We are going to look back at ourselves walking to work with a pitcher like Jack and drill off the train. Basically, what we have is a backpack with a straw. We have a hiking back where we can caramill constantly be hydrating. Hydrating is fine, but I reckon out of control. It's completely out of cans.
I made a wheely bag from my water bottle.
Hello, and welcome to Mamma Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about. On Wednesday, the fifteenth of January. I am Holly Waynwright.
I'm Me Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And on the show today, more masculine energy please. That's what one of the world's most powerful men says is missing from everywhere right now?
Is he right?
Also, are you and your mates in the catch up track if you have an agenda running in your notes app for your next dinner, then yes you are. And are you trying to eat more protein while wearing your weighted vest and obsessing about your sleep hygiene? Well you are bang on the health trends for two I need twenty five. But why anyway?
First, mere Friedman, young man, there's no need to feel down, young man, pick yourself off the ground, in case you missed it. Even when you're an American president, booking a bound for your party is hard, especially when you're Donald Trump, who's set to do inauguration two point zero next Tuesday Australian time. So thank god for the Village People who will be performing at the inauguration. They'll be performing Ymca among some of their other.
Hits, because that's the song that he has kind of popularized all over again with his dancing Yeah, which.
Makes absolutely no sense because it's not relevant, But that's the kind of chaos that we expect and we're here for in the Trump administration.
So one of the things that would happen at those rallies was that they tried to just make them into parties, because there's not a lot of places that older people get to go and have a dance and listen to fun tunes. So there was one rally that he did where the autoc you didn't work or something happened, and
he just played music and danced. So even though interestingly the Village People had some fights with the Trump campaign about using their music unauthorized, they've now just kissed the ring like everybody else, and they're doing the show for a few reasons. So I just want to go back to twenty seventeen because back then the first inauguration, everyone said no. Elton, John Celendon, Garth Brooks, Kiss, Andrea Bicceelli, even Charlotte Church. They all said no because they said
they didn't like Trump. So he ended up with I got a list of the people he ended up with. I hadn't heard of any of them. There was a band called Three Doors Down.
Three Doors Down millennials know.
Them, okay.
Also the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Radio City Rockets. There were a bunch of others that I'd never heard of before. So it was a little light on star power, he would say. The Village people have said that they are doing it for all very lofty reasons. They've said that they believe that music is to be perfre formed without regard to politics. They said. They also expressed their hope that their song Ymca, which features look, the Village
People traditionally have been a gay band. They've been, you know, representing different people in the village. It's become problematic for other reasons if I look at it, because it used to have an American Indian.
They came out of the New York disco scene in the seventies. That's the context of the Village people is that that's where they came.
So they're obviously gay icons. But are they gay men?
They have been, they were.
I think they're also a changing cast of people, all right, exactly like Manpower, Yeah, or the Chippendales.
I had no idea where you're talking about.
Okay, there's sort of groups of mousetripers that are a brand. They're not, no, but they've been different characters over the years. Anyway, they say they really love how much joy their song brings Trump and also they have made a lot of money because they're song is back on the leaderboard of the charts.
Is it is it bad that I look at this story and I just go like them.
Oh, for sure, let them, let them.
Trump would also, She'll be singing the Star Spangled banner.
For sure, let them. I just think it's quite funny, particularly because remember when we performed YMCA and that Mama Mire out loud shows that it was going to become the anthem, a mega anthem of Donald Trump's two point zero presidency. We didn't know, but maybe on some level we did.
The Village People themselves commented on their Facebook page. They said, we are announcing today that Village People have accepted an invitation from President elect Trump's campaign to participate in inaugural activities, including at least one event with President elect Trump. We know this won't make some of you happy to hear. However, we believe that music is to be performed without regard
to politics. They said. Our song YMCA is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our prefer candidate lost. Therefore, we believe it's now time to bring the country together with music, which is why Village People will perform at various events.
That's interesting that Trump will still have them, even though they've said it wasn't our proferred candidate.
He's got to take what he can get.
He's also quite good at forgiving as long as you admit that you were wrong and he was right. I think he likes that. So they were like, we're in. We'd like come on him, I guess him and elon up there giving it loads with the arm pumps.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta thinks the corporate world needs more masculine energy please. Speaking to Joe Rogan, here's what he said.
The kind of masculine energy I think is good. Yeah, obviously, you know, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really like trying to get away from it. And I do think that there's just something that it's like, all these forms of energy are good, and I think having a culture that like celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive. That has been a kind of a positive experience for me, just like having a thing that I can just like
do with my guy friends and life. Yeah, and it's like we're just like beat each other a bit.
It's good.
It is good. It's good. I could see your point though about Yeah, corporate culture, when do you think that happened? Was that a slow shift because I think it used to be very masculine and I used to be I think it was kind of hyper aggressive at one point.
No, And look, and I think part of the the intent on all these things I think is good.
Right.
It's I like, I do think that if you're a woman going into a company it probably feels like it's too masculine. It's like there isn't enough of the kind of the energy that you may naturally have, and it probably feels like there are all these things that are set up that are biased against you. And that's not good either, because you want you want women to be able to succeed and like have companies that can unlock all the value from having great people no matter what their background or gender.
You know.
But I think these things can always go a little far. And I think it's one thing to say we want to be kind of like welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it's another to basically say that masculinity is bad. And I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the spectrum where you know, it's all like, okay, masculinity is toxic. We have to like get rid of it completely. It's like, no, like both of these things are good, right. It's like
you want like feminine energy, you want masculine energy. You're going to have parts of society that have more of one or the other. I think that that's all good, But I do think the corporate culture sort of had swung towards being this somewhat more neutered thing.
The conversation went for nearly three hours, and I went and listened to the context. Full disclosure, I didn't listen to this three hours, but I listened to what he said on either side, and he did say that feminine and masculine energies are both beneficial for the workplace and
that he wants women to succeed. Is Also it's important to note that along with putting an end to fact checking, which we talked about on Monday's episode, Zuckerberg has also said his ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and disbanding Meta's DEI team. Because this is a quote, the term has become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some
groups over others. Yet if you read the fine print, the company still claims to be prioritizing diversity, but more so just rejecting the wording so they'll focus on eliminating bias. But anyway, back to masculine energy, did we ever really lose it? And does Mark Zuckerberg actually have a point?
Maya? I thought it was really important to listen to the context of that, because the headlines that you'll read are, oh, Mark Zuckerberg says we need to bring more masculine energy back, and two out of three Meta employees are already men. And how much masculine energy does he need? I think a couple of things that stood out to me. One is that he prefaced that by saying, interestingly, I grew up with three sisters, no brothers. I have three daughters,
no sons. Now he didn't then say something positive about that, but he then went on to say, so, I think that gives you a really good indication of where he's coming from. He then went on to say what we heard about about masculine energy in the workplace. I think this becomes a little bit of a raw shark test. I never know how to say that. You know the ink blot where you see what is in your own mind and you project onto it how you feel about something.
The term masculine energy can mean really different things to different people. For a lot of women, the hackles go up because it's like, oh, that means sexual harassment. That means people being assholes.
So that means people shouting, how do you define it?
And talking over you? And meetings and all those.
Things exactly, and I could define it like that, and I think in some cases it is. That's why it's so subjective. In other cases, when I'm looking at it from a corporate point, you as a business owner, I think what it speaks to is that qualities like competitiveness aggression and I don't mean actual aggression, but I mean like hunger. I don't mean it's like hard work versus
not hard work. I think the workplace really had to change, and a lot of more what are called feminized cultural values like kindness and sensitivity and consideration and you know, things around work life balance and everything. I think we really needed a correction there, and I'm really glad that we had one. But I think that those things have to coexist with competitiveness in business. And I'm very competitive. But if you're talking in these generalizations, I.
Went really deep on what masculine energy even means, because it's not just him using it. I have heard in the last maybe two years, these terms of masculine and feminine coming up way more at a time when I thought we were sort of done with them.
And I think we all have both in us.
Yes, exactly, it's right. I don't think that you know, mass skuline energy belongs to men necessarily, but I looked it up and it's broadly defined as sort of ambition, reason and logic, strength and independence and having a win at all costs mentality. Right. And I think that the clue to what Mark Zuckerberg meant was in what he said, because he had the word aggressive in there, right. And the reason my back went up is because that aggressiveness,
which I see, is very synonymous with capitalism. Look at where it's got us. I don't mean look at where men have got us. I mean look at where the privileging of masculine energy has got us to climate catastrophe. It's got us to incredible waste, it's got us international conflict. It's got us to a wealth disparity that is not closing. It's got us to a gender pay gap, like it's got us to a point where Fortune five hundred companies,
they're all male leaders. I mean, to suggest that it has become feminized is laughable.
At I agree with that because I think you're right Mia, that you read this headline and you take what you want from it. So the people like me who got their backs up by it are taking He means there are too many women whatever. But also the people who agree with him will see what they want to see too, and they won't listen to the context, and they do feel like the world is being skewed towards women, and
it's not true. As you've just pointed out, Jesse, the top ten most powerful business leaders in America are all men. One woman on there, she's the GM of General Motors. They are all men. They have all built these enormously successful, possibly the most influential private companies that have ever existed. When you think about the fact they control everything we read, everything we watch, everything we talk about. They were all
built on these very masculine energy. Well exactly what I mean is his point is that we need to get back to it. It never went away. Everything was built on masculine energy. So it's like it's a straw man, it's a red herring, it's disagree, it's throwing meat to a base. Because it's like saying we've lost so much because women are taking over. It's like, no, we haven't, because women haven't taken over. Interestingly, in Australia, if you
look at the most successful business people in Australia. About four of the top six are women, right, And I know it's not as simple as male female, But what the people who are agreeing with Zuckerberg and love the Joe Rogan Show and feel very strongly that the world needs to be put right again, and Donald Trump is one of them. They're talking about a very specific kind of masculinity, which is physically aggressive, strong man. How many times did Trump talk about that in his campaigning? Is
talking about who's going to stand up for you? It's a very traditional, very masculine vibe.
Yeah, I agree with that. It chills me that vibe, So I don't see it as about men and women specifically. And I thought what was also really interesting, which is worth pointing out as a conversation progressed. Joe Rogan really pushed back and sounded a word of caution and said, I think it's really important that we have both, which is true and which of course I agree as well. But the other thing that I think you can hear in him about him personally, he's come from a family
of women, he lives in a house of women. I think that we have really pathologized masculine energy and we're likely to call it toxic when boy's rough house, when boys want to be physical, when boys want to run around, we pathologize that. We say they've got this condition, they've got this problem, it's toxic. And this idea that everybody should be more like women. I think that the hair is truth to it, but I think we've made men feel really ashamed of them some of their masculine traits.
The point that I agree with is that we have conflated masculinity with toxic masculinity. Yes, in terms of having a handbook of how to be a man in twenty twenty five, I'm not sure that that exists yet. And I think that Andrew Taitan his popularity is proof of a wide open gap, which is that some men feel as though they don't have a blueprint for masculinity. And you've got a Taylor Swift concert and women go and
celebrate femininity in a really innocent way. But we see something sinister about a gathering of a lot of men, not for entirely ludicrous reasons, like for reasons such as domestic violence and sexual harassment and everything we know about what happens in some all male cultures, but that leads men and boys in a difficult.
Spot, always feeling ashamed of some of their instincts, which might be a.
Rough house or shout or run maybe, but one of the things that I would hate to be lost in this rush to re embrace musculinity, which even Zuckerberg says he's found his masculine through his enthusiasm for mma. That is a massively, quickly growing, enormous movement among young men. And I'd push back a tiny bit on the notion that women have Taylor Swift concerts to gather at. Who's usually filling those stadiums?
Right?
Men have plenty of and I'm not suggesting for a second the sports games are only full of men, but traditionally they dominate the culture and public spaces. So let's again not get too that.
Those public expressions like even a football grand final or whatever, and very rightfully has now been cast, is can we talk about what happens after the football grand final, which is a lot of these men leave and domestic violencing a little bit of that.
We talk about that for the first time because we weren't talking about it for fifty years. Actually, what we talk about that's all over the newspapers and all over the television, all over everything is the game, right, So I think there's male culture is not in danger. That
is my general point. But also what worries me is just this sort of re embracing of these very traditional roles because for many people, and our talk go about myself diversifying, the idea of male and female energy has been so freeing we were all locked in these cages. You know, I am allowed to be the breadwinner. My partner is allowed to express his nurturing side as lead parent. My daughter can play the football, while my son, who would much rather go and be in a play, can
be that. You know, this is the freedom that loosening gender roles is given to us that in my mind
is entirely positive. And although I know this isn't what Zuck was saying, and there's a lot of context to it, but there feels like this big cultural pushback personified in a way by things like this enthusiasm for MMA, for the like I mean, the andrew Tates of the world are literally saying wrestling and boxing should be mandatory in all public schools, and we're putting one of the big bosses of wrestling on the Facebook board, and we are
re embracing that side of masculinity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it's just all signaling this very binary way that we see the world, which is like men fighting, good women nurturing. They just want everything to be nice. What's that true?
What's not said in the undercurrent of all of this? And the reason that feminism tried to unpick this in the nineteen you know, sixties and seventies, and we've been trying to do it since is because masculinity and femininity do not culturally sit on an even playing field. It is seen as a hierarchy, and masculinity is seen broadly
as higher than femininity. And the reason that is is because capitalism rewards a lot of what we see as masculine energies, which is why it's so ironic that you would say the corporate world needs more of it, Like I just can't stop thinking about the state of how aggressive and how competitive the market is, and how women you speak to who work in the corporate world would tell you that there is not too much feminine energy there. Like whether or not it's run by men is one thing,
but the actual incives that drive it. I'm not led by any sort of feminine energies.
No, I think we need to be careful about making this too broad and saying, you know, we're talking about everything from schools to the world. He's very specifically or he was speaking about the workplace, and there is no question.
Not the workplace, the corporate corporate, which is a distinct environ.
So in the corporate workplace, there has been, and we've spoken about it a lot on the show, there has been perhaps overdue, understandable, very positive in many ways, change in the way the corporate workplace went. And I tell you, I was rewatching How's That the drama about Kerry Packer and the rise of cricket in the seventies and eighties, and it was a reminder and I worked in that building.
I worked for Kerry Packer, and I saw that stuff go on, and he was shouting and throwing plates and calling people names, and it was so like it was almost funny to what It was funny to watch it now because now HR and every workplace in the oh and s is actually about does everybody feel psychologically safe?
And psychological safety and how important that is. So I don't think you could argue that corporate culture has quite rightly moved from people smoking, men grabbing women's asses, not that that's masculine energy, but the toxic parts of that, and it has really, really, really changed.
It has changed, but I think the idea that some of the toxic behavior isn't there. Like when you hear about people who work with Jeff Bezos or Ellen Mask, which we've talked about, Oh they're being yelled at. Those men have not stopped yelling.
Look, it's maa who really likes leaderboards around here. But I have an unofficial award for out louder of the week. I'm calling it early Is. Her name is Emma Right, and in the Facebook group after Monday's show, she wrote a high coup called I like Megan Markle a high coup and it goes like they're I like Megan, seems like a nice human, likes dogs, dogs like her. Dogs aren't stupid. The end, I love it. I love it. We need to put the disclaimer in before you get
your phone out. We know that's not strictly a haikull.
Some of us knew. I thought it was one day.
I didn't mean too because I struggle with the maths of haiku. There's too much maths involved. But yeah, I just what's haiku?
Haiku is technically a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables in three lines of five, seven and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world, so it doesn't quite fish but dogs and some of us too much maths. Haikus are a vibe. Haikus are about whether it gives a vibe the gist of a haiku. And you could have fooled me. I really like it. I think it's straight to the point, and I actually really like the underlying point she's making.
You told me that your mother jesse Ann Stevens, friend of the Pod. Her social media bio is written in haiku form.
Yeah, yep, so English teacher of one hundred and three years. It is a high and it's like I have husband and four children and a dog ted he is fat or something like. It's just this weird poem. She has no recollection of writing.
It doesn't sound strictly like.
I've got hiku again, not really about the natural world.
Dogs are featuring a lot in nikus.
If anyone wants to weigh in with Haikus, inspired by today's show very hare for It.
In a moment after the break. Are you stuck in the catch up trap? And what can you do about it? We are too, Let's fix it. The thing about December and January is that you can often find yourself seeing people you haven't seen in a while. I know that happened to me over Christmas, and you often find yourself saying, let's catch up to those people. And if that's you, I have a warning for you. Beware of the catch
up trap. There's been a bit of talk about this recently, including a column by Tanya Hennessy for Body and Soul last weekend. And here's what you need to know about the catch up trap and what it is. Essentially, it's when two people live their lives pretty separately and they catch up over dinner or maybe lunch, breakfast, a walk, or maybe they have drinks, and they don't do this very often, and so what their time together involves is telling each other about what's going on in their lives,
but never creating new memories or experiences together. And this is the trap, part of the catch up trap. So I thought about this a lot because the part of being younger that I really miss as well as the collagen is getting ready and just hanging out with your friends. Like when I see girlfriends now it's for a specific amount of time, usually over a meal or a cup of tea, and I find myself doing things like, you know,
I've got a group of girlfriends. I guess we catch up constantly over group chat, but when we meet, I'll often be like, can we just do a quick around the grounds to find out how everyone's children are, what's happening in everyone's lives. And it's true. I always thought this was a great thing, but now I've realized. So everybody does their little monologue and it ends up being like a series of spoken social media up there.
Yes, Tanya Hannessee calls it friendship admin, which I thought was a really accurate term. I have a friend who saw this article and just thought it was brilliant, and so she put it in a group chat. There's about twenty of us in there, but someone had just gone to an android, which meant that everyone was sent that message individually, and then she was in undated for two or three days with intense messages from friends being like,
I'm sorry, we are called in the catchup truck. We should do something lovely together, like have a hiking weekend, and she was like, no, no fucking hiking weekend with twenty people.
It's not an intervention.
But I totally agree with this. I found over the holidays I did do a hike with my mum and sister and like, there's no pressure to do anything. It's just like walking alongside each other or talking about what you can see. Like we've joked before about having an agenda, I often have this with friends where I usually call it theagender yes, where you just tick off at a bunch of things. I mean, firstly, it can make it
feel a bit like a work meeting. And secondly it reminded me maybe of why I can find those situations not boring. But I'm telling the same stories all the time, So I hate this. I'm so bored of my life. So it's like I have three stories, how's the health of BA, How's this, How's that? And you just tell exactly the same stories over and over again, and there's no just like the natural hanging out vibe.
Have you noticed this, Holly one hundred percent? And I also think it means they're just less satisfying conversations because I don't really like I hate it when people say, so, what's been going on? You know what I mean? I'm like, whereas I like to talk about a thing. I mean, that's why we make this show, because we like talking about a thing. I like to go deep. I like depth rather than breadth. And when I say deep, I don't mean like tell me about your childhood. I mean
like talk about some thing for a long time. But when we do our around the grounds and we do this sometimes obviously it's like what's going on with your kids? Sometimes there's something really big you need to unpack, and sometimes like, oh, they're fine, Like I don't really want to talk, you know what I mean? So I entirely get it. The only thing I think because I don't
like structured catch ups like that. But the only thing that changed my mind a little bit is because I think it depends on your friendship groups, right, Like this is why going away with friends is good, because there's lots of hanging around time where you just talk about whatever.
That's why we like being on tour together.
Yes, yeah, there's lots of hanging around time where you just talk about whatever, and things happen, and then they become stories in themselves, and then there's that time that that thing and blah, and that's always fun. But you know how, you've got those people in your life who you might only see twice a year or something. So I've got a group of friends who I probably see twice a year at most. We'll go out for dinner.
And at the end of last year, we went out for one of our dinners and one of my friends, inspired by this very show, wanted to do around the table best and Worst, and I was like, oh, but actually it was fucking great.
Because it cuts through.
It cuts through because it isn't like tell everything that's happened to you this year, so you know, I lost my job, got another job, but you know, blah blah blah. It was more like it made you think what was the best thing, what was the worst thing? At white And then that led to really interesting, deep conversations Rather than like two of those people that had a baby in the last year, they were like, obviously that's just news,
and I hadn't seen them all met their babies. But the best and worst related to the babies led to really interesting conversations about here, Do you know what I mean? Yeah?
I wonder if the catch up trap is also about wanting our social life to be incredibly efficient. So we want to go and think, how can I make this a very productive social interaction where I do three months worth of catch up in an hour.
And a half.
And that's why we don't go and do things like often go to the movies or go and see a show. Or my friend who sent this article then organized an escape room. What you can't do in an escape room is catch up, and you're actually doing an activity always creating a new memory or experience that is fun in the moment.
Interesting.
Yes, So I also find that there's a lot of pressure to be brief because it's like, well, I've got to summarize, but I know we've got to get to everybody else, and the main course has already arrived and people are halfway through it, and we better speed up. It's also that misnomer of people think that quality time is the best thing, but there's a lot to be said from relationships being built in quantity time, which is
more than hanging out. I also wonder if the catch up traps become more of an issue now because there was a time a few years ago at Christmas where you would see people that you hadn't seen for a while, like family or whatever. Everyone would say to each other, Oh, I'd ask you what's happening in your life? But I already know because I follow you on Facebook where I
follow you on Instagram. Now, I think, firstly because of the algorithm that doesn't show us anybody that we follow, and secondly because a lot of people are not posting that kind of stuff anymore. We've all called back, so there is a lot more that we don't know about each other's lives. So there is that sense of we didn't need to catch up before because we literally knew it, but now we kind of do.
I think that's really true. I thought about that too, as it used to be like I know all the facts, tell me the feelings, whereas now I'm like, shit, I don't actually know whether or not you've changed your job, but I don't actually know whether or not. So it's like, can we go back to life updates? Please? Circulating quick life updates before the meeting, pre reading, the reading, prereading, pre reading, so that in the meaning we can go.
Deep feedback is a gift from both the perspective of a giver as well as the recipient. I have some feedback, it's a gift as me or says, Look, this is something that's making me puffer fish. We used to talk about puffer fishing a lot. It's a Hannah Gadsby term. Is when something really pisses you off and you turn into a puff fish.
Do you know what puffer fishing is? Usually when you need to give feedback. It's the thing that happens just before yes, you give feedback, blows out. Yeah, Hannah Gadsby. Thing is like it's just a normal fish and then something happens and it's suddenly puffed up. Yeah, And that's usually how I feel when I'm needing a feedback form.
Okay, So I had my puffer fish moment. This actually happened last year, but I've been reminded of it recently and I posted about it on Instagram. I was in a shop and I saw a water bottle that was three point seven leaders.
What do you mean was this to go camping with?
No?
It was just like, I don't know school.
Was it a camping shot?
That tank stuck behind the person filling that up at the tap and yes in the kitchen the other it's.
Why you're probably late to a record. But I looked at this water bottle and I said, Holly's word of the year.
I said, nap.
I said, we've reached pete water bottle. That's too much, that's unnecessary, and we're getting silly. And Holly and I did an in the and Outs episode of twenty twenty five and I said, we are going to look back at ourselves walking to work with a picture like Jack and Jill off the train with Basically basically what we have is a backpack with a straw. We have a hiking back where Iram will constantly be hydrating. Hydrating is fine, but I reckon.
Out of control.
It's completely out of I made.
A wheely bag for my water bottle.
I want to know what you think about this, because me, I loved an accessory. Yesterday in a cafe, I saw a very stylish woman and she had quite a big water bottle that had its own like leather holder and straps. So you know, like the army, you know, how like soldiers you used to have like a water bottle, and it obviously looked very cool. But I was like that's a lot.
It's a bag for your water bottle, and then you've got to buy little charms for that bag that holds the water.
And then you've got to buy a new holder because guess where a water bottle doesn't fit in your car, your desk, your bag. It doesn't fit.
And when, of course I bought that accessory and then I lost the water bottle.
I put this on Instagram and I had a bunch of pelvic floor physios say, this is a real issue for women. They're drinking too much water and they're fucking their pelvic floors. Yeah, because women can't have three point seven leaders yes of water just sitting on your pelvic floor when you've had multiple children. And someone else said, I'm a surgeon and people are breaking their toes.
Oh thought you meant by the water of their stream after the break? Why everything is a trend, particularly cottage chief.
Do you want daily outloud access? Why wouldn't you? We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and MEA subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week and a huge thank you. If you're already a subscriber in case you missed it. The b CCI, the Board of Control for cricket in India, has introduced new travel restrictions for Indian cricketers wives and families following poor performance in
recent test series against New Zealand and Australia. Under the revised rules, family members can stay with players for a maximum of fourteen days during tours lasting over forty five days, and only seven days for shorter toours. I wonder if they've also got sex pants. So basically the wives and girlfriends just for their performance.
Yeah, it's not the first time. I remember in English football, I think about ten years ago there was what everybody called the wag ban, which was when the footballers wives and girlfriends weren't allowed to travel to Baden Barden for I know, the World Cup of the Euros or something, and everyone was up in arms and basically the manager made the decision and he said, if they want to come, they can make their own arrangements and turn up, but
we are not bringing wives and girlfriends on tour anymore because they are a distraction.
I feel sorry because that's a lot of days that you're playing cricket. Right, that was forty five days or something.
Wouldn't feel that sorry because it's like, does everyone anyone else get to bring their wives?
And no, no, no, it's not that bad. I about Can you imagine if Brent was sitting in the corner applauding every time we said something.
You know, No, he'd love to be here.
He's tried, no, but cricketers, we had to lock him out.
They're traveling all around the world. I have heard cricketers interviewed who say how difficult it is, especially with really little kids, Like, imagine how much Jesse is a life choice. It's a life choice. But to not have your say, wife and a newborn along with you if you've newly become a father, would that be when you're at work but you're on there much at work, when you're not on the pitch and you're just going back to a hotel room or whatever.
Well, yes, no, it's interesting because they've also the other new rule that they've made is that if the wives and the partners and are on tour with them, the players must travel together on the team bus. So obviously they've been like, I'll just go with my family and I'll meet you there. And it's like no, no, we won't have that. What if you guys wanted to bring your partners and children on tour when we went on.
The thing is we only tour for a very short amount of time, pretty people, Jesse. If forty five days a year we weren't there, then.
They've got to find someone to blame. And you know, as I always say, it's usually the women's fault.
If you are on trend for twenty twenty five, then right now you're wearing a statement flat shoe, also matching it back with your weighted vest, and eating a boiled egg because protein.
They don't know my life. That is literally been my morning, every single thing you just said. I'm wearing my flats, I was wearing my weighted vest. I finished my protein.
I noticed that weighted vest were a perimenopause thing, and it hadn't even left my mouth before me it was like, oh, I've.
Got two.
One to Anyway, there have always been trends for our hair and our shoes, of course, and there have also been those helpful trends for our bodies which have always been great for us. Your big boobs are in and then you're out. Your flat bomb is in. Then it's out, et cetera, et cetera. But how does a food group become on trend the way that protein really has At the moment, every instareel that involves food that pops up in my feed helpfully advises me how many grams of
protein the dish, all that meal contains. This is because I'm a midwoman, and obviously I'm falling for it because I need to optimize myself. Like Gwyneth, I am buying bread with added protein, yogurt with added protein, pasta with added protein. My cottage cheese, which apparently was always a good source of protein, now has more protein in it. And at this point, on January the fifteenth, I am
ninety percent hard boiled egg and ten percent post. I bought a new blender for protein rich smoothies, which TikTok tells me I can turn into protein reached banana bread with a dollip of you guessed it, cottage cheese. And the thing is stupid sheep that I am. I don't even know what protein is how it does. I just know I have to eat more of it. So how did protein become the sexy go to word for women's health? Well, look when I did look into what protein was because
I am such an idiot actual nutrition. It's not me. So this is why we do need it and why I'm eating all those boiled eggs. It helps to prevent accelerated muscle mass loss, helps build bone health, and helps optimize you metabolism. It also has some evidence that it helps with mental health because it can help boost your dopamine receptors or something, and all of those things can be negatively affected by a lost of which is why
all the midwomen are into it. Fun fun, fun. So I want to know because I have a suspicion that it might be just a new way to talk about something we've been talking about a long time, which is low carb. We're not allowed to say anymore I'm not eating carbs, but we are allowed to say I'm really trying to eat more protein.
It's firstly, it is the result of a lot of research, and they are very smart people working in like dieticians who are working in this space and publishing papers. And it does seem like the cutting edge research is protein good for now, And the nature of research is it constantly evolves and changes. I also think that in terms of how to communicate public health messaging. Telling people what they should eat more of rather than what they should eat less of is probably a good thing. So we
were told like less sugar, less fat, less blood. It's like, eat this because it'll fill you out. Yeah, health wise, seems like a relatively good message. I also think that the reason protein is resonating is because it's about weight management, but it's also about bone strength, especially for women.
If it is about weight management, to be honest, because it can cause you to put on.
Weight, well, it's about lean muscle, maus and metabolism. So when I was doing research on this and the reason why a lot of people are gravitating towards it, and as much as I kind of criticize this, a lot of our discussions about health are really coded are about weight. A lot of the research suggests more muscle burns for out,
so that's why people do it. But the other thing is injury prevention, and with an enormous increase in exercise, and knowing that exercise, there's a word that we are going to be hearing more than ever in the next twelve months, and that word is longevity. So people don't just want to live longer they want to live longer with a far better quality of life, and having muscle mass is going to help with you hear people fall over and break a hip or whatever. Like muscle mass, this is good.
Same with bone density. That's why we're all lifting weights like Arnold Schwartz smooking exactly. So is that why you have a weighted vest? Yeah, I've got a weighted vest that I sung. I waited too hard over the holidays. I waited my vest while I was lifting my weight, hurt myself and I literally the other day, I'm such a cliche and a basic bitch. A very blood box arrived at our house with four kilos of protein and Jason's like, what is that? And I'm like, I need protein.
So are you putting it in your green smoothies? I'm putting it in my green smoothie. Is the other reason that I think people are big on protein. I was told by two doctors my doctor's after I had a whole lot of just blood tests, just check ups and stuff. Because I don't eat meat. I'm essentially a pescatarian and I don't eat much fish. My diet is mostly tea and carbs, and so I was you know. When she looked at what I was eating, She's like, you're literally
giving almost no protein. And so I am now thinking through the lens of protein meals, because I'm the opposite you, Jesse. If I don't have carbs, I don't feel full protein. I'm like, whatevers, I can live without it. But I have increased my protein. I've got my weighted vest on.
And have you started sleep, Hugene yet, that's the next thing that's going to be a sleep.
Touch with sleep is okay, I'm slapping my hit patches on.
So I just look.
I think it's also very gen x that we just make a big fucking deal about anything that we're doing. We don't do it happily quietly interesting.
I was reading this research that said that the highest like search terms, the people who are most obsessed with protein are like twenty to forty Like they're the ones.
I would hazard a guess too that that might be male bit more male, because it is true about the muscle. Bros has previously discussed how it's very cool at the moment to be really shredded in the MMA and stuff that you've got to help your protein for that. I just find it really fascinating how health trends because you're
so right, Jesse what you said before. We're learning more all the time, so it's really great that we're all a bit more aware of like protein does this, and you need more of that because your estrogen's plunging and blush. But it also feels like these things just come out of nowhere suddenly, and every single thing that you see is protein, protein, protein protein.
But that's because of TikTok. That's because of social media. TikTok influences. Things happen really really fast. Usually they're ahead. I was reading recently, it's now that TikTok trickles up to the media that the media now then reports on what's on TikTok. But TikTok because it's regular people, mostly younger people, but regular people, it is like what everyone's doing, and then it suddenly can go viral and it can feel like everyone's doing it.
Yeah, And I think that there's some probably necessary to have a dose of skepticism because in the past a huge trends of food have actually been driven by the market forces. So it's like we need to sell more beef.
Oh, that's not the reason Yeah. Because of weight loss drugs or the new generation of weight loss drugs that are coming along, people are consuming less calories and if you're consuming less fuel in the form of food, you need the fuel that you're consuming to be high quality, so you need things like protein to build muscles. There's been a lot of emphasis on that too.
Have either of you watched Brian Johnson's documentary on Netflix about Never Dying?
I find him just so creepy. I've watched quite a bit of YouTube about him and his YouTube channel.
I think we're going to talk about it at some point. He goes to the nth degree of measuring every little bit of everything that goes in your body. And we know, and we know about this conversation that for a lot of women, whenever you talk about what you're eating and how to eat it, it can be really dangerous in a way because we can obsess about it when really I think a lot of the stats in Australia show at least that we don't really have a problem with protein.
Me or a side she did she needed to get the protein pattern. But Australians generally do eat a lot of meat, and they do eat a lot of protein, and so they're saying that studies show that it wasn't really a big problem for us, but we've convinced ourselves it is. And it's something else to angst about the way that a guy like Brian Johnson has turned everything he puts into his body into an absolute science, down to the last little Millie drop. If that is a trend that's going to spread out.
Yeah, I think because that released that came out on the first of January, which was no accident. I think that was almost like, we know what your New Year's resolutions are, and they're about health. And so I've been interested to see what the health trends are going to be for twenty twenty five, and I think they're very influenced by him. So some of them are preventative medicine, so getting bigger and bigger. You'll hear people talk about, I do this to lower my risk of diabetes.
Yeah, that's why I'm doing weights.
At home health testing. So even with your paps. I did my pap smeir at home recently. That kind of sty convenient, very good AI coaching, and Brian Johnson talks about this, which is having an AI assistant. He says, it's our brain getting in the way of a lot of health decisions. An AI coach that says, exercise now, this is what.
You do, this is what you should eat.
Blah blah blah. I'm only laughing because you know what I'm like. I'm like, you're not the botto of me.
I know you know all the things that I know.
You've consumed every piece of information in the entire universe about this, and you are telling me what is absolutely perfect from my particular body.
But you are not the bottom of This is going to be the year of Holly saying no every time AI tells us something No.
Out Louder is a massive thank you for being with us today while we solved all the problems of the world, especially those who created haikus specifically, maybe let's write a haiku about boiled eggs.
Okay.
I had a massive thank you to our fabulous team for putting this show together. We're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Before we go out louders. So much happened over the break that we were desperate to talk about, so we packed it in to two subscriber episodes. The one that we dropped yesterday catch up about Yes, we had to catch up, not about our life Hugh Jackman and Suck Foster. That was important. And also Golden Globes mayor gave some opinions about some fashion and such things and you can find a link to that in our show notes.
Bye bye bye. Shout out to any Muma Miya subscribers listening. If you love the show and want to support us as well, subscribing to mom and Mia is the very best way to do so. There is a link in the episode description