You're listening to a mother and mea podcast. You were so pretty jesty.
Oh my god.
I was just thinking I just looked very, very washed down.
I don't want to hear you complain anymore. Very best. I'm just going to say, Mary best to you anytime time.
Well, I was saying that how many times did she have? I think she's got at least three sets? And she was all right, So I'm like, mate, I can do it.
Hello and welcome to MoMA Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday, the twelfth of November. I'm Holly Wayne Wright, I'm Amelia Lester.
And I'm Jesse Stevens.
And here's what's made our agenda for today.
A sixty five year old woman was denied custody of her fifteenth child by US court. Now that story is wild, and we will bring you all the details about it, but it's also provoked a lot of debate around the office here about why old moms get so many feelings and so much outrage and old dad is just going to pass.
I was late to this record because I cornered me out and we just couldn't stop talking about it. I have so many thoughts about this story. I'm desperate to talk about it.
Also, what's a grief vampire? And why is an alleged one filling theaters around Australia this week?
And Black Friday creep You may have noticed it. I very unsurprisingly have some concerns I would like to table.
But first, in case you missed it, and I'm sure you did, Princess Anne is here and nobody cares even a little bit.
You didn't put that in my calendar, I know.
And the given all the who ha, we have a Brown Royal tours. It's amazing that the fourth most popular royal. Actually I think she's the third one popular royal.
It's such a lie.
She's the third most to the UK Government. They survey this stuff.
I couldn't pick her out of a lineup. I probably walked past her on the way to the office. There's no way I'd advertize her.
Our producer's husband did walk past. She just walk pretty down anyway. She is the third most popular royal because she is well known for being the most hard working. Right, so the royal ranking as of now, according to the UK Government, goes Catherine William and Charlie. There you go just I'm telling you if these are facts facts anyway, the fact that we don't know I was all very oh, look, we only care about royals when they're young and glamorous and dah da da dah. But it's actually a little
bit by design. She's here at the invitation of the Australian Army because they're celebrating the centenary of the Royal Australian Corps of Signals and she is their colonel in chief.
So is it Remembering Stay adjacent, Yes.
It's Remembering Day adjacent. It's their centenary and that is an area of the army that doesn't get as much glory as a lot of the others because it's not a combat wing. But it's like signalers communications support, so not unlike Princess and vital to the operation, but not necessarily getting all the heralding anyway. So she's here, she's
doing a few cities. She apparently brings a tiny entrige, so just her husband Tim, who inspects the troops with her and stuff, her secretary and like one assistant.
So she does not bring, as Charles's rumor to a mobile martini mixer who travels with her everywhere.
She's really missed a trick there.
I think she sources them like a lee.
Well, we do have good Martini tit, so she keeps it on the down low. And also none of the royal roader have come, so none of the big royal reporters are following Anna around. They've all been in Brazil photographing William looking handsome on the Amazon and Rememberance Day in England where all the other royals have been on display. So I just want it out there that there is
a royal in our midst. But that brings us to the other bit of royal gossip from today, Harry and Mix, the Dutchess and Duke of wherever it is they live these days. Want Sito went to christ Jenna's seventieth birthday party that you wonderful people discussed on Monday. It was the most star studied of events.
The fallout continues, it really does.
They were photographed with Chris, with Kim, with everyone until they were okay.
Can you explain this to me because I keep seeing the headline that photos were deleted? So did Chris and Kim actually post photos with Meghan Harry and then remove those photos? Why?
Well, This is what we need to unpack because obviously there isn't an official line why but as somebody who has been following this party obsessively, because I cannot get my head around the fact there was a party that Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Beyonce, like, it just boggles me. I can't get my friends in the same room, like anyway.
I don't, Yeah, your friends aren't.
Surely are important anyway. I've been following it. So I saw all the pictures, and there's Harry and Meg's with various Kardashians just last night with the pictures of just Meghan and Kim together smiling for the cameras. Today all gone. The reporting is that Harry and Meghan requested them to be taken down. What do we think about that?
So some context. On the same night was the biggest celebrity event of the year in Los Angeles outside of industry events, which is Baby to Baby's gala. Baby to Baby is a charity exclusively populated by a less celebrities, and everyone wants to be invited to that gala. It's like a really big deal to be invited to that gala.
And Harry Meghan went to that and I think that they just sort of thought of Christianna's party is a bit of an after party, a bit of a lark to go to after the main event of the evening, which was again a big deal for them to be invited to. And I just think they thought they were going to go under the radar.
Well, I'm sure you're right that they did, but what a stupid thing to think. Have you met a Cardashian before, do you think they're not going.
To be They're not under the radar people.
So our theory is that Meghan and Harry have asked for them removal.
Oh yeah, I think that's that's clear. But the question is why, why do you think?
Well, I think they immediately I mean, not that this is new, but they immediately got a lot of flak for being at that party, even though, as discussed, the most powerful people in the world were at that party. There's a lot of sneering and this shows how far from the royal family they've fallen and stuff. I think it's not very on brand for Harry, who's still trying to keep a foot in the royal camp, to have
been at that party. But in my opinion, they look like idiots for asking those pictures to be taken down. Either don't go, or go and know that you're going to be photographed. Yeah, they're a picture of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg playing what's the thing you play with the discs Roulette? And I'm like, if they can be photographed at Christians but you're too precious and important.
Okay, Because the other theory is that it was Remembrance Day weekend and now he was wearing his poppies, and he was wearing his poppy, which in an American context didn't make sense to a lot of.
Everyone would have thought of it as just sort of a corsage flower. By the way, I love his thought process on that. So he and Meg's are getting ready, He's like, no, it's really important that I wear the poppy for Remembrance Day, which is not marked in the US, so no one's going to know what I'm doing, but it's really important because is there any better way to mark and to commemorate the sacrifice of the fallen. Then by going to Chris Jenny.
I'm going to defend him because all this criticism and chatter going look over here at what Kate and William are doing. They're at all the really long ceremonies in their black looking very somber and doing all the royal things.
It's a big deal.
And then it is a stark contrast to then see Megan and Harry. But of course the context that a lot of that reporting missed was how many events Harry did that week that were very much in you know, his work with Jesse.
Come on, I did a lot then, to Chris Jenner's party at Jeff bezos Man.
Yes, I think Jesse. I don't have a problem with them going, like they should go to all the celebrity parties they want to. My problem is going And again I'm with you, let's pretend we didn't go, because that might be a bad look. It's like, if you're worried about your reputation and remembers to and all the things, then don't go, just go home after the baby to baby and put your feet up, or you go and you embrace the fact that you are at a party.
Own it that.
Literally exists for the purposes of being shown off on social media. I have seen more pictures of that party than I've seen of your wedding.
Oh, one hundred percent. My favorite hobby now is zooming in to see what celebrities I can find in the background who didn't make it into the foreground, Like it is so star studded, it is so fun just own that you went.
I don't know if you saw this photo. Did you see Justin Bieber coming into the party?
It was side on, so I didn't know it was Justin Bieber saw him down there.
He is famously underdressed. We've seen many pictures of him dressed in basketball shorts next to his impeccably dressed wife, Haley Bieber. But on this occasion he did wear a suit. It's really unfortunate though, because he must have put the suit on and then decided that he really needed to bake some sour dough, because he did have a little bit of flower on his power white powder. Yeah, that's sometimes you just got to bake a sour dough, don't you.
Exactly, Or you've just eaten some and you get a little bit of a white mark powder, a flower flower.
My hero of the party, though, is the cranky neighbor who called the cops.
I mean, you're.
Out, Like this is what we say when we say eat the rich. What we really mean is call the cops on the rich People's party. Good on?
You can we urgently talk about Black Friday creep because according to my very thorough research, Black Friday sales officially twenty eighth of November, and according to Holly wayIn right at the top of Today's show, today is only November. That's true, So there are days between now and Black Friday. So why is the top email in my inbox about Black Friday sales?
They're kicking off in Australia on November the eighteenth, That's what I've been told, Like it might be the twenty eighth, but I think it starts on the eighteenth. But then it's already started.
On some sites I don't know, they've already kicked off. And we are also already in the midst of something called click Frenzy.
Oh yeah, that's that.
Sorry, Sorry, yeah, I don't know what's click friends.
Click Frenzy started maybe yesterday and it ends at midnight on Friday, and it's three full days of just mad internet sales. I guess, so click Frenzy is upon us.
What about Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday is first of December.
And then there's giving Tuesday. Okay, what's Giving Tuesday.
It's Giving Tuesday. Really Giving.
Giving Tuesday is the one where you meant to give to charity, and weirdly it hasn't taken off like the other That's.
What I've had off Giving Tuesday, which is the worst day of the week.
Okay, So I have a question. I know this originated in the US, the whole Black Friday thing. Can you, Amelia, can you explain the context because I'm confused as to why the end of November is now I'm being in sale.
Yeah, and it's really confusing because of the Black Friday. The origins of this will make it even more confusing. Basically, around the nineteen eighties in the US, Black Friday emerged as the biggest shopping day of the year, and there's always a particular date that it's on, and that date is the day after Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is the fourth
Thursday in November. Now, the reason why that's such a big deal to hold on to in the context of this conversation is because there's a sort of unspoken rule in the US that you do not think or talk about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I like that, and so as soon as Thanksgivings over, then you start thinking about Christmas. Then you hit the sales. But the problem with this Black Friday creep is that even in Australia, no one is thinking about Christmas yet.
I have bad news feel on that front, a Melia, because every shop I've been into in the past two weeks has all their decorations up. My Walley's bag already has ballbles on it. There's a massive Christmas tree in the middle of Sydney. We've already started Christmas on the record. Last year, I got a lot of a lot of feed back for my grinchy complaints about Christmas starting too early. So I'm not going to do that this year, but noted.
But I feel like that's part of the problem. Because we brought Christmas forward to November one, we have to bring shopping.
We have brought it to November the first. And you know how, I know that even in the US Mariah Carey, whose song All I Want for Christmas Is You is one of the most played songs of all time and every year she makes something like ten million dollars off the royalties of that one song alone. Now people start to say that it's all I want for Christmas season, and she's been releasing a video the last few years declaring that it is the Christmas season, and this year
the video hit earlier than ever before. It hit on November the first, and speaking to the capitalistic times that we live in. It was also a tie in with Sephora for a sale that they were having, which was a pre Black Friday's sale, a.
Pre click frenzy. This is my question, John, say, click friendly, you're buying into the hype? Am I being frenzy? I hate the word? Am I being a grinch? Or maybe is this a cost of a living story? Like are we so pinched? I think finger wagging too much at people who go hard at Black Friday sales is really annoying because often there is there are some people who are so organized, they've got their Christmas lists, they can get good deals like go ahead. But is that what
this season is about? Is that they know that people are trying to be more organized and more intentional or is it about over consumerism, marketing spin? This is all terrible, Holly, what do you think?
Well, the serious answer is it's about trying to prop up flagging retail sales. Right, So if you talk to any business owner. They will tell you that in the past couple of years, Christmas is quiet. This is the time of year that is crazy. So end of November, if you're like a jewelry business online, if you're a lady, start at whatever. Lee Campbell says this about Brillow Beauty's shifted to now crazy crazy crazy. And then actually, the few weeks before Christmas are quiet.
So we sorry, are we doing our Christmas shopping right now?
Well?
I'm not because I'm a deeply disorganized person.
But Holly, do you think no? Of course not. You think that that is because people are buying stuff online these days more than in shops, and so they have to build in the shipping time.
Is that why I reckon? That's a large part of it. Although I have heard recently the bricks and mortars on its way back in a big way. But if you imagine that younger generations in particular do most of their shopping online, it's like, get them to start thinking about that early, to spread it across time. Now, the thing that's tricky is so I feel personally attacked by this because I have no idea what to buy anyone for Christmas. In November. But this behavior is teaching me, it's training
me and changing my behavior. In research for this segment today, I tick something off my Christmas list because any parent of teenager will be familiar with the PowerPoint presentation that you would get given that says these are the things I would like for Christmas. Please. It always comes with the caveat of I don't expect to get them all, but here are twenty five expensive things I'd like with links. And my daughter started making that one and keeps texting
me the things. And when I was doing my research on Black Friday, I was like, oh, those ogs, they are thirty percent off.
Fantastic done.
So it's training me, it's changing my behavior. What are the bad things you're going to say about this? That's just made my life better?
Okay, the bad things will be that a study came out in the last few years that said eighty percent of what people buy Black Friday sales is going to go into after zero or one use is going to go into some sort of landfill.
Yeah.
I've been on my goal this year of not buying anything new. I must say I have broken that roll a few times. Every time I'm in Westfield I just know that there's an out louder I'm tutting, and I'm like, no fair, I need some shame.
No, you are pragnant with twigs.
It's exactly and like it just is hard. But I now can't buy things without seeing the beaches of Ghana, where like all the kind of western mess and over consumption ends up in landfill. Like that just kind of makes me sick. But at the same time, I can appreciate that for people who were more organized, these kind of sales actually are really helpful. How about your man?
But they also make us feel bad. Like I saw an actual example of an Australian brand sending an email out this week that said that they were having their Black Friday sale two weeks early. It was on a particular day this week. It started at seven am and it was thirty percent off sightwide from seven to seven thirty am.
Now that is just ridiculous, and that's you know, it is encouraging me to rush and make an impulse, urgent decision, which is when we waste as well.
And that's why I guess I hadn't thought about this before, but that's probably why your stat that so many of these Black Friday purchases end up in landfill. That's why, because we're making them under these incredibly stressful conditions. But I want to be clear that my issue here is not with the people who take advantage of them. These people are amazing people. They are better than everyone at this table, and it's because they're just more organized than us.
And it got me thinking about how there really are two types of people in this world. There are the people who refuse to pay full price for things, and there are the people who know no other way. And I think I'm very much in that camp as thinking that there's all these sorts of hallmarks of how you know if you're the person in that first camp, how
you know that you're a super organized person. And the first one that came to mind, and we were talking about this before, was this that person always has a cupboard in their house full of presents that they had just accumulated throughout the year. They're not going on a scramble before a birthday party. They've got some lovely candles to give us hostesk gifts.
Yep, they've got some arm oil, they have blank cards, they don't have to rush to bully.
And stamps for them too, because they still send thank you cards by mail.
That is so.
Here are some other signs, would you like to hear them? Some other signs that you're the sort of person who uses the Black Friday sales for good. You wash your bras regularly and with a bougie detergent on Sundays.
Yes, and you have one of those special bags, you know, those ones that you put fancy lingerie.
And when was the last time I washed my bra don't come too close. You have a shared family notes at doc where you list errands and then check them off on them, as opposed to waking up in the middle of the night realizing that you never signed up for that thing that you were meant to sign up for. Here's one. You never eat in your car.
Most of my meals and.
They're on my steering wheel.
Oh my god. You are never without your keep cup. Now I work with you both. I know that I used.
To have a keep cup, but I lost the lid. And then it's like that, and I bet that this person never loses the lid.
You kept getting shamed because you were handing them a dirty It's true.
I got two more quickly. You own a shoe tree.
Yes.
And finally, your toilet rues bag is the kind that you hang on a hook over the door and unfolds so you see everything in it, as opposed to having that freebie that you got a department store in two thousand and night.
That's so true, rather than going to a hotel and for some reason everything is on the floor.
Look, we salute you people who do these things, and we wish you the best of like navigating the Black Friday sales.
But the three of us I feel December two, we're going to go. It's time to really take advantage of those sales and it's going to be like guys, every sale they can't.
Take the festive stress of shopping on December third. Christmas is one of my things I've done all my life. And the heart rate, the caffeine intake, the swearing, the car park range, like you can't take.
That Christmas and the debt.
After the break. What's a grief vampire? Is there a chance that they're actually doing good? Doesn't sound likely if you haven't noticed Princess Ann on tour because Oasis had better bucket hats.
Let's be honest, did you see the headline that Oasis stayed at Sam Wood's holiday house. Oh yes, I did on the morning simple then I really enjoyed that.
And he said the recycling bins were full. I'm like, I am not surprised.
Why have I retained that information?
Bless them? Anyway, if you haven't noticed the Princess ends on tour, you might not know that there's also another tour going on that's attracting lots of eye rolls and big crowds. Probably the world's most famous medium one, John Edward, is in Australia at the moment. He's doing thirteen shows in most capital cities over the next few weeks, and lots of the events have sold out. Now, Jesse, I know you have been to a John Edwood show before. What happens there? What's it like?
I went to one in twenty nineteen at the State Theater. Why do you go for a work thing?
Like?
We got work passes Claire and I for story and we went, this is going to be really interesting, let's recap it. So State Theater I think has two thousand seats. There's a lot of people there and we were skeptical, cynical all of the things, and the first half of it proved that cynicism to be fair. So it was like, over here, I'm getting a chipped bone? Is there a chipped bone? I'm getting the letter in that was just you I'm getting. Yeah, it was a prophecy. It was
a prophecy there a few years early. But and then would hone in on someone and almost get a bit irritated, like, come on, do you know someone who died after surgery or something? And it's like most of us would know someone who died after anyway, also chipped bone.
Yeah, it was a.
Really weirdly specific thing. And then there was like this irritation and we were going, oh, this is feeling a bit awkward. And then it was like the seventh month or the seventh of a month mean anything to you. And then you start going statistically, come on, it's.
Five days before quick frenzy.
Yeah, exactly right, exactly. So it got to that and Claire and I went, you know, you could fill the room getting a bit lost. The second half had me utterly convinced. Oh wow, he absolutely He went to this really specific woman and said the Vatican. You went to the Vatican. Your father said he heard your prayer and I was like, come on, how the hell would and this woman just burst out to tears and went, I said a prayer and then and then he said, and
his slippers. You found his slippers, and she had found his slippers that morning. And then he said, there's an Eric who has a wedding ring. You need to get that wedding ring back. And Eric hard the ex fiancee, still had the wedding ring, like really specific stuff. He got to another woman and said, you're putting off a doctor's appointment about your lungs. Why are you doing that? You need to go. They're going to give you steroids.
And that was spot on. So look, do I know whether there was some way he had plants in the auditorium to kind of get some of that information. I don't. But what I did know is that that room walked away feeling like they had got something. It was incredibly entertaining and for the people who came there bearing their grief, there was some resolution for them. That's how I felt.
Well, not everybody is so stoked about Edward's shows. Right in the Sydney Morning, Harold on the Weekend Peter Fitzimon's interviewed a woman called Susan Gerbick in an article called calling out the Grief Vampires. How John Edward and other psychic mediums apply their a moral trade. Gerbik is described as a leading American skeptic. Right, and she makes it her business to go Your mom and me are out
loud to leading American skeptic. She makes it her business to go around like unmasking people that she considers are exploiting the grieving, milking their misery for money. She doesn't mince her words about how she feels about them. This is one of the quotes. They have no conscience, they're sociopaths. They just don't care. They're just looking for grief. They can capitalize on by doing tricks that convince paying customers.
They really are talking to the spirit world. So she says that she has exposed certain psychics, and not necessarily John Edward for legal reasons. Let's get it out there, because he's a medium. He can hear me. He knows I'm talking about him, not necessarily Edward. But she says that she has unmasked mediums and psychics doing these things
called cold reads and hot reads. Right, and she says a cold read is which something that we might expect if you were doing like a one on one, she says, You assess someone on how they look, how they sound,
and what they say. You make observations and assumptions about them, and then you throw out baked so a bit like exactly what you were saying, so like someone beginning with them the seventh chipped bone, Yeah, that kind of stuff, and then you begin to reel the me because in the big audience you see who reacts to that, and then you go okay, and then you drill in on there, and if you know the right questions to ask, you can probably draw out a bit of a story, she says.
That's generally in the business called a cold read. A hot read, she says, which happens less often and is obviously more deceitful. She says that you and your staff would go through the names of people who are coming to a certain audience and go and literally research them.
And also she's spoken in the past about what she believes is the practice of these famous mediums, which is that they do plant people in the lobby before the show or at halftime at the show. And the example here would be perhaps the reason why he knew to say to that woman she needs to go to the doctor for her lungs. Is maybe she was smoking outside before the show? Ah, maybe maybe.
And she says when she's done stings to expose people, she's planted stories. So like herself, she's planted stories and then see if they can come up through the psychic and they have. So she says that that happens a lot. One of the things that's interesting about this, of course, is that so this article was very much like these are the worst people in the world. I mean, I'm exaggerating.
She used the word sociopath.
She did, And there's lots of talk of them being exploitative. And she also just says to the argument that would come back that it was like, does it really matter if it's true or not? If it's comforting, she'd say, well, this is basically the question, is it okay to lie to make money out of people? What do we think about this? I know that Amelia, when we did our tarot session a while ago, you were the most skeptical amongst us about the whole process. It made you quite uncomfortable.
Do you share that feeling with these guys?
No, you know, I actually wasn't skeptical. I would characterize you as skeptical of the process. I was scared of the process.
Right, That's true.
And what that meant was I don't actually identify myself as a skeptic on this stuff because I just don't know.
But what it does make me feel is scared. And the reason is with the terror was because I felt like people often describe a terror reading as like seeing a therapist, and my response to that is always like, well, I'd prefer to see a therapist because I don't want people who don't necessarily bring any expertise rifling through my brain, planting stuff there that could psych me out, or that could send me down a path that may or may
not have any bearing on what ends up happening. That's why I feel scared about it.
How do you feel about these guys?
Well, I didn't know a lot about this guy. Interestingly, when I was researching John Edward, I discovered that he is unusually popular in Australia. You know how there are certain celebrities like Pink psych. He's the Pink of the psychic world. He comes to Australia more than any other country. And I came across this very telling little incident that happened on the project when he was here last in June, and I want to play it for you because I think it reveals a lot about how he works.
Let's have a less then, are you feeling anything from anyone at the desk right now?
Not at the moment.
Not at the moment, I mean I could have done that. Yeah, as we continue to ask questions things just I'll tell you why, Because.
If I wind up reading for a host of a show and I get something that's private and personal, that is not this is not taped, it's live, and it's not something that somebody wants to discuss publicly. Yeah, you're going to say no. So I've had that experience.
Yeah on radio you can't handle the truth.
Yeah. But it's a little bit convenient, isn't it that the one place where he won't do a read is on live television with journalists who might push back. Jesse.
Yeah, I totally see your point. And the cold read hot read thing I think is really interesting and I always think the world needs both. And I really respected the position of fit Simon's and the expert who's dedicated our life to going can we please have some rigor and research involved in this stuff before we hand over our money. However, when something offers a balm for someone's grief, and if John Edward and he has said this, my job is to make people leave feeling better, it's basically
do no harm. I don't want to do harm for people. And in that article they talked about lies. And I find the use of the word lie really interesting because do I think John Edward believes what he's doing. I don't know. I don't know, but I'm not completely convinced that he is a fraud star or a con man who gets up and intentionally manipulates people. When I've listened to interviews with him, I think he believes what he
is doing. And there are a lot of things in some instances, for example, fertility, I know people who claim to be fertility experts that have no expertise, no degrees, no research that triggers me like I find it so irresponsible and so harmful, and they're giving people advice and whatever. But then you know the practice like cupping, where they put comes on your back and they did it. A research is out on whether or not that's good. I've
got cupping. I've walked away feeling better acupuncture. Yeah, lots of question marks around whether that actually I walk away place ebo, eh, I walk away feeling better with this stuff. I think grief and death and the afterlife is just this massive well of like what balm do people have? And if this has them leaving feeling better, I kind of think there's space for that.
Look, I want to agree with you. I've spoken on the show before about how Imbrent's family, my partner's family, there are psychics, and that my late mother in law was a self proclaimed psychic, and I know people who she brought so much comfort to with her readings. Now I am a skeptic, like I'm born a skeptic, right, It's also an area that kind of frightens me, so I don't want to go near it. Some people run towards that stuff. I'm very much backing out of the room going you guys carry on?
Is that for the same reason that I identify being scared of.
Me plea and I just find it really unnerving. I am quite romantic and magical in some way, Like It's not that I'm very scientific, fact based in every way, but I do find this challenging, and so I probably back away from it. But when I began to get to know people who lived in this world, basically I did really have to reassess my view because I couldn't sit there and point at my mother in law, who I adored and say you're a liar, like you're you're
a liar and you're a fraud. On the other hand, she was not filling massive theaters and charging large amounts of money. You know, she would do a reading for someone for free, for a bottle of wine for like, you know, she would do it almost as a neighborhood service, and whatever the truth of the situation was, very many people felt good about what she did. And so, like lots of things, I'm not sure how black and white
it is. When I was doing a bit of digging into how many people actually believe this is really interesting stat This is an American stat about how many people proclaim that they believe in ghosts and the afterlife, and it usually sits somewhere around thirty nine to forty one percent of people who were like open to that. But fifty three percent of Americans say that they've been visited
by a dead family member. So isn't that weird that people actually say they've had lived experience of having contact with people they've lost, even if they don't really believe it themselves, Because I think that we've all had those experiences where, you know, I remember, not long after Julie passed, my mother in law, something that she gave me fell out of a cupboard onto my head, and I was really freaked out because I was thinking about her at
that moment. I was like, it's a sign, It's a sign, you know, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't like, but I think that it's interesting that we can feel things sometimes that we don't actually believe in. And I think a lot of this stuff lives in that area.
And this is an imperfect comparison. And I don't want to offend anyone, but I know people who I'm close to who donate significant amounts of money to different churches or not even church, different faiths, the faith that they're aligned with. I don't necessarily believe in the god that they're aligned with. I don't necessarily believe the exact things that they believe. Do I think they have the right
and do I respect their affiliation with that institution. I do and if that makes them feel better, and if particular stories and maybe I get a little bit funny about any sort of patronizing of any set of beliefs that you feel are stupid or can't be proven. I have a lot of space for people who kind of explore those things and find comfort.
Yeah. I thought it was a really interesting point you made, Jersey about what John Edward himself believes. And it's interesting that he insists on describing himself as an entertainer, and that is indisputable. He is an entertainer.
Yeah right, And yeah, his show is listed under art theater and comedy. Yeah, so it's a performance.
That's what when we went our first instinct was this feels like a comedy show, except without jokes, but more dead people.
But then it does raise the question of stakes, Like if he is an entertainer, then we come back to that fundamental question of why does it matter? And this interview that we kicked off the segment talking about with the sort of renowned leading American skeptic, you end up feeling a little bit like she's a bit too invested in this thing.
You know, why is she?
So she's kind of just as dogmatic as he is. I want to ask you, Holly, if this is real, because is this ghost again? No, it is not ghosts, but it's similar. It's when Brits moved to Australia. Oh, it's this phenomenon called the Australia Effect. Right the other day I came across it and I was like, well, I sit in a podcast studio with a lady with a British accent. That's you, Holly, A lady with an American accent. That's your Amelia. And I thought, if anyone
can tell me about the Australia Effect, it's you. Two came across this TikTok video of a woman explaining what the Australia effect is. Here's what she said.
Has anyone seen the TikTok trends called the Australia Effect.
So essentially, it's like British girls will.
Go over to Australia.
Before they left, you know, they got full face makeup, massive.
Lip filler, big eyelashes, you know, the hair extensions, etc. Then they moved to Australia. After a bit of time, they're they're just like all natural, bare face.
They're never really weird makeup. Maybe they've taken their extensions out, they haven't got lip filler, etc.
So her name is Nina and she's moved to Wales, I'm pretty sure. But her theory is that when people from overseas moved to Australia, they almost have a glowdown. They become more laid back, they stopped doing their hair, they stopped trying so hard. Holly, when you moved to Australia, did you fall victim to the Australia effect?
Look, it was a long time ago and lip filler and hair extensions weren't really the vibe. But absolutely one hundred percent. Yes, this is absolutely one hundred percent, I think really, and this is just about assimilation to the beauty standards of the place you're living in.
Right.
So there is a very classic, often mocked British mainstream young female.
Look Jordy Shop.
Yeah very much. You see it on every reality show, very Love Island, and it's very high maintenance. Let's just call it what it is, high maintenance.
Right.
And then in Australia, although obviously there are high maintenance pockets and all kinds of different cult suburbs coming together and every but the predominant kind of mainstream vibe of what an Australian particularly. Let's remember that these people often come and move to beachy places, so they congregate around coastlines in Australian cities, and what they see is people getting up at far running outside looking amazing in the active where everybody's like just coming out of the surf
and their hairs and it's a completely different esthetic. So I think one hundreds of what happens. And when I came and I was young, I was twenty three when I came to Australia, that wasn't my look. But within weeks months I was like swimmers with the denim mini dungarees over the top, like always air dried hair which suited me, freckles like, it's just a very much looser vibe.
It's one hundred percent Tury. You would look weird. I mean maybe not again, depending on where you were down at Bondie at six am with all of that stuff on you.
Okay, Amelia, you have lived in lots of different places all over the world. Do you find that how you dress, how you do your makeup, how you do your hair changes when you're in Australia.
It's a really good question. I'm going to push back against this idea a little bit. I think that the low maintenance look in Australia has become extremely high maintenance in recent years. So I came back here to live last year, and I think in the last i want to say, five to ten years, I see way more lip filler here than I do on the East Coast of the United States. Just as an example, like that's a very popular look here is the lip filler. Fake tan is a much bigger thing here than it is
in the US. And the idea of some people really maintain their fake tan all through winter, and they're doing it on Sundays when they wash their bras and so on. And the hair is the beechy wave takes a lot of work, unless you're holy, in which case she does have naturally beachy waves, which is annoying. But for most of us, beachie waves take work.
Okay, So I liken this too. When I go on a holiday and I pack my straighter and my makeup bag and they never come out. It's exadly like that, and I go and I just become a coastal goddess, and I look in the mirror and I go, you look great. Look at you with your like messy hair. But if I turned up to an office like that, I would look scraggly and just like unkempt or whatever. So I wonder if it's more of a coastal thing.
Oh, it's one hundred percent coastal. Yeah, yeah, I think it's very much place to a particular stereotype. The young women that she's talking about in that video, that's where they are. Yeah, you know what I mean, they are hanging out in those places. It's not like all of Australia is like that or that even a few suburbs back from the beach is like that. But there's very much a kind of a different aesthetic. It's very well
documented on the internet. You can find a million tiktoks of like taking off my British chav makeup, or going from a British girl to an American girl, going from a British girl to an Australian girl. Like, there are no question different stud And.
You probably wouldn't walk around Manchester barefoot you've any season whereas I do that very Oden.
You really wouldn't.
After the break, we're going to unpack the article which prompted a very heated debate about old mums.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of MUMMYA out Loud just for MUMMYA. Subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get your daily dose of out Loud and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.
Gather around. I'm going to tell you a story that a lot of people think of as an urban horror story, but this one actually happened, and it was in the New York Times recently. Mary Beth Lewis is a retired nurse living in the suburbs of New York. She had five children with her husband, who was a very very busy and important airline pilot. And then just as those five children started to leave home they went out into university or to the workplace. She got lonely. She was
in her fifties. She said, I want to have more kids. So she used IVF to have twins just before her fiftieth birthday. And then in her fifties and I need to get this exactly right, she had another daughter. She had twin boys. She had a third set of twins and a thirteenth child. At sixty two, she's got more children.
And those children she all physically carried and birthed.
She physically carried in births. And what I took from that is, Jesse, I never want to hear you complain about carrying twins again.
What a lightweight you are? I know, Worry Beth is the standard.
She survived it and did it again and again and again in her fifties. I'm finding this. This is inspiration pawn for me.
Okay. So next, what happened is that her husband, who had recently retired, said I don't want any more kids. But here's the problem. Mary Beth wanted more kids. By the way, her adult children at this point are begging her not to have more children. They were fairly indulgent of the couple of kids that she had first naturally in her late fifties, but they didn't want her to have more kids because they were looking after these kids. The adult kids were looking after the little kids.
And she used IVF throughout her fifties. Correct, yes, she used IVF.
And then what happened was she went behind her partner's back, behind her grown children's backs. She hired a surrogate to deliver her full fourteenth and her fifteenth children. This is where the troubles begin.
That this is where the troubles begin.
I think the.
Troubles have already begun.
Her fourteenth and her fifteenth children were taken away from her before she even got a chance to meet them. Because remember these were children who were delivered by surrogates, So before she got to hold these children, they were whisked away from her and put into foster care. And now she's seventy and pursuing legal action to get those kids back.
Wow, who are not genetically hers doesn't have an egg of hers or her husband's sperm, but it shares a donor with some of the children she's already had, so some of her children would be biological siblings to these twins. But she and this is where it gets really complicated too, is genetically and gestationally and socially, she hasn't been their mother, although she was the one who intended and to be born.
Because in America, this is something you can pay people to do.
Correct, She's paid hundreds of thousands of stars.
She's basically paid for those children, which I assume is part of her legal case.
Right.
So she's like, I have bought those children, and yet I do not have those children that would be part of this, wouldn't it I imagine.
No, that's a great point. Absolutely, And the judge that took the children away from her didn't really have a very sound legal reasoning for why he did it. He basically made a vibes based decision that she was too old to look after these kids.
Which I think lots of people would probably sympathize with.
But then what's interesting is how many judges, in cases of child protection or you know, due to tragic circumstances, you lose a mother or a father, would those children then go into the custody of the grandparents. That would happen all of the time, and that can't be aged discrimination.
Ed, right, That's a good point. So this is so I want to broaden this out to talk about old moms and why we have a revulsion of about them. But before I get to that, this story, what did it make you feel, Holly?
It made me very sad. I think this is a story of extremes. And I know that you should never diagnose people who you know. I'm not a professional, but Mary Beth to me seems like she has some mental illness issues right the bit, as you said, Amelia, the kids left home, and she said, in this article it says this is empty. She thought, I don't like this at all, but so many women That's what I was going to say. But what I'm going to say is
that's a very familiar feeling to lots of people. They don't all go, you know what, I'm going to start all over again, like to fulfill that. And it reminded me of somebody I met recently who she had quite a complicated family, but she said her mother loved babies.
Loved babies, you hear that often, yep.
And would foster babies in any kind, but then kind of lost interest in them as they got a bit older, you know, Like I think there is a point obviously at which your urges and your desires clash into the
well being of kids. Now, you know, I don't know Mary Beth, and I'm not qualified to say this, but it seems to be that in this very extreme case of somebody who is fulfilling, as she says, an emptiness in her at some point, isn't it fair enough that somebody's going to intervene and say, hey, Mary Beth, maybe you should just get some therapy.
And how the rights of a child intersect with the rights of a mother, with the rights of a father, and then add on top of all of that reproductive technology. Because that's the story here, is that what are the ethics the limits of reproductive technology?
And I'm really uncomfortable to say when is too old and for there to be Like in Australia, there aren't hard and fast rules, but different states and different clinics have their own rules. But generally speaking, mid forties is often when IVF clinics will stop treating you. If donors are involved, they'll push to fifties. This is obviously there is actually firm ruling on it, but that's broadly the cutoff is seen to be around that time. You know,
I was an old mum. I was forty when I had my second child, and some people would have thoughts about that. You often hear people say it's much better to have them young and that you won't be around
when they're old, and da da da da da. But as you pointed out with that example about people who lose parents and get put in the care of grandparents, it's not like having your kids young inoculates you from all those eventualities and means you're definitely going to be living down the road from them when they have their
kids and whatever. So I'm not a believer in like this is too old, full stop the end, but I think this is an extreme case, and in extreme cases, I kind of think the intervention is fair enough.
No, it is an extreme case, and the starts back that up. Only something like twelve hundred American women in their fifties gave birth in twenty twenty three, which is the most recent year stats have been collected, So it is an extreme case. But the reason I get uncomfortable hearing people say, well, then they'll never be there for your high school graduation and they'll never be able to see you grow up. It's like we don't decide whether women can have children based on whether we know they'll
be a good mother or not. And it's getting into that issue of like, well, but you won't be a good enough mother because you won't be there for the high school graduation. And if you go down that path, then you're going to start deeming all sorts of mothers not particularly good mothers for various reasons because of choices they made because of how they live their lives, and that's what bothers me about the moralism around it. I also want to say that Mary Beth, by all accounts,
was an excellent mother. And so even in this very long New York Times magazine piece which we're talking about, which is clearly very skeptical about her case, legally, her children talk about she was an amazing mother. She took them lots of interesting places, even when they didn't have a lot of money, and then when they did acquire more money, when her husband's career took off, she still really wanted to make sure that she was there for them and that she was there emotionally for them, which
by all accounts she was. There's another interesting dynam in her story, which is that her husband was clearly a very absent father, so he was the primary bread winner in that he was this successful commercial airline pilot. He was never there, and what the story makes clear is that they liked it that way. He liked not being there.
He liked, as the story says, taking selfies in front of the Sydney Opera House when he was down in Australia after flying a plane there, or he liked having a beer in airport hotel bars at the end of a long flight. He didn't particularly want to be there for the kids. She loved being there for the kids. And I think that adds this whole other complicated wrinkle into the story.
Does And I felt throughout the story an enormous amount of empathy for mary Beth. And I kept thinking, there is nothing quite like the desire to have children.
She had thirteen children already. I want to be empathetic, Jesse, and I am to a point. But it's not like she didn't have children.
No, no, I know, but like, for example, so I had Luna, and then I would have gone to enormous lengths to have another baby.
I know, Jesse. But again, you can't compare yourself.
Your spot on, your spot on, And that's why I kept kind of reminding, like, this is a human being who longs for her two children, and I kept kind of coming back to the humanity in that experience. The other element in terms of reproductive technologies is that they could in certain embryo into mary Beth. The twins that she had right before her fiftieth birthday nearly killed her.
Like she had such an awful complication that she could have died, and that puts health professionals in such a The resources it takes for someone who is fifty five fifty nine giving birth to a set of twins like that is an enormous.
So they actually refused, didn't they to let her have good lust.
So they said she wanted to have naturally as in birth children after the age of sixty, and they said, you've had six seed sections and the scar is paper thing. You will bleed to death. If you try and carry this child, you'll bleed to death. So that's kind of another element. But then it's an uncomfortable conversation because you'd never want to shame. What reproductive technology has done for same sex couples, for people who would otherwise not have children at any age is incredible.
And also the thing is, as you've touched on, the reason why this is quite an interesting thing to consider, is that reproductive technology is one thing, but also longevity science is another. And we are seeing the people are convinced that they can live better, healthier, for longer, and that your forties isn't what your forties used to be, and your fifties isn't what your fifties used to be.
And so there is a perception and I've heard it talked about on American podcasts and things like that, whatever cutoff limit we used to have in our minds for when a woman and it's always a woman, as I'm sure we're about to get to, but when a woman should have a baby like that gate is being bashed down with you know, all the supplements and health breakthroughs and fertility, and so we are going to have to
grapple with these issues. But I agree with you Amelia that putting moralism around it is nonsense.
It's dangerous.
But at the same time, Mary Beth Babe, I think maybe thirteen children is enough.
Mary BET's got some unique problems. But you know what's not that extreme is old dads and celebrity old dads. There's no tut tutting about them. There is a little bit more increasingly, I think, but for a long time there it was sort of seen as a mark of pride that they were still virile enough to father children. And just a couple of extreme examples from the celebrity world.
Al Pacino became a dad for a fourth time last year at eighty three eighty three, and just last month Kelsey Grammar, congrats he became a dad for the eighth time at seventy. And there is no judge taking those children or taking custody of those children away from these old dads.
I now is that there is no judge taking them away because they think that they're in the care of their younger mothers.
Right.
So the age of the women these men are having children are spoiler alert Hollway, Yeah, is quite a lot less. However, I do feel very judgy about those guys like I do. Why do I feel so judgy about that? Why do I feel.
Because science says that as men's sperm gets older, the risk of medical complications increases. We don't talk about that as much as we do as for women, but it's true.
And do I also think that the eighty three year old al Pacino is you know, I is not.
Taking the responsibility seriously?
Well? No. And also, although I very much agree with what you said before, Amelia about we don't go around saying or you should be able to have children because you're going to live a long time and be at the graduation, which is a nonsense idea. But al Pacino eighty three like it's really not going to be around it. So it doesn't feel like the fathering part of that is like an active choice more and again, maybe I'm judging too much or something that his younger partner wanted.
Yeah, his job is to exist and a mother's job is to do everything else.
Yes.
Now, while we're on the topic of parenting, Amelia, you cheat on us on Saturdays with Parenting out Loud. Can you tell us what is on your agenda for Saturday's episode?
Yeah, think of me as the Orlando Bloom to your Katie part if you will. I do another podcast on this network called Parenting out Loud with Mons and Stacy, Yes, who are known to the out Loud universe, and it's similar to what we chat about here on out Loud. It feels very similar. It's not parenting advice. It's not oh gosh, I have spit up on my shirt and eyes.
Like the conversation we just had.
Yeah, I'm not like a clip art of like a working mom with like you know, the laptop and the high heels. Like these are real conversations, really thinky conversations about what's in the parenting zeitgeist. It's the conversation I think the parents really want to have, but which they might be too scared to voice out loud and with my friends.
What's Saturday's episode about?
Yeah, so this week we're talking about a very controversial new skincare brand has launched for little kids. We're talking like three year old.
I've seen this, Yeah, yeah, and I'm dying to know what you think about that.
Where we got to on that was we sort of wanted to talk about whether girlhood is just another consumer identity now it's just another thing to buy, another market to pitch too, and is that bad? Like how should we feel about that? And we also wanted to talk about that phrase it takes a village, And where we got to is that maybe millennial parents don't want a village, Like maybe that's inconvenient, maybe it's too much trouble. Maybe
we actually don't want a village anymore. Very controversial. So search Parenting out loud and hit follow and come join us out louders.
Thank you so much for being here with us today. Remember we're on YouTube and if you watch today's episode on YouTube, you would have seen my face when I was going can't tell me?
And your beachy.
Waves and Beachy Waves. But you can always catch all of the episodes on YouTube if you want to. There is a link in the show notes. Thank you to our amazing team for putting the show together. We'll see you tomorrow.
Bye bye.
Mar Mayor acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.