Hello and welcome. It's Mom and Mia out loud. What women are actually talking about today? It's Friday, the twenty ninth of May. You have to look down to check the day I did, because I'm not going to say it's so boring. I'm just like, but how is it the twenty ninth of day? I'm sorry to be boring.
I'm a Holly Waynwright, I'm Claire Stephens.
And I'm m Burnham. And here's what made our agenda for today. It's what Katy Perry calls Justin Trudeau. It's what Kylie calls Timothy, and what the Internet calls Pedro Pascal and what the world's most successful female podcaster calls herself. So what's with all the daddy I have answers?
Don't worry, worry.
Plus, we finally have an answer to the age old question of how often do you wash your hair?
This is very important business and the perils of a reading gap relationship. What does it mean if your partner doesn't read and you survive it?
But first, ed Vernon, do you guys.
Remember when I attempted to raw dog boredom?
Yeah?
I do.
Well. It was this trend where the young people were filming themselves doing nothing except looking at a clock, and I was like, that's silly, and you were like, I tried it.
I tried it.
I stared at a wall for ten minutes and I had a clock in front of me.
We actually filmed it because I did it on company time. I do nothing for it.
I did it in a little meeting room.
It was very difficult, but I think that's what started my obsession with analog hobbies, because then we talked about my analog bag, which is another TikTok trend where women just made a big tote bag full of analog activities, like coloring in maybe like taking photos on a film camera, just kind of doing journaling stuff that doesn't require any digital device.
I don't know when my an so I take it. It's not going that well.
It's not going too well. I feel like I stuck with it for a few months.
I want to know about this. I want to discuss this. Our relationship with boredom. I saw this meme this week that was like we've normalized over Consumptionorry very worthy, very worthy podcasts while walking, Doom, scrolling on the toilet, Netflix while eating something is always filling the silence. We're becoming scared of our own thoughts. Our minds have no breathing space. We feel groggy and mentally exhausted. I'm like, you don't know my life, and then I'm like, oh, yeah, of
course we are. Our brains never get a break. Boredom is the cure. And this message is very fashionable at the moment, and I wanted to check in with how we're going with that.
I feel like all my friendships slash podcasts slash, Like all my contact with the world is just a cycle of people being like, here's my hack for getting off my phone. I got and thirty three ten and I bought this thing, and I'm guilty. I have a brick stuck to my phone.
To your fridge. Yeah, two fridge, So.
The thing that you like, tap your phone on and it locks you out of your apps. Bloody great when I remember to use it. But the problem is I'm on TikTok so much that it's distracting me from remembering that the brick is even a thing. But I feel like everyone just goes through these cycles, and then the fact is we're just back on our phones and then we all listen, listen, to a podcast or read a book that it's like this is ruining our lives and we're like, yes, yes.
Can I ask you? Are your friends really buying nockire like dumb phones?
Yeah?
Really? And how does it generally go? This is how I picture it. You're at dinner and they put their nock here on the table with a sort of smug superiority, and you all go, wow, I didn't know there's existed anymore.
And then what happens Or they turn up and they're like, I've deleted everything. I've deleted Instagram, TikTok, I've deleted every app. I'm just not it. And then you're like, you're amazing, You're an icon, Like I don't know how you do it. And then three days lady, you DM from on Instagram and you're like, hmmm, things aren't going so well.
Or they're posting on Instagram about how they've ditched Instagram and they don't have a smartphone anymore, and you're like, what device are you posting this from? Does your knock here connect to Instagram? Doing a desktop computer post?
But I have to say, when as as somebody coming reporting live from my flop era, the fact that sometimes all you want to do is kill some time with some lovely distraction. And for example, I've always hated exercise. I just simply do not enjoy it. And I'm sure you're meant to do it mindfully, but I resent every second of it. And the only way for me to get through it I I look forward to in the evenings I put on my television show. It has to be bad and I do my weights, and that is the only way I.
Can do it. Fine, that's good, that's allowed.
I think that's actually really admirable.
That is allowed, definitely, because that's what it's for. Your bad TV show is for weights. There is the distraction, yes, And also if we've trained our brains to always be multitasking, demanding it to focus on weights, it's hard.
No, it's horrible.
And the analog bag, really analog bag, it's just was too hard. Like one time I took my so my whole thing with my analog bag was I would take everything to like a park and do like my little hobbies and activities journal and I would leave my phone at home. And then one time I went to the park and I was doing my analog activities and there was a dog and I couldn't take a photo of it.
Oh no, that's rue because I left my phone at home. I had that one time. Oh my gosh. I went for a walk. I think it was during COVID and I went for a walk, my normal little walk when I lived in Glebe, and it was like la la lah, so smug, so smug. I don't have a phone. And there was a seal. It's so cute and it keeps popping up and I can't document this and I feel so alone.
Did the seal even happen if you didn't take a picture. I explained the brick, which is that? So the brick, as Claire said, is a device you can buy that locks you out of your phone, well, locks you out of your apps on your phone, but like it would still ring if your child needed you or whatever. But I explained that brick to Brent and he did not understand the words coming out of my mouth. He was like, just don't touch your phone, and a lot about Louder
said the same thing last time. It's like what I don't understand. Why would you buy a thing to stop you from looking at your thing? And I'm like, you don't get.
My brain and understand that I'm on well I am.
I am in a very bad habit, which I've talked about before, but at the minute I'm back in it, which is ten minutes, say ten minutes, let's be real. But before I go to sleep, immediately before I go to sleep, and when I very first wake up, I'm scrolling, and I'm scrolling pleasant things. I'm scrolling like bad bunnies back on tour in Spain, gardening rivals, whatever. But I'm still just scrolling nonsense. And I know it's bad for me, and I know it affects my sleep and all those things.
But I am powerless before it, and I need to get back out of that thing. And I just so I see memes like this, and I'm like, I know you're right, I know you're right. I know you're right.
I just don't change my behavior.
Oh dear, speaking of the Internet and the things that it's taught me lately, I don't think I saw this on one of my nighttime scrolls. I bring some serious texts from the Internet for study friends because I'm trying to understand something about the current moment that I do not so text one a comment from Kylie Jenner just one word written under a post from page six, which is The New York Post's gossip column. I don't know why she's looking at that, but clearly she needs a
brick anyway. One word under a picture of her boyfriend, the Chalo May arriving at the basketball. She just wrote daddy, and the Internet lost their mind.
So many likes, so many, and then it got so buried by other people being like daddy, daddy, daddy, that everyone's like, did you de lead her comment? And it's like, no, it's just comment number three, four hundred and one. You can't find it now.
Chala May is not Kylie Jenner's daddy. That would be Caitlin Jenna. But that's a whole other conversation. I'm so glad you clarified that second text. Katie Perry just a woman in love. Right. She was on a live stream interview with station Head. It's a social radio live streaming thing, right, and we're about to play this grab. She sounds a little bit tired, overwhelmed, love sick. But this is what she said.
Okay, I'm not gonna forget my Canadiens. He would need to say that. I'm so Canada down. Oh my god, I love him so much. I can't stop looking at him. Makes me so happy. Oh god, it makes me happy, so happy, I can't even look at him. Stop it. You got me giggling like a school girl. I'm like, oh, yeah, he is our true daddy, talking about the love of my life. Of course, double Rainbow comes on.
Oh don't make me cry, so Katie Perry, and that clip is talking about the former Prime Minister of Canada, just In Trudeau, and she refers to him in case she missed it, as her true daddy. I just know she regrets that video.
She's gonna regret that whole thing. True Daddy, No, no, I don't like it.
Daddy is everywhere. There's the Internet Daddy, which we've discussed before, personified by Pedro Pascal. Other men who wear that crown are like Stanley Tucci, Addris Elba, David Harbor. Before the whole Lily Allen thing really blew up, he was a bit of a daddy before and also after really still after.
Yeah, yeah, I think he's back as Daddy.
And then there's the subversion of Daddy Call Her Daddy. One of the biggest podcasts in the World is hosted by Alex Cooper, who is Daddy, and she is like, here's your father figure talking now from where I sit. Using daddy for anyone other than your father.
Well, even using it for your father.
Well and then only I think only under the age of twelve. Yeah, right, Like was something that no one admitted to publicly, like it was your own private business in the bedroom. Look, it's got to be said that some people consider this term, you know, part of a whole mainstreaming of a fetishization of underage girl that is really dangerous and unhealthy, no question, right, But it's suddenly
everywhere we look in a really mainstream culture way. But what has happened, Emily Vernon, that we are now just daddying all over the place.
I think it's happened because so many women have been burnt by men their own age.
So we're looking ahead, Wow, we're looking.
Does daddy have to be an older man?
It has to be an old like an older esque man who embodies an infectionate, sexy, protective persona so Pedro Pascal from the Last of Us daddy esque.
That's where you're your friend. Lily Allenstein was very these are very stranger things. He was guiding a young girl through it, but in a non sexual, non non.
But responsible, trustworthy, has your best interests at heart.
Henry Cavell in The Witcher was very protective. So these are like daddy esque figures that us as women going, look how he treats those young children who aren't his children.
But that's a very generous read of the daddy thing, right, because that is not what Kylie Jenner is saying about Timothy Shalloway. And like, the people who get the ick about the daddy thing is because I think it used to be seen as a kink, right Like, and I don't mean to be really clear, we are talking about this as like a cultural term right and now. And
the idea was, yes, protective, but also sexy. And that's that mummy isn't used in the same way, right, So a daddy, the whole mainstreaming of daddiness isn't just about being protective and lovely, right, I don't know.
I think it's come from like you're definitely right, it has come from the bedroom of like men wanting to be called daddy. But I think that's because I want to feel masculine and protective even though they might not be, and they're just like missing that, and I think they get a kick out of it. I don't know any woman who like says it openly about her partner or anyone like that. It's always in reference to like a
celebrity man. It's never too like my person, or like, oh I think that guy is so hot, he's so daddy.
I never I never heard that.
I currently had it heard it for like celebrities who are like kind of like untouchable.
Yeah, because I and the thing is, I mean elephant in the room. I think the reason that we all feel funny about Kylie's comment is that Timothy shallow Mate is not Daddy.
No, he's not.
She's she's she's actually encouraged.
She's starting a marketing campaign to Daddy fight him. That is not right, and he's not there yet.
And when I googled, I was like, oh, where did this Timothy Shalla may daddy think? I googled it and it came up with his father Mark. I was like, well, he's probably more Daddy than Timothy. And I'm like, Timothy, Mate, I've seen it like like you're too young, you're too immature. I've you know, you're just really not at that point. But then I went on to TikTok and I saw all these different descriptions of it and the fact that it's really different to like alpha, it's really different to
having like cocky energy any of that. It's about emotional emotional safety. I quite I was like, okay, physical protection, like feeling taken care of. But then I did go down a rabbit hole of how it actually started, and I forgot. I learned this in psychology, so you know how there's the there's the Oedipus complex. Yes, there was a theory about the Yeah, so Sigmund Freud said, had this or that has no basis in science, and and it gets a bit laughed at now that that. Yeah,
it was boys in love with their mother. Then Carl Jung had one called the Electra complex, which was like daughters being in love with their fathers. And so it started this thing. And then I remember that Sylvia Plath some of her poetry was about daddy, and it was like the parallel between the issues that she had with her father and then the issues that she had with her husband, which I think comes down to the whole
idea of daddy issues it comes from. And so my question is is there a relationship between the term daddy and somebody having daddy issues? Yeah?
I think we put that on women who have like, quote unquote daddy issues and we're like, that's her daddy. Like, especially women who date older men, we say she's got a daddy because like, she's dating older men.
Daddy's that's the whole thing. Yeah.
But I remember, like specifically, when I stopped calling my dad daddy because I always did as a kid, like that was always my word for him.
And then I remember I was on the phone to him.
In high school and I was like fourteen and he called and I was like, hi, daddy, And then my friends just gave me this look like oh, you need to stop this, And I was like, why do you guys have to make it weird sad?
Right?
Because Okay, so there is something specific about growing up people calling their father's daddy and their mummy's summy. I think that is equal on both and both genders in that way, right, King Charles Posh.
People do it in.
England, right, So the upper classes in England have always done that. It's mama and Papa or it's mummy, and daddy, And so I think King Charles did it at the Queen's one of the queen's big birthdays or something, didn't. He got on the mic and he just said mommy. And the thing is about that is that it is it was a marker of class. Mom, dad, you know, and their mad whatever was seen as lower class ways to talk about your family, and so it was kind of got a credibility to be like mummy daddy to
carry on through. But one of the reasons why daddy is it is because it has taken on this like slightly sexual sugar daddy vibe, which is devastating really, like that is not where it should go. But it is also interesting that mummy doesn't have the same vibe. Like when we're talking about iconic women on the internet, we call them mother, right, So like you have like who's always called mother, like Lady.
Gaga men, that's women calling them mommy.
Yes, but it's also it's completely devoid, I think of any kind of sexual energy. It's very much about like a goddess goddess, yes, so, but it's not mummy like mother.
So my question is celebrities that are daddy, right, Because as much as like it's a weird, problematic term. I think we have an instinct for who is and who isn't. Yeah, Pedro Pascal is clearly Tucci. How about man Affleck.
He is of course a father, but he's not daddy.
How about John Hamm?
Oh yeah, John ham No, I don't see it. I don't see it for John Hamm.
Interesting.
The interesting thing though, is that when we were talking about this earlier and you said if they are a father, they can't be branded daddy, which we bring John Hamm in because he is not a father, so he could be daddy. But he is also a bit of a hot mess. Everyone has seen him dancing off his chops at bad Bunny silly. Bringing us to my friend Benito, he's not daddy, he's puppy. Of course.
He actually did call Kendall Jenna when they were dating mummy.
Oh yeah, I know. It was very sexy, very beautiful, like.
Hey, okay, but like Colin Firth for me, yeah, Colin, he's like father, Okay, he is father, he is father. Yes. How about Adam Driver last one.
After the memoir, a bit before he lost his daddyfication.
Yeah yeah to me, definitely not out louders in a moment, what is a reading gap relationship? And can you possibly survive one?
Hey, out Louders, it's Mea Friedman here. I host the Tuesday and Thursday episodes of out Loud for subscribers, and in yesterday's episode, we spoke about the return of the personal essay. It was huge at the beginning of women's websites when Muma Mia was starting out and Holly m and I, well all of us really, we have all written some banging personal essays and some mortifying ones and the problem is they're all still on the internet. We talk about the ones we regret and the ones that
we feel really made a difference. Have a listen a link in the show notes.
Beauty expert and host of Muma MEA's You Beauty podcast, Lee Campbell has revealed exactly how often we should all be washing our hair. And I am going to give you a bit of a rage baby answer because she says you should wash your hair however many times you want, but.
No wait into which I say, that is not it.
But she brings context to this because she says people with thinner hair it gets oilier more quickly, which is why people with thinner hair should be washing their hair if you want your hair to keep looking fresh more often. Some people wash it every day. Some people wash it every two days. People with thicker hair because the oil takes longer to get into your hair, little buds wash their hair less regularly. So if you're like me, I
wash it once a week, once a week. If not wash my I wash mine today.
It looks very voluminy.
I do like a wash, and then I do. I can get three days out of it, and then I do slick backslick back, slick back.
This is interesting.
I can't do a slick back.
That's how many times do you wash your hair?
I have to wash it every day.
You wash it every day.
I'm the thin I believe what my hairdresser says is I have fine hair, but a lot of it and so it. But the fineness means that if I haven't washed it in a day, I'm like, everyone knows. It's just it's not it's not nice.
Wow.
Wow, how about you, Holly, Because I thought we had.
Kind of the same texture twice a week, two or three times a week.
Well, they say, with curly hair, you shouldn't wash it's that's good. You should be washing it less because it keeps the curls.
I used to wash it every other day religiously. I thought that's just what you had to do. But actually, as I've gotten older and more like, fuck the rules, man, I live my own life. I have discovered that my hair is often best on day three, like because it's very frizzy my hair if it's not anyway. But what's interesting to me is doesn't it depend what you're doing
with your head? Because also if you exercise a lot, oh yeah, sweaty head, I have to wash my hair, like if I'm on the spin bike or you know, do it. I mean, let's pretend that that happens all the time. But when I'm in an exercise jag and I do that, or you go swimming or whatever like, then you have to wash your hair more often. Right.
Sometimes if I'm like, because you know how I feel about showering, that's true, you're not a shower. Sometimes if I'm like, like working out and it's not like my shower day, I'll just wet my hair.
Okay, this was gonna be my question. So there was a viral TikTok that I saw about a month ago. That was this girl being like so she said to her friend. She's like, I'm gonna have a shower. I'm not washing my hair, and her friend's like, cool, go for it. She goes in shower, she comes back out with wet hair, and her friend's like, why is your hair wet? And I thought you weren't washing your hair and she's like, I didn't, and she's like, well, then why is your hair wet?
Yeah, she's washing it.
I wet it in between in between washes. And her friend was like, no, no, this is not a thing. And it turned into this whole debate on TikTok because I would never really, you can't.
So every day you're properly washing your hair, not just wetting it.
Yes, I think it's something about blondness.
This must be.
It must be.
It must be some deep psychological childhood. But I, well, you've got lots of hair, long hair, but you do too, like washing hair is a mission, right, so sometimes like a armed hair, like you don't need to do wait to the day you wash your hair. I don't want to wash my hair and so therefore there is no way I'm getting it wet in the shower. Although as much discussed on this podcast before. I don't have a shower cap. I just keep my fricking heads out of the shower.
It's one of the reasons my posture is so bad, yes, because I'm like, this.
Well is showering, But if I was going to wear it, i'd wash it. Why would I just wet it.
That's just going to turn it into you just need to wet it, just to wet it, and you can't do a full wash.
Is blown. I know this is not one of the important issues of the day friends.
But and then something else has blown my mind recently, so having a Jesse and I had a conversation the other day where we're like, okay with our toddlers who were like two and a half three, we wash their hair with soap like cant like like baby soap. Okay, and they got full hairded hair, and we're like, a what age do you do shampoo and conditioner? And then we're like, I don't know if shampoo and conditioner makes a difference. I don't know if it actually does anything.
This is radical. She's burned it all down the champoo industry.
We've taken it too far. You're probably keeping the shampoo industry alive. With your washing hair every.
Single day, I actually am condition You can't not if you've got long hair, conditioners everything.
It becomes like.
I do have a really good hack that I learned from someone who works She works at one of those like stores that sells rye shampoo. If you dry shampoo your hair after you wash it, not when it gets oily, it actually makes your hair last way longer.
You could get like three to four days out of that baby.
Rits go white. I think because I don't shake this.
You don't just raw dog dry shampoo.
This is my problem.
You shake the bottle, you spray it, you leave it for a bit, and then you rub it.
In that I'm missing that step, despairing of a shell.
This is why baby shampoo has invented to make people feel comfortable about the bridge between soap and proper shampoo. Yeah, yeah, it's nonsince I think.
Yeah. An article published on Dazed last week was called help my boyfriend doesn't read And these are the things I click on. It told the story of April, who a year ago broke up with her partner of four years, a man who rarely read. She was in a reading gap relationship, and she said, I remember feeling really lonely at times because I would be excited by something I was reading and I was just never able to have conversations about it with him. Now, apparently for women who
date men, this is really common. Women make up about eighty percent of the book buying market, and this gender gap in reading is particularly pronounced when it comes to fiction. It's women who are reading fiction and the rates of men reading fiction is really declining. In a recent survey, twenty four percent of people say they wouldn't date someone who's reading habits don't match their own.
That's tricky because I know a lot of women who might read two or three books a year because they like books, but their lives are really busy, so a book for them is a holiday. Like, that's what a holiday is, when you will get to read a book. Now, are those people readers or not readers? And do they like they can they only date people who also read three books a year?
I know, like it's very I find it a really.
A no shade. By the way, on the three book. If you're squeezing that in and you've got to be the life, you're doing very well.
I know, I find it really interesting that people. Then, as April says in this article, she now considers it a red flag if somebody if a guy that she's seeing doesn't read, that's.
So it's just like doesn't read in general, not like reading up to her standard of reading.
Yeah, it's just like doesn't read in general. And she don't worry. Guy, she's got a new partner. He has a library in his bedroom, So don't stress. April's fine.
I would find that very attractive in the bedrooms unless they were really boring.
Yes, anyway, actually true. Obviously for April it was about dating. But I think a lot of us can find in our lives that with the men that were around, whether it is our literal dads or our male friends or our brothers, that we wish we could be speaking the same language book wise, that we could have conversations about what we're reading. And it is something that women find really appealing in men, and I think it can be
a bit of a source of connection. But another thing that we came across this week was a relationship an attraction group. Date Psychology surveyed eight hundred and forty men and women on the attractiveness of male pastimes, and they found that the most attractive hobby to women that men could do Number one was reading. I love this, Yeah. Two it was foreign languages, number three, playing an instrument, and then the least attractive were man a sphere. How is that a hobby?
Just for it?
Existing hobby the gambling pawn and my personal favorite, arguing on so good.
That is some men's hobby that genuinely is some women's hobby.
Actually actually I'm like, yeah, I mean.
Equal opportunity arguing online. They clock in and.
It's a really important pastime. So my question is, Holly, could you is it something is a relationship deal breaker for you? If Brent didn't read? Firstly, does Brent read?
He does because he writes, He does read, but he doesn't read loads. So I read. You know, life gets busy and you don't get to read as much as you'd like. Like, my fantasy is that one day when I don't work anymore, I'm going to read all the books. That is my dream, because these days I read in bed. Now that I've finally got a bath, I read in
the bath. Fancy I read on the train. But like you've got to fit it in around your life, right, And I've always read, so I've always, all my life had a book on the go, and not everybody does. And Brent doesn't always have a book on the go, but he reads a bit. And this is his His reading habit is very common of men I know, which is that he is more likely to read nonfiction than me.
Not not always, but at the minute, for example, he's reading, Oh, he's reading Jane Carrow's lady's book about public education, right, because Brent is a big well we're a big public education people, and he's involved in local school whatever. And his annoying, his annoying habit is that he's in bed reading that and I'm engrossed in my novel because I only read novels and memoirs. And he'll be like, he has to read it out, not like read it to
me like a story book. No, but oh my god, did you know blah blah blah blah blah, Oh my god, did you I'm like, you don't have to perform the book, baby, It's okay. I know you're reading. It's all going in. That's okay. But that's a very typical man thing. I think in lots of ways to sir type, but he does read, but we don't necessarily read the same things, and I wondered if that was a reading gap.
I'm confused about April's dilemma because her whole thing was she reads, her boyfriend doesn't read, so it makes it hard to have conversations about the books that she's reading. Whereas I've dated men in the past who don't read, and I've read a book and I'm just like yapping at them. Yeah, And I found that quite fine as long as they're listening.
And it's quite nice if you know they're never going to read it. Yeah, Like I can just tell you the whole plot and it ain't a spoiler because you are never ever, ever going to read that.
And I think you can still have conversations about books that not everyone has read. So many times I've been to drinks or dinner with my friends and I've been talking about a book I've read that they're not reading, and we just discussed like the plot points of the book and the context of the book.
Top tip they're board.
I do have to go bring that up.
It is I as a book person who loves to talk about books. It's not exciting to talk about books you haven't read, do you.
Know what I mean? So?
Do you think he was just bored and relationship? But Claire, what do you think? You're a book worm?
So I do think there's something here, something April was picking up on in her male partner and a lot of men not reading fiction. I find that to be I think through reading fiction, you develop a level of empathy, the skill of being able to see things through someone else's.
Perspective that you're curious. It's why we're obsessed about trying to get children to read. And it's a harder and harder thing to do, but it's that walking in someone else's shoes.
Yes, And I feel like my mind has been changed so much by fiction, so many times where I might have had a certain view of something and then I've read a book seen it through a completely different lens and being like, oh that is just that is invaluable.
How that's changed my perspective. And I think it can be frustrating sometimes in your relationships with men, where you feel like saying, I really want you to read this book because it would really, really really challenge you, and you know they're not going to because they almost can look down on fiction a little bit. My partner's the same as Brent Holly, so very into nonfiction and really he just reads freaking like the biography slash memoir of
the Nike guy. Yeah, and he will sit there and just read out it to you facts and I'm like, that's great. I'm deep. I'm on page one hundred and eighty six. This of this there was a great twist, but I can't explain.
It to you. Or also, you're on an island or in some other world, or walking through a market in India, or you're in a whatever. In your mind, that's where you are because you're reading a book about it, and you're like, I can't be dealing with the laws of business, right.
No, No, I don't. I don't care, but it is I do think maybe it is simply a difference in preference. There's interesting whenever you see lists of like what men read versus what women read, men read books about money.
So to back that up, right there, it isn't true that men don't read fiction, but they're more likely to read crime fiction. Interestingly, right. Top ten books from that
women bought in Australia last year. Number one recipe. He needs no surprise because of course nage go Number two Onyx Storm, Oh yeah that sounds yeahs number three The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osmond, so Crime but Cozy Crime, The Unquiet Grave by Devil mcton and Crime Here One Moment by Leanne Moriarty Crime not ish but genius, great, big, beautiful life. We did that for the book Club by Emily Henry. Let them Ah nonfiction Sally Rooney into Metso
Bake with Brockie, who is Nagi's nemesis. I'm sure she isn't. Jokes jokes, jokes and fearless, which is a ya. Now, this is really interesting if this is to be believed, that the top ten list of books brought by men in Australia last year, number one was last one out
by Jane Harper. Jane Harper is leave to be a writer who has neutralized the gender gap, which is really interesting because a lot of those, with the exception of Richard Osmon, a lot of the books that were top ten by women were written by women, and a lot of the books in the top ten men were written by men, which is kind of depressing.
Right to your.
Point about opening your eyes walking in other people's shoes. Da da Da da da. It's kind of depressing that that's the case. But Jane Harper has neutralized the gender gap, and so is Richard Osmond. Actually he has more women than men. But still but number two bears out our theory Atomic Habits by James Clear, which has been out for this.
And this is the thing why the gender binery isn't it is? You know there are many contradictions to it. Because I have read and loved Atomic Habits. I will never stop talking.
Right now. You and Jessie are like spokesperson. Then there's Matthew Riley, the detective. So those are those really pacy crime ones Exit Strategy by Lee Child's saying vibe the Barefoot Investor.
I believe that's been in the top ten for.
Two hundred and fifty years.
The amount of times I've talked about Barefoot Investor on my dates.
Actually, I've read the book The Psychology of Money by Morgan Hasel, The Valley by Chris Hammer. That's crime Gravity Let Me Go by Trent Dalton. I'm very happy to see that in their very positive male role model in that book. Well he's crazy, but you know he really cares about his family. Then there's an essay book about post American future, a Quarterly Yes.
Yes. I also read the Quarterly Yes.
That's huge and Clowntown by Mick Heron, who's the slow Horses guy. So there is a lot. The fiction that is in there is what you might imagine, like the lists do play to those stereotypes, and so it's that idea. I guess, yes, why people find men reading really attractive. But I think that if books are really high upon your values list, then isn't that also going to be true of friendships and lots of other.
Relationship I agree, especially when it comes to like we've talked about how women, especially in when they're older, want to make more friends and things like that, and book clubs is now the big thing right now, everyone's having a book club. And the best thing about book clubs is that you're reading a really fun cozy novel or a romanticy novel and you can all giggle about it and talk about it and talk about the themes about it.
I find if I were to go and I do love memoirs, but if I were to go to a book club where every time the book is non fiction or a memoir, it will be really fun and exciting, I feel like the first few books, but then you feel like just really it feels like work. It feels
really hard. And I think when it comes to reading, a lot of women want to read books because they want that escapism and they want to have that like no that's so far fetched from their life that they can just deal with, like a little mystery on an island. And every time we read nonfiction, it feels like we're doing it for a purpose, to make our lives better.
And sometimes you don't want that. Sometimes you just want to escape. I blame Dual Leaper for the high standards of expecting your romantic partner to read what you read. Now, I will say that it is lovely. I remember Rory and I went on a holiday once and I was reading a Caroline Overrington novel and then I passed it to him and he read it, and it just it was the theme of our holiday was just assessing this book.
And there is nothing like it, but frickin' Dua. Leeper met her actor fiance Callum Turner because they sat next to each other and realized they were reading the same book, and it was it's called Trust by hern And Diaz, and they had both just finished the first chapter and then she looked at him and said, oh, yeah, yeah, I just I just finished the first chapter two and he said, so we're on the same page. I don't believe that, And it's like, cool.
I don't believe that because I've heard it before, and I like, I'm very impressed by it. But I kind of feel like one of those two was fibbing about the situation.
I thought they were both fibbing because they're both just two hot people.
Like hot people talk to hot people.
It's okay, you can have just liked each other. They probably saw like.
A girl in the corner reading the book. But this is what straight women need. They need to and like push the expectation of reading on men as a manly activity.
And Jacob Alordie has been has been great for this as well, often photographed in bookstores or walking around holding books. He's been photographed holding Primer Facie by Susie Miller. I've also read that he says he's read Uh Secret History by Donna Tat have also read that I'm like, you're him. We'd have lots stock about Paul mescal was once candidly photographed reading alone in a bar.
That's so, we've talked about this before. Yeah, follows an Instagram account of hot men reading. But I worry it's becoming performative. Yeah, I think the poor mescal was a bit performative. I'm not gonna lie.
Even if it is. Maybe they'll get bored and read a page and that's lovely.
Little steps, little steps after.
The break, a book, a movie, and a TV show. Our recommendations for your weekend.
Vibes, ideas, atmosphere, something casual, something fun.
This is my best recommendation. It's Friday, so we want to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations. I'm just gonna straight up go first. Oh yeah, I'm going to dominate you stand your grand girl? Yeah yeah, yeah, I will. Okay, My reco is a memoir. I'm gonna call it memoir. Is it too Early to Bitch? By Grace Rubray?
Oh it's very good.
Now. Great is a Mummia executive producer and host. You might have heard her on the Spill and on the Quickie. Her voice will be very.
Familiar to Grace has a gorgeous voice.
Oh, she's a trained voice actor. So if you wonder why her voice is so beautiful, that's one of the reasons. She's a former actor producer, and she wrote and starred in a series called six hundred Bottles of Wine that was on Channel ten.
Like she's just like in so many amazing Australian TV shows that you see her in the background, Like she's been in an episode of Colin from Account and she's been in Heartbreak High.
She's so talented, she's real talented.
And then she's just nice.
And I'm sorry nice anyway, even if we didn't know her.
I would be recommending this. So her memoir is about her friendship and it's it's like a love story with Katie Lee's. So it starts with they connect by bitching about someone who's in their acting class, and what follows is a thirteen year friendship that becomes the central, most important relationship of their lives. There there's beautiful, beautiful scenes where they are traveling in Europe together and it's just anybody who's had one of those formative friendships where you
feel like you have found your person. It just really strikes a chord. Then Katie dies suddenly and tragically, so Katie was. You may have heard Katie's name or you may know her story. So Katie was the healthy, thirty four year old living in redfen who died in August twenty twenty one after receiving the astrosenica vaccination. There is
nothing political in that statement. It's just a fact, and Grace so expertly navigates the complexity of that when your politics go against your personal lived experience, or when people assume that because of your lived experience, you will have a certain set of politics, and when you know that something is so rare and so tragic, but the fact is that it happened to your best friend, and she writes about Some of my favorite chapters are where Grace
writes about getting her vaccination and having a panic attack. She ends up having her baby daughter in the same hospital where she lost her best friend, and it is
just brilliant. You will laugh at you will laugh and smile at all the iterations of their friendship or like it just everybody's got a friend like Katie, and the kind of secret language and how they support each other through breakups and moving to different parts of Sydney and South Wales, and then obviously there is a lot to grieve in it as well, So I sobbed and I just couldn't believe how Grace was able to put this
into beautiful, beautiful words. I recommend it to everyone. I just think it's such an important story like that, especially with everything that we hear about people who are cynical and skeptical about vaccination. I think this is such a complex, nuanced story told full of heart, and nobody could have told it like Grace has. So I could not recommend it highly enough.
It's absolutely brilliant. I'm interviewing Grace for no filter. Yes, so you will hear that story in more depth to if you want to. But yeah, the book is gorgeous.
Oh so it's called is it too Early to Bitch?
I am recommending a movie, another fam action pack movie that I.
Think rivals The Sheep Detectives.
Okay, you go to the movie so much. I'm so jealous.
This one is so good. My sister convinced me to watch it. It is called The Mandalorian and grogu Is it really good?
Okay. Listen Brett went to see this on Sunday. But he's a Star Wars person, Okay, so he liked it.
So I'm glad he liked it because I am not a Star Wars person to the point where this is the first ever Star Wars thing I've ever watched.
You understood what was happening.
Yes, every every Star Wars person was like, don't watch it, you won't understand it.
I understood everything. It is so good.
I've never seen the original one.
I've tried and I couldn't.
No, Holy I've never seen Star Wars. But so this movie has come off the back of the TV show The Mandalorian. So now I'm going back to watch the TV show because it stars Pedro Pascal as the Mandalorian and his sidekick Grogu, which is played by an animatronic robot. We're not doing cg I now we've gone back. He is okay, So Grogu is Baby Yoda.
I know Baby.
I do love Baby.
My kids were obsessed with.
I nearly cried every time he came on screen. He's so sweet and beauty.
This is really bolstering the daddy, really bolstering the daddy. Now he's looking after baby Yoda exactly. That's he just plays the same character across all Johns. But you're right though, that robots are back because the hell Mary project that alien was a robot, not not CGI.
And that little Rocky was really cute. I was like, he reminds me of my dog and my baby.
I just loved controversial opinion, bring back robots.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unfortunately that's what's happening because while he's doing his own little press tour, Baby Grogu's going to all the press conferences and they're interviewing him anyway, Cadalorian Grogu.
So this has happened.
Like, I don't understand Star Wars law, so I kind of had to get Wikipedia to help me because I wasn't following the plot.
I was just looking at baby Yoda.
Yeah.
But the Mandalorian so Pedro Pascal plays the Mandalorian who's hired as a bounty hunter to go and find and track down the Imperial Overlaw to Jesus Christ, to track down the Imperial Overlord who managed to escape when the empire fell.
Okay, okay, so Star Wars think like what empire? Yeah, what empire? What Lord?
There are Star Wars people listening to this right now who are just horrified.
No, I'm I'm so sorry. I just had a really good time. It's very actionally, very fun. You don't even see Pedro Pascal. You see him for the twenty second and I ask, does he take his helmet off?
You see it?
Yeah, the helmet comes off for twenty seconds, and then I in the cinema went.
No one else joined in. You're like, it was a very inappropriate woo. I was told later on.
All of all of the serious Star Wars people are just like, she's.
Totally here for the Pedro and they were wooing at people I didn't even know, so you know what they were like.
There was little bit characters from the Empire popping up and they were like, that's that guy.
I guess. No, it was a really really good time.
I think I'm now going to get into all the Star Wars in like seventies, right.
I went to see the first one of the movies when I was about seven night.
Sorry, it's really boring.
It's not it's got hand. You can't.
He's like, he's, yeah, oh my god.
Anyway, that's a treat for you.
It's a really good movie. So if you're not into Star Wars, you'll like this one.
Okay, try and believe you, I am recommending something that's on iView because you know there are too many streaming services. Agree this one is free and I we my family very much enjoy Guy Monk's Spelling Bee. That is our obsession, and Aaron Chance not on it anymore now it's because he's too good for the guy anyway. So we watched that, but when we run out of those, we were like,
what else can we watch on here? And Brent and I have started watching Ursula, which is the new Ish stand up slash sketch show from Azula Carlson, who is a brilliant stand up comedian. She's like originally from South Africa but lives in New Zealand but is big in Australia, and she's so she's kind of like all the things. She is so funny. Now I'm gonna admit that when we first started watching this season, it's got this interesting
setup where it's like half stand up half sketch. So every episode she comes out and she's like in a stand up theater and she sets something up that then plays the sketch on the big screen. Now, at first I was like, I am not gonna like this. This is gonna be a little bit cringe. Sketch comedy can be a little bit cringe, right, And I did like the hybrid. It is so good.
It sketches are amazing.
Is it kind of like SNL? No, it's like so she she's kind of doing a few stand up bits that obviously can to the sketch you're going to show, and then it throws to the sketch and they're properly fully produced sketches, you know, on location. She has some recurring characters, so like the sort of home for the recovering Karens, which I can see that some midlife women will find quite offensive, but personally I find hilarious.
The humor is actually really clever. It is It's really it's really clever. There's there's another layer to it than what you expect.
Is so at first I was thinking because and this is about internalized ages, and I think that some of this, quite a few of the gags in this series are about midlife women. It's there's a there's a detective called menopause Cop, and there's the Karens thing, and there's and sometimes there's a mid love woman be like, oh, that's going to be really cringey. But it is not she It is so good, it's so funny, it's so smart, very relatable, but just clever, clever, laugh out loud, both
Brent and I just absolutely pissing out. So I love it now it's become my new treat. Watch. It's also got like Julia Morris is on it, Sampang is on.
I love Sampang. He's my celebrity.
Seem Hussein is on it, Melanie Braithwait is on it, bron Lewis.
There are a bunch of comedians if you, for example, if you've seen any Sydney Comedy Festival, Melbourne Comedy Festival, if you've gone to anything and seen a comedian and been like, bloody hell, they're amazing. I never see them pop up anyway, they will pop up on the show and oh gosh, I watched it with my mum and we just cracked up for a really.
Long Yeah, it's a really good show. And so if you want to laugh, that is my recommendation. Is the amazing Ursula. It's on ABC. I view I think the whole seasons there and yeah, it's bloody great.
Cannot wait. That is all we.
Have time for out louders don't forget that. On Saturday mornings, a newsletter drops in your inbox. If you are smart enough to have signed up for the out Louders newsletter, I will have put you something together. I'm not sure what I'm putting together. We'll do that this afternoon.
I'd like to file a complaint because I was scrolling through substack yesterday and I saw gardening contact be sent to I thought, Holly, come on now.
Last week I snuck in five things I adored this week, and one of them was a seed snail. I will not tell you what a seed sail is, but if you want to go and find out sounds gross, it's tim you can sign up for a substack. There was also some music, a TV show which you could all guess what that was, and an episode we did Me and You and MEA and so anyway, there's always a treat in your in box on Saturday mornings and maybe a couple of other times in the week if you
sign up for the news letters. So we'll put a link in the show notes. That is all we have time for. Thank you to our incredible team for helping us through another week, and we'll be back in your ears on Monday.
Bye Bye MoMA Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.