You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.
You know how we are preparing for our live show in May. Yes, we are, okay, And I try and get out of certain parts of it that I don't enjoy, which has for some reason gone from zero to one hundred very very fast.
The rehearsals and the lyrics and the measurement.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I've been trying to tell you that I don't like to dance. Wasn't on my job application when I came here. I shouldn't have to. Anyway, They've got this new thing on Ancestry DNA where they have your traits. They have like forty traits, right, so think like morning on night person, do you require a lot of caffeine? Do mosquito mosquitos buy you all that stuff because.
Mosquitoes don't bite her bite out of me?
Yeah. Not only does it tell you what your traits are, but what parent you got them from?
Right?
This is how amazing it is. Anyway, I was going through and apparently I do not possis s the DNA to learn choreography. It said there's a there's.
Actually a spit in a stick to find that out.
I feel like this is mine. You know how you use your adhd as a get our jail? This is mine, Mia.
I feel a sick note coming on from Jesse Stephens. My doctor precludes me from having anticipates it.
Said, I can't learn choreography. Totally different, DNA marker. I don't like dancing, yeah, said it said, you don't like dancing?
Dancing? What about when you're drunk?
Yeh, when I've had a few drinks actually dancing. But I don't want to dance right now?
Did you?
She did? I saw her doing that. Hello and welcome to Mama Mia out loud and to our Friday show where we take a break from the news cycle because holy hell is scary out there. Deep breaths, because today it's Friday, it's the thirty first of January, and we are talking about other stuff. I am Holly wayIn right, I'm mea.
Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And on today's show, there's a new item of clothing that the finger wagging trendsetters of gen Z have assigned just TikTok's sartorial binfire and we think we know why. Also, a viral essay has reignited a debate about whether there's any such thing as an a for effort recommendations which include a meal to eat while you're wearing your weighted vest, a movie that you'll sop through on a TV show about bitches, and our very best and worst of the week. But first, Mia Friedman, we're.
Big fans of pettiness here on Mama Mer out loud or maybe that's just me, but no, I think Jesse, you're very petty.
You like some pettiness?
Yeah, I do like a little bit of pettiness.
I think it's an underrated personality trait. Personally, does being petty make you the bigger person? No, it makes you the smaller one, and sometimes that's okay. I'm excited to report that we've discovered a new form of petty behavior that's even more petty than the regular kind. It's more subtle, it's smaller, and it's easy to miss, but it can still be deeply satisfying.
In case you missed.
It, we learned about it via a viral tweet this week from a woman called bex Luthor, who wrote, there's someone in our team who behaves horribly to me, and whenever I have to type his name, I've taken to using a slightly smaller font.
Size than for everyone else's. I love that. I love it. Micro pettiness is pettiness via.
Stealth, Yes, And what I love about it is that it is a level of petty that makes the other person feel crazy. Because if I said to you, guys really weird. But every time Mia sends me an email, I swear she puts my name a little bit smaller, people would ye paranoid. Yeah, it would make you question your grasp on reality. But that means the person's really getting to you. And I love that.
We have asked out loud as if they do any acts of micro pettiness, maybe in the workplace or in their life generally, Jesse, you've got one.
One out Louder said that when someone in her family is really pissing her off, she'll go and sit in their usual seat, Like, say, there's a head of the table that someone normally sits in, so it puts everyone a little off. Kiltop sag.
Yeah. One of the outlauders said, I tell my best friend if her boyfriend is being mean to her she should just take small things from his house, nothing important, just inconvenient, like the base of his phone charge and leave the cord. Just take the plug, one of the stove dials, only one, the little spitty thing under the plate in the microwave, so it won't yes one shoe, but leave the other. That's great, that falls into the hole. Like, am I going crazy? Yeah? I love that.
I've got some examples from out louders of admin pettiness. One person says, I'll stop using exclamation marks when I talk to this person over email or slack.
It makes me feel like I'm being Yeah, that is my peak. Rude is when you get proper punctuality.
Yeah. Someone else said that people often get her name wrong in emails, so she does the same back, calling them by their last name or spell their name wrong. Instead of signing off every email with many thanks, they just sign off their email with thanks.
I realize that I have been guilty of micro pettiness in the last twenty four hours. I do this often, which is when I get up in the middle of the night with our baby, which has been happening a bit lately. I will send my husband a text message about something that's not very ard. But yesterday I did it at four fifteen. I went, we need milk, and I just it's like a marker of just going I'm awake.
Just so you know, just so you know. Do you know what I used to do?
Every time I was annoyed with my husband, I'd take off my wedding ring.
That's not my friend, just petty.
He never noticed. I wish I was more of an evil genius. Maybe I'm going to try and develop that. Yeah, I'm not genius enough.
Hi, I'm married, David. I want to tell you about a new store I'm opening called lat Larry. Why am I getting into the coffee game? Because I went to this coffee shop next door and the guy was such a jerk that I felt like I had to do something.
You know what.
I got me a little Spots store.
As the fashion correspondent on this show, I've come across some urgent news. I read an article this week on Muma Maya that told me, in no uncertain terms, that I a millennial. Must bury yet another of my beloved staples. There was the eyeliner. I remember they came from my eyeliner.
Oh your winged eyeliner.
Yep. Then they came from my skinny jeans. They came for my socks. Now I've got a bide part yep, visible socks, yeah, yep, yep, yep. And now I've got to wear the long ones. Now apparently we are doing bags wrong. So Nicola Dolf, who's the head of style at the Iconic, has declared the cross body bag done. Interestingly, you know who I see wear a cross body bag more than anyone else is this lady who thinks she's a fashion icon over.
Here, although she wears like a cross phone strap thing a lot.
I wear everything cross and it's for reasons of feminism and also disorganization, because I tend to lose things.
Yes, right, keeps your hands free.
Gen Z's in the office were asked how they felt about the cross body bag and if they were surprised by this news item, and here's what they said. Cross body bags are very millennial coded. Gen Z's are all about under the shoulder bag, big or small. Another said, it's not so much that the cross body bag is bad, it's more so you can spot a millennial out in the crowd with it. It's a millennial identifier.
See gen x is are stoked because if someone thinks we're a millennial, that's a compliment. Thrilled. People who get really upset about these pronouncements from Gen Zed are millennials. Yes, how are you feeling? You don't wear a lot of cross body bags. You still wear like a backpack like Dora the Explorer.
I was going to ask, how are we feeling about backpacks? They're in, They're still in, right, justipractice videos love a backpack.
Yeah, when you need to grab something, No, I do struggle with that because you have to take it off, put it down, pick it up, put it back on again.
The reason I also like cross body bags, apart from having your hands free, is that it also can give a bit of color. It's like something going across your body.
I thought, if you.
Are a big busted woman, then the cross body bag has never worked.
Yeah, that's true.
It's like a seat belt. It's just it doesn't It just sits between, it kind of emphasizes.
Sometimes.
See, sometimes I find that it cuts because I am now a big bustard woman. Sometimes I find that it cuts. If I feel like I've got pillow bust, it cuts it in half. Dagally, I actually think it can be quite complimentary. I have a theory about why jen z are so obsessed with telling you millennials, millennials that you're old. And the difference between now and say, when we were in our teens or twenties, is that now pretty much
everybody dresses the same. Like there are three generations of my family women who shop at Uniclo, my mother, me, my daughter. We're all buy the same kinds of items.
Your mother and I wear the same shoes, tevas, Yes, we love a Tevah do love a teva?
Exactly.
My father and my son were the same kind of runners, so that was very different. Like if I think about my grandmother growing up and my grandfather, they didn't even wear jeans.
So over the last couple of.
Generations, there's been this blurring of you know, everyone chops at cotton On, everybody shops at Zara, whether it's a small label, I'm using those because there are labels that everybody's heard of. It's become very democratized. Why do you think that is because we don't want to look old.
Yeah.
I think there's greater existential angst about getting old than ever before.
Yeah, And I think you've got four generations who are essentially the broad constructs of it addressing the same. Like they could be wearing sambas, they could be wearing jeans, and they could be wearing a graphic T shirt right, and they might wear it all in their own way,
but they could all be wearing essentially the same. So what gen z's have to do because they don't want to look like their parents or their grandparents or their older millennial siblings, they have to pick on very small subtle aspects of it, specific aspects, and you know, demonize those and.
Say they're the coders.
So it's the socks, it's the bags. It's not like genes, it's the type of gen do.
You think, Because I'm not convinced when I think about growing up or whatever, we've always laid shit on people older than us. That's not entirely new. Like I have been giving my mum shit about what she wears since I could speak. I wonder if the difference is that we used to bitch in private and now we bitch on TikTok, Like is it that now we're just so open about Oh this makes you look cold, this makes you look cold?
Well? You also now you get to watch the reaction. See, millennials are in this very particular moment of realizing they're not the young ones anymore, and that's a very painful space to be because you go through in this relatively short time, oh I'm the young one at work to like, oh I'm not more, and it's jarring and you're trying to figure it out. And now when people mock your side part or your skinny jeans, because I think me is right, it's all about the micro although let me
tell you me. If I walked in here dressed in the clothes that my fifteen year old daughter was, oh.
My god, you people would throw me out onto the street, like giant white leg jeans.
And teeny tiny crop tops. My god, can you imagine. But anyway, that aside the little markers of it, they see how upset you get. People get furious about this. What do you mean I can't wear my skinny jeans? What do you mean my socks aren't cool? And they get so upset. And that's fun for the young people to see the old people getting upset about stuff, Whereas you used to not see it so much, but now it's like hilarious watching us get upset about sock.
I think the problem is we're just too cool. Like mothers and daughters go and get tattoos together.
That's what I did. It's this is what everyone's doing. It's not darling.
There's a lot of people, like young people have always wanted to separate themselves from older people.
We've never resisted aging more.
And also old things have become cool, like you know, older people can wear sexy things and wear crop tops if they want to, although I will judge them for it.
And younger people want.
To wear daggy old man shoes or old woman shoes like you do.
And so it's like norm core. It's all blurred.
In the article on Mum and May, out Fran said, gen Z haven't lived through enough to understand all the benefits of a cross body bag. And I think that that's very true. It's like maybe we just have the wisdom. We have the wisdom of knowing that certain trends.
Also, gen Z, you don't have any responsibility.
No, you just can said I don't use a bag.
You can just.
Punching bag under your arm because you never have to lift your arm if you don't want to.
Yes, And because they don't have to put their phone in their bag because they've never put their phone down. It's just attached to their point.
We've got a funny ven diagram in our house because you know, my daughter, her girlfriend, my son, who's sixteen. My daughter's girlfriend has this ven diagreen where she's in the middle. She shares clothes with me, she shares clothes with Coco, she shares clothes with Remy, And even though Coco, Remy and I don't dress at all the same, we all.
Share clothes with Jack.
She's a hybrid.
Yeah, you tried really really hard, you worked super duper hard. You didn't succeed, In fact, you failed. Should you be commended for effort over result? This is a familiar debate kicked off again by an essay by Adam Grant, who's one of the most prestigious and popular organizational psychologists of our time. We love organizational psychologists, don't we, because they know things, but they also make us more productive. He's
the loveliest guy just to name dropped us quickly. Everyone loves that.
I interviewed him for No Filter a few years ago, and he's amazing. He also co wrote Cheryl Sandberg's book that we love, Option B about dealing with grief. He's like the cool internet psychologist.
And he also teaches university at the prestigious Warden School in the US, and he wrote an essay called No, you Don't get an A for effort at the end of last year about how he's noticed that his students are now frequently presenting him with their marks and complaining that they should have been higher because they tried really hard. He wrote, recently, at the end of a week long course with the light workload, multiple students had a new complaint.
My grade doesn't reflect the effort I put into this course. High marks are for excellence, he writes, not grit. In the past, students understood that hard work was not sufficient and a required great work. And yet today many students expect to be rewarded for the quantity of their effort rather than the quality of their knowledge. Now, he goes on to explain that this isn't their fault. The young people I guess who are coming to him and talking
about this. He says, we've had a shift that was made in educational work ago, which ended up entering the psyche of the mainstream that acknowledged that rewarding effort cultivates a strong work ethic in people and often reinforces learning. So it's a good thing to enforce that effort is a really good thing. It makes people want to work hard. But he argues that we might have taken it too far, not just at school or at UNI or on whatever course we might be taking, but in the workplace and
even in relationships. Jesse, are you an a for effort person?
This made me really think because the respect we have for effort I broadly agree with. I don't think this is the same as like a participation ribbon, giving everyone a participation ribbon. It's different because this is saying it's about growth, mindset and understanding that it's not fixed. It's not you're smart, you're not. You're good at netball, you're not. It's saying, if you try, it's something you'll get better, which is true. I love that, and I think that is how we should teach kids.
Now. That's encouraging, Yeah, exactly, kind of demoralize.
Yes, it's not rewarding you just for showing up. It's rewarding you for showing up and they're putting in.
Yeah, and if you had to decide if you're hiring someone for a job, I reckon you would go the hard worker over the person with natural ability any day. So conscientiousness in terms of like the beat five, I think the big five personality traits that you look at like there's openness, as neuroticism or that conscientiousness, those people that work hard. And I remember this from school. There were people that worked hard, and then there were people
that didn't even study and would get really really good marks. Right, I can look at it and see who's more successful, and it was the people who put their head down and developed that work ethic succeeded. And I think that grit and resilience are really important qualities, and you generally get better at things when you have a good work ethic. In saying that, what this made me think about was
how you can work really hard ineffectively. So there have been periods of my life where I know I've done this. In fact, the university exam really resonated. I turned up to university, I worked harder than I've ever worked, and I got about sixty in my essays. I just wasn't doing the work effectively. I was applying this other strategy that I'd always used to this new thing and failing at it and.
The day I hadn't been in meta yet. You couldn't cheat.
Putting your hand up and going. But I tried really hard on that isn't the point, and that's it's.
An honorable So are you saying it's an honorable character trait? But it doesn't necessarily assure you anything.
Yeah, and more honorable, which is what Adam Grant says, is to put your hand up and go to your lecture or whatever. I tried really hard in this. What am I missing?
Like?
What can I do that's better? And it reminded me of do you remember this story? Blew my mind. At the Olympics, Cam McAvoy the fifty meter Australian gold medalist swimmer. Right, he was a first Australian man ever to win the fifty meter freestyle. I think it was his late thirties, right, like he was older than most.
Happened at the last one.
Yeah, this is the last Olympics and he had been training for years, couldn't win it. At the beginning of his career, he would do seventy kilometers a week swimming when he trained for this Olympics, he did three kilometers a week and he just went, I'm going to change how I do it, and I'm going to train in a twenty five meter pool. And he won the gold medal. And I think you know how they say insanity. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting
different results. It's like sometimes sitting down and this is what Adam Grant's all about, and going and putting in all this effort. It's not paying off, then your effort is misguided. It's misdirected. There must be a better way to do it, right.
Yeah, I think you can see how it's happened because it did start out in parenting. It's funny that when we were talking about this earlier today, Holly and I who when your kids get to a certain age, you start getting reports. And in our kids' school reports were always interested in the effort and the comments more than the actual marks.
I tell my kids, and I'm sure that having read this now I should not. I always say that's the mark I care about the most is the effort.
Yeah.
The only trouble is in their final exams, there's no little brackets for how hard they try.
If you ever, like me to see a cardiologist, you don't want the one who tried the hardest, do you, No, I just want the one who's good.
And then when you get into the workforce, the person who prepared the hardest and for the job interview doesn't necessarily get the job. So I'm torn about this, but I find that I have it in everything that I do as a parent, because it's all about good trying, good waiting, good thinking, good sharing. So we're very focused on effort and intention. But I have noticed this at
work as well. I've been a boss for a lot of years now, about thirty, and I've noticed over the last maybe ten years there's a lot of sometimes indignant insistence on output as the most important thing versus outcome. We talk about this in our business a lot, and so to many others, because people will often say I tried really hard, we worked really hard, we put a lot of time into this project, and it's like, well,
that's great. However it didn't work. The output might have been huge, but as Jesse said, if the outcome is not good, the actual effort itself.
Doesn't count for anything.
So we're in an outcome based society, not output.
But that's tricky, right, I very much recognize that to me, But the outcome isn't always in your control. How much effort can you put into something is in your control, but the outcome is not always because it's affected by lots of other factors, right, And it's interesting to me. You know, we as a society, although we do say that we really value hard work, We really worship natural talent.
We really worship like high IQ, natural beauty, like speed, whatever it might be that people are and renately got it and things looking effortless. We really like that.
Whereas if people when it comes to female appearance, certainly when it comes to women and an.
Intelligence, we talk all the time about they're smart. They're smart, they're smart. We don't talk about whether or not they've worked really hard to do that. And I wonder if that's partly because of that You can work really, really hard and what actually comes from that might not be in your control. So then how do you measure success at all?
Is the praising of effort really about arts? Attempting to teach kids and young people to love the process because the process is where you're going to spend ninety nine percent of your time and also character.
I think it's about trying to teach character, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee success. But would I rather that my kids were pleasant and class, did their homework with polite to their teachers, or that yes, that's character right, rather than though I didn't try, I didn't do anything. I wasn't a productive person or a good team player or any but I got an A because I'm clever. Like, that's not my value system.
In all situations are the same. So for example, trying in a relationship is worth a lot. Some things you can't control, but you can control how much you try, whereas at work there are no rewards for trying.
I mean there can be. You know, it's interesting.
We have a lot of shout outs and encouragement for people who try, because that is a character and a core value that you really want. But I think what Adam Grant says, which is the key to this is what you need to do is say I tried really hard, which does count for something, but the outcome was not what I wanted and not what I'd hoped for and feels not true to the amount of effort I put in. Therefore, what could I do differently. So I used to hear a lot a writer would say, I wrote this really
great story. It was fantastic, it just didn't do well. No one read it, And I'm like, well, then it wasn't great. What are we missing? Was it the headline perhaps could have been different, was it the image we chose, was it the way we promoted it?
A story, it's a.
Bit like if a tree falls in a forest. You can try really hard, story can be really great, but what's the objective measure of that greatness? And in a workplace it is fairly objectives.
A point of effort, though, is that it's meant to be internally validating. So what we're trying to teach kids is that you should be proud that you tried, and pride is meant to come from within. It's not meant to be something that your teacher gives you, or your boss gives you or whatever. It's something that you go to bed at night and your internal validation I know
I tried my best is the internal validation. Because you can sit down and do your best and write a book that you believe is really good and put in three times as much effort as you ever have with anything you've ever done, and that book might absolutely flop. And that's because of luck, and it's because of timmunity and market and all of the things you can't control. But if you're doing everything for external validation, then it's
never going to be that satisfying anyway. So really, I think effort is just something about like it does we should get our self esteem from how does that work.
In the real world when it comes to trying to get a job, trying to retain that job, doing your exams.
It doesn't actually matter how much effort you.
Think it does, though, Like if I walk through my life and I go I didn't get that opportunity, but I know that I tried my absolute best. There's a real peace with that. There are people I see who don't want to try their best because that's a scary thing to do because rejection could be on the other side.
I'm already to try. I see what you're saying.
So you're saying that as parents, we're trying to help our children to get that internal validation so that they're not completely beholden to the validation external validation of the outside world.
Yeah, which is like the weather. You can't control it. What you can control is what you But.
How do you I have a very clear memory of being a like early high school kid. It will shock you both to learn that I was not sporty, like, not even a tiny bit, but I quite like running. And we've earned one hundred meters athletics and I remember going, I am going to run as fast as I can. We're going to run so hard, We're going to try
so hard, and I was just shit at it. Yeah, And I went, well, clearly, I'm not a runner, and I just would go and smoke sickies behind the bike shed for the rest of the whole rest of my sports career. I see this in my kids where they put in a lot of effort on a particular essay or whatever and they don't get a good mark and they just kind of go, yeah, well, what's clearly I'm not good at that, so I'm just not going to do that. Or I tried really hard to understand that massing,
but I'm not good at it. So mathstead to me, like it's really hard to there's still a lesson in there have any motivation for things that they don't succeed that because most of us are average at most things. Right, most of us are like a few people are really good at a handful of things, but most of us are pretty average at most things. So if we're only interested in outcome, then you wouldn't do ninety percent of the things you've got to do.
Yeah, and I guess that's resilience. But it's like maybe, then you go, it's about changing your goals, right, and you go, well, next time, I want to come second, last, last.
That is, after the break, We've got you sorted with some recos, including something to cook, a movie to make you cry, and a TV show about bitches.
Vibes, ideas, atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
This is my best recommendation.
It's Friday, so we want to help you set up the weekend with our best recommendations.
Holly, please go first, something to eat while wearing fast. We've been talking about protein around here, Haley. I am in my big chicken salad era because I love chicken. Chicken, chicken. We talked about it the other week. Maybe chicken with egg maybe chicken with legoons.
What anyways does this chicken?
Have you noticed that eggs there's a shortage because of bird flu, so anyone else.
It's very disheartening. It's tricky froust vegetarians. I am recommending a chicken salad from the one and I only wonderful Nagi of recipe in Eats fame now if you don't know about Recipe to Eats, and of course you do, because everybody does. She is the most unbelievable cook and her two most recent cookbooks she became really famous for having recip eats online. It's what we might have once
called a blog became a cult hit. Her last two cookbooks have been like they outsell everything in the universe. Is it just about things in a tin? No, not at all, Not at all. I thought it was all things that you could make with tin.
No.
No, Recipe in Eats just comes from the original name of it, which is like a tin that you keep your recipes in. Oh you see, not really, but any always stand the reason everyone loves there as the food is really tasty. It's relatively simple and basic and it always works. And her most recent book is called Tonight, and I have been making from it this it's called Cowboy Chicken Salad, and it's like a Mexican chicken salad.
Chicken so you get chicken breast, and obviously you're going to need the proper recipe because I'm not.
But like, do you grill it?
Do you whack itack whack, which is very satisfying to get it nice and flat. Then you marinate rob it in some stuff which obviously argue you'll tell you what that is, but it's like you know, Mexican spices. You marinate it and then you grill it, and then you have it on this salad, which is like avocado, tomato, corn, black beans. But the thing that makes it amazing, as with any salad, is the dressing. And it's this Mexican
dressing with like lime and cumine and whatever. But I make mine with yogurt because too much mayo makes me feel poorly. But you can use mayo if that's your vibe. I just can't tell you how good it is that I love it satisfying and how much it is a meal that just fills you up. And if you want less avocado because you're not doing that or whatever, of course you can do whatever you want.
Eat it.
Yeah, Matilda loved it, Billy Woni. Then the thing that's vaguely looks like a vegetable, but he ate the chicken part. Could I do it with a barbecued chicken? Oh chicken? No, Well you could, but it wouldn't taste quite as good. But yeah, dressing would hide a million sins. I'm looking for a lower effort way. Yeah, it's not that hard to promise, but it's delicious. Of that cowboy chicken salad, it is my recommendation. It is all I'm eating this summer.
I texted every mother I know about the movie Night Bitch, which I watched over the long weekend.
Is super cute. Do you just love getting to be home with them all the time? Yeah? I do. I love it. You're an artist, right, well I used to feel wow, but that feels like a lifetime agirls. Yeah, totally definitely we get it. I used to be a stripper, Mamadie. I'm not buzzy. I just feel aw look at my teeth sharp.
There's a little bit weird.
Motherhood and changes you and connects you to some primal urges.
Have you ever felt so exhausted as a that you worried you might actually be turning into a dog.
Maybe not not exactly that dog, but a wild animal.
Yes, that's the premise of Night Bitch. It stars Amy Adams. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical. It's been categorized in that genre body horror, along with the substance. But it's not anything like the substance that was too gory for you. There's one tiny.
Scene that's a little bit erh Is it funny? I think so much.
It looked almost like a black comedy, like the concept is Finney.
Yeah, exactly. The concept is funny but also very powerful. It captures something really raw about motherhood that I've never seen on screen before, and the turning into a dog thing. There's no spoilers here, but it's actually just such an amazing metaphor for how primal and feral motherhood can feel. So Amy Adams is a woman who's got a toddler, her husband is away for work a lot, and it's just which is so good.
It's on Disney.
Plus, I'm just desperate for everyone to see it so that I can want to watch it.
I will totally watch it.
Jesse My recommendation is also a movie. I went to the movies over the weekend and saw We live in Time with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pew and it is exactly what I expected.
What's happened to my own?
Why it's an idea?
I'm so sorry, But do we know each other yet?
No?
I run you over? Sorry, Sorry, I'm Alma by the way. Both we're going to make sure you have the time of your life. Okay, probably ought to get go, he says. Unless you have checked to do, then I have nothing.
Whether we like it or not.
Clock is ticking because I'm worried. There's a very distinct and real possibility that I am about to fall in love with you.
It's brilliant, it's moving. How long did it take me to cry?
I reckon.
I cried in the first fifteen to twenty minutes, which a lot of people have said. And then you just you managed to cry the whole way along. But what's amazing about it is that at no point does it hit you over the head. There are points where I went you could have gone harder on that, but it's the subtlety of the pain. In a lot of the moments. When the lights came on at the end, I just was heaving crying like it. It is so so well done, and Florence Pugh steals it. In my opinion. The broad
storyline is that there's Almut and Tobias. It's been called a sort of rom com vibe. It's them, and then she receives a diet. So yeah, I thought it was interesting to call it a rom com, but that's the genre. Apparently she receives a diagnosis. And what's new about this is that it explores ambition and motherhood and not wanting to just be remembered as someone's dying mother, Like what do you want out of that period of your life?
And you know how it's the cliche or no one lays on the deathbed thinking they want to work more. This may be challenges that a bit and says what would you want to do? And what might it take from the people you love? So it's so really good?
Is it very distressing? Well? What do you think? I didn't know.
I knew that it was about illness, but what I didn't know was that they had a daughter, and that bit killed me, Like that bit there.
Because I think we talked about this, but like I want to go somewhere and just cry. I will. I love movies that make me do that. And I love the idea because if there are so many movies from Turns of Indment to Sleep Sin Seattle that have dead moms, right, and it's true, but they are always absolutely selfless angels, like it's just the trope, right, So I'm really interested.
In saying that played with the challenged.
What was it like when the last came on? It was not good.
I was there with two friends and they just couldn't stop laughing, And then they were like, and they kept saying one line from it that just got me. It wasn't. I cried all the way home, but it felt good. I'm not a crier, Like I can't remember the last time I cried, and it just felt very cathartic to get that out.
I've got one more little throw in before we go, before I forget. I watched it over the holidays.
One of my favorite TV shows of all time, The's Split.
I've never watched remember.
There were about four seasons.
It was about a family of women who were all lawyers, a mother and her three daughters. Two of the three daughters were lawyers, and it was just a beautiful, interesting and they were family lawyers. So each week there was someone's divorce that they were working on, and it also followed their lives. Anyway, I loved it. It was written by Abby Morgan who is a phenomenal writer any way
she has done. They did a bit of a Christmas special which was like a three episode arc where they got the cast back together and it was the split Barcelona.
You look amazing. I love a good weather. Have you been dating a couple of dates a few months ago? Archie asterious lawyer, We may have a Seriously, Hannah, what's ho? Are you back? Scared of being alone? Scared of being with someone?
But isn't anything worth doing? Terrifying?
Another taste of that.
It was, you know, a bit like four weddings and a funeral but in Spain. They all go to Spain for the main character, Hannah, her daughter's getting married and it's just where do you watch escape as viewing on ABC iView And it's worth it just for the Barcelona's scenery.
It or make you want to go to.
Spain after the break, an ambition, crisis, a big booboo. It is our best and worst of the week.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we dropped new segments of Mama Mia Out Loud just for Muma MEA subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get your daily dose of out Loud and a big thank you to everyone who is already subscribed.
It's time for Best and Worst of the week. This is a part of the show where we share a bit from our personal lives. What's been going on, Holly? Your worst? Please?
Well you know what my worst is, Jesse, because you've got a panicked message from me in the middle of Thursday morning saying, do you know how to get something out of the trash on your computer when you have already emptied it.
I had a bad feeling when I read that message, and I said to you, the good news is you have your.
Worst, and you did. I was in my little office at home. We were going away for the long weekend, and so I was getting ready and you know, you're like prepping things. I was answering some emails, making sure I had everything in place, and in the most uncharacteristic move of my life, I went my desktop. It's a terrible mess.
I've done this, Yeah, terrible mess.
Just twenty million random screen shots, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know what our desktops look like, so, I'm just going to get a little clean out, big clean out, just whack it all in the trash. And then in the second incredibly uncharacteristic move, I went and I'm going to empty the trash because I'm sure I'm
taking up a lot of memory on my computer. So I hit empty trash and then I thought, I've got to just finish that very important proposition for the next book I'm writing that my publishers waiting on that I've been working on all summer. That's thousands of words. I better just finish that before we go away and send it. And then I realized that I had thrown that in the bin on my computer and pressed empty. And I cannot tell you how upset I was.
Did you cry?
You know? I didn't actually cry. I nearly cried. I got very mad. Brent heard me screaming, and so he came out and he was like, you know, when you're getting ready to go away and there's chaos and everything, you're packing and the kids, blah blah, and he was like what what? And I was like had He immediately went into don't panic, you're panicking. You're panicking, and I was like yeah, So that was so bad.
Panic is the only appropriate was that I went to AI.
I did it before everyone goes you can do time machine. I did all that. I went to all my clever AI assistants. I asked them, then they told me what to do. Then I tried. All those things didn't work, which is also my fault. Like my eyicloud, I hadn't saved it in the right folder to be on the cloud. I hadn't updated my this and my that and all that boring stuff, so I hadn't done any of that,
so it had really really gone. We even went to an actual human who works in the computer shop with my laptop, like Curry Bradshaw in that scene, yes, saying can you help me, sir, please, kind sir, I'm desperate, and he said no. And the thing that was so weird about it, and I was so mad with myself, is that it was so uncharacteristic that I'd written this thing in the place that I had in a word
doc that I kept on my desktop. Normally I do all that in a special program that's got saved somewhere, like it was just like a series of that was crazy. So then I tried to talk myself into well, clearly that was meant to happen.
Yeah, I was going to try it, you.
Know what I mean say that, but I don't believe. Yeah.
The worst thing about that is you want to be mad at someone like you want to be mad at the technology. You want to be mad, and then it's really upsetting when it just is you.
It was just me, And then I had to obviously spend the rest of the weekend trying to recreate this thing that I'd been working on in parcels all summer long. It was very upsetting. I was very upset. We may recover, we may not. Who knows. Anyway, Maybe you won't recover the document you emotionally may emotionally.
I love also that you saving to say to your publisher, I'm sorry I can't hand it.
In because I deleted it. I mean, that's some fucking Freudian shit. Yeah, And you wouldn't believe it, would you just be like, she's been kicking back all summer long? Anyway, I haven't probably Anyway. My best is that then we did go away, and the thing that was lovely, but it must I can imagine. I was really really fun and relaxed, but while I was stressing and trying to remember all the great ideas I had. We made the
children do real life things. So we angst all the time about how the kids don't live in the real world anymore. And I have this sort of policy that I think we've spoken about before where they have to do one, like at least one real life thing every day,
like real life thing that's connected to the world. Anyway, where we went was a bit further down the coast and where we live, and there's this famous and possibly quite dangerous I apologize to anyone who's going to tell me I'm irresponsible, like jump there that kids jump off not a rock, like not that kind of thing, but like kind of like an old platform and you jump into the ocean and the ocean's crystal clear and it's gorgeous. And I was like, kids aren't going to do that.
Kids these days don't take risks. My kids spent push them.
I wouldn't have pushed anyone off anything at this point. I wasn't throw myself off there at first.
I'm just like they spent all weekend of throw themself this having the best time ever.
It was like this.
Beautiful, wholesome childhood thing. It was great. Billy, who gets very obsessed about stuff, started counting how many times he'd jumped off this thing. By the end of the weekend, he'd jumped off at forty two times. I my wowness, it was so much fun. So my worst was my IDoc and my best was kids jumping off high stuff. Be careful, take precautions. Everybody on both of those topics maya what was your worst?
My worst and my best were intertwined this week in the way that occasionally these things happen with bittersweet things. I made the announcement yesterday that I am stepping away from No Filter after ten years and I think six hundred and fifty something episodes.
I've tried to do this.
A couple of times before, as listeners to No Filter No and as you guys know, when I've needed a little bit of a breather, I've persuaded some people, including both of you, to step in for occasional episodes. Kate Langbrook hosted for me over summer last year, but I knew it was time. I've been wanting to do this for a couple of years. It hasn't been possible because there hasn't been anyone who has been able to take it over.
It's a big job. You're annoying. It's a big show. Have jobs. It's a big show.
And I explain in this announcement that I made in the No Filter feed why I decided to do it, and it basically comes down to I've been piling things on my plate for seventeen years since starting this company with my husband, and I've finally worked out that if I just keep adding more things, it's not possible. So I've finally understood how time works.
That's part of it.
So to be able to do more things and new things, I have to stop doing some of the things I've been doing for a long time, and also creatively. As much of an honor and a privilege as it is to sit in those rooms and have those intense conversations, they are intense, and I've done a lot. I've got much better at interviewing from when I started my God and I've learned so much. Yes, and I'm proud to
say I'm a really good interviewer now. But I've done that, Like the challenge of it isn't there for me anymore, even though every interview is obviously different. I've kind of done it, so I was ready to hand it over. I have persuaded Kate lane Brook to take the mic from me on a permanent basis, and she's the new host.
Her first episode is next week.
I am the guest because I was easy to book, and we're going to go into a little bit more about why I decided to leave, and just also me interviewing her. It's more of an in conversation really, because she's got amazing for that. And funnily enough, we recorded this a year ago before it was going to be her first episode of her summer hosting thing. Part of the reason I've decided to move away from No Field. I was in a really bad state.
Then we recorded the interview, and then when I heard it, I was like, I can't.
You sent it to both few people.
Yeah, you guys.
It was one of my favorite interviews. It was so honest, it was so insightful. I loved it, and I was so I think I even just a few months ago, I said, please release that.
I really upset that we didn't release it anyway. This one's just it was a little bit more, you know, I was talking from a wound, and now I'm talking from a scar, and I hope you'll find this one better because I have more perspective and there's kind of more resolution, whereas I was really in it at the time and it was just a bit of a hot mess.
So that's both my worst and my best.
How do you feel right now having actually really this process?
Now that I can people know about it and I can be public, and I've got some lovely messages, and it's been lovely looking back at some of the interviews. But I interviewed everybody that I wanted to interview. I ticked every box that I wanted to tick.
Is it hard watching someone else hold your baby? It is glorious. It is so so glorious.
There's a word that I learned from someone I interviewed on No Filter who was in a thruple Rowan Mangan who she's in a thrapple with two other women, and.
She said, there's a word. It's the opposite of jealousy.
It's called compersian, where you feel happier from watching someone that you love be loved by someone else. And I feel so happy watching Kate do such an incredible job. I mean, she just happened in those six episodes that she did last summer, did the most downloaded episode of the year for No Filter, when she interviewed Andy Lee, and not a single scaic of me.
Was jealous or you know, disappointed that it wasn't me competitive.
It's the opposite, because my biggest challenge in running this company is finding people who are better than me and smarter than me so I can do less. And you know, for me finding her with No Filter, I'm getting emotional. It was beautiful and I'm just so feelly happy.
Well, I'm going to miss you on there, but if it's going to be anybody, Kate, thank you. I have learned a lot listening to that show. Jesse, what was your worst? My worst?
It's a big one that I've sort of had over the summer, which is this crisis of ambition, is how I would put it. And at the beginning of the year, we've talked about this before I go full Oprah for a month and I usually I'm very goal oriented and I like knowing what I want and having clear goals and I don't have any. I don't have one, and I've been trying to find them, and I find it very discombobulating. And then my word of the year is creativity. And I've sat down and I've gone all right, well,
come on, what are you going to do? And the sensation is like when you're trying to run in a dream and you can't run, Like I just feel really not like myself in that way, and I feel.
Like there's an itch that you want to scratch, but you don't know what the itch is or could this just be for the first time in many years, pretty much since I've known you, you're not spread completely thin and overwhelmed.
It's that.
But to be completely on it, I am experiencing.
Boredom like I'm unchallenged.
Yeah yeah, And I love going to work like I love my job more than I have ever loved my job. The problem with this job is that it actually does finish, so I found it. Even on the weekend, I'm like, Okay, well I want to do something. Luna's gone down for sleep and I've got a couple of hours I can't do out loud.
Just spuck up the group chat.
You can't.
That's a thing about a book or an idea or you've always done.
That's true.
I've read this thing about how motherhood Like your hands are busy, but your mind can be idle. There's a lot of time to think, and I don't know what I meant to be thinking about. I would like to be marinating on something, but I don't have a thing to hold on to.
Are you going to write another book?
I want you, but I don't like. I kind of have an idea. This is a thing, right, is that when I go to work, I've designed my life around being incredibly efficient, and I have no guilt around working with a baby. I've no guilt, but I go I'm a efficient and then I go home to her. The problem with creativity and writing is that it's not very efficient. So the idea of sitting there and writing for two hours and taking that time away from lunar and coming
up with nothing, I can't justify that. And I'm really struggling with how to explore creativity in a way that doesn't feel incredibly selfish. When it's like I sit down at the computer, I'm like, well, I'm going to write a book. But you know, if I'm going to spend two hundred hours writing a book, it better be an award winning masterpiece. Oh wow, and guess what not how.
That Protestant work effort.
It's a bad effort.
That's interesting.
Yeah, so kind of in a weird place of that. But my best is I did an escape room this week with eight friends. We went and I had forgotten about escape rooms. I got really into them like maybe five or six years ago, and then a friend suggested it and it was so fun. And before you go, you're kind of like, oh, can I be bothered? And before we were all going, someone was dating someone new and you're kind of trying to talk, and then you go into the escape room and you're like, well, we can't gossip.
I've never done. So they sound like my worst nightment. No no, no, no no.
They're very mindful because it's like you don't think about anything else. They take your phone. It's a different part of your brain that you're operating. Everyone's brains work differently, Like it was so fun.
Who's the Boss in an Escape Room? US escape leaderboard?
We were thrown in and it was a senses It was about your senses, so you had to use all of your senses from smell to sight. There was one where it was completely dark. There was a braille like all of that. It was amazing.
Who takes the lead? You are some people are better at those things than others, right, so it would be it must be competitive in there.
Yeah, So it's like everyone's looking around at different things.
So problems treasure hunt, I'm terrible of that kind of yeah, terrible.
And there's lots of red herrings. So when we walked in, there was newspaper all over the walls and there were different random letters circled and you had to work out if it was spelling something or whatever. But an additional recommendation is that I was speaking to a friend who has just met someone on a dating app and it is an AI dating app, and I have become obsessed. It is called a Marta Amata and she's been on
dating apps for years no luck. She finds this dating app and it's a chatbot and she goes, Hi, I'm looking for someone who blah blah blah, and just gave them all this information and they said you might like Jack, and they say here's Jack. Jack likes this and that and blah, and she goes, yeah, great, looks great. Went on a date with this person and it's just like
the best relationship she's had in forever. But people are talking about this dating app because a chatbot takes in all the nuances of what you want, yeah and matches you, and.
Like they should do that on maths. There should be the robot that matches the people up. Get Ai to do it.
Because all my single friends are saying, hinge Tinder a lot of issues, right, is that it's just they're not succerethful at the moment. But this one, she was just saying, go and try it. So everyone who's single and looking for dating app, try this one.
We need to do an episode. We get to respond to Jesse's Cristi of Ambition because I have twenty five pieces of useless advice for you. Oh I'm excited, but we need to do that. We need to do that because we have run out of time.
Yeah, exactly right, exactly. I can update you all on my performance psychologist.
Cand wait and share the tips so that we don't have to go see one. That is all we've got time for. Out louder Is on our Friday show, Thank you for being with us all week. We will be back in your ears next week. Of course, Jesse and Mia read us out today.
A big thank you to our team group executive producer Ruth Devine, executive producer Emiline Gazillis, our audio producer is Leah Porgis, and video producer is Josh Green, and.
A bonus record from our group EP Ruth. She's desperate to tell you about a product she believes makes her look less dead in the morning. Out louder, she says, home home, h O home, I know this brain is home like Katie Holmes, Yeah, Holme beauty. It's a setting spray, and she says it has glow for days.
I heard.
I was just googling yesterday about wearing white with makeup, and it was saying that you've got to put a setting spray on because you've told me this, You've got to put hairspray on your color.
So if you're ever wearing white or something light, use hairspray before you put it on. You don't do it when it's on you and leave it for like five seconds or ten seconds to set and then put it on and then your makeup went smudge onto it.
But setting spray is the other top tip. You put it on, it's not going to transfer out louders. If you're not ready to say goodbye. We thought we'd leave you with a little bit of a conversation we had on a subscriber episode with one of your favorites, Amelia Lester. We were talking about fashion and the tyranny of looking like you haven't tried. I want to start today by asking you both. I should probably say as well. We have a very special guest on this subscriber episode, Amelia.
Lest you are sitting in hollywain Wright seat.
I am. Should I push on a different accent? Don't try? I try for me cringe.
Apparently we try often. Hello, Nor, I want to know how do you want to look when you leave the house?
Maya?
You first? What are you aiming for when you walk out of the house in the morning.
How I want to look to the others or how I want to feel in myself?
How you want to look to others? What do you want people to think of what you're wearing?
Is Copenhagen? Oh my god? Can I say Copenhagen? I want people to think She's A.
Link to that episode will be in the show notes.
Bye bye.
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