Hello, and welcome to Mama Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the fourth of November.
I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm Mea Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
On the show Today, A woman's real time meltdown is top of the Australian TV ratings again. So why has even our home renno inspo now got a side of cheating scandal? Also, something has happened to Sunday while spending the day meal prepping is now they must have badge of honor And a famous woman has donated millions of dollars to an anti violence charity. Why does it feel a bit wrong? But first, take my Pamela.
The American people want to start the chaos and end the DRAMAA with a cool new step Mamala pick backing our pajamaa's and watch a rum Pamela.
That audios Kamala Harris making a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live with Maya Rudolph, who's been impersonating her on the show through this election cycle and actually since twenty nineteen. Now, in case you missed it, it's the US election this week. Of course, can you hear my faintly hysterical life.
Yes, you say up, yeah, yeah.
Interesting mood. I don't think that many of us are feeling very nearly.
Hanging on by a thread.
I wouldn't say, I'd say mannik, yeah, yes, hysterical. The polls open on Wednesday, our time.
Now.
Either you're full of existential fear and nausea about the results and you're refreshing the New York Times homepage until your thumb falls off, like me, or you have your fingers in your ears and you're singing, perhaps falla lulalla in a bid to drown out the.
Noise, or or maybe a voting The third option.
Is that you're mildly interested but don't really care what no.
The fourth option is that you're a Trump supporter and you're also feeling really good.
Well, no, everybody's nervous. It doesn't matter who.
Are so tight. No one's feeling like a victory lap is imminent.
Everyone's feeling tense. I think about the results, except for the people who are singing or don't really care. But no matter which of those categories you fall into, I just want to get you across some quick basics. The polls. Basically, nobody knows.
Nobody has any idea.
Every new pole is closer than the last pot, and it's close the poles I've ever made.
Yeah, or they go there are two for her, two for him. One don't know. That's kind of it.
And I'm clicking on a lot of stories that say this polster has predicted correctly every election result, and here's who he say he says is going to win. Or it's like a snail who has crawled in a particular direction. I've stopped looking at the poles. Those of us who lived through twenty sixteen were scarred by them.
I've started asking my dog and seeing if the way that her ears twitched, there are any hints, any possible gives that.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump was seen in a garbage truck looking a very unnatural shade of orange in a stunt that was designed to draw attention to the fact Joe Biden accidentally called Trump supporter's garbage. After one of the speakers at the Big Trump rally in Madison Square Garden in New York, Lass Week called the entire nation of Puerto Rico a floating pile of garbage.
Cal did you guys see the Milwaukee rally where his mic wasn't working.
Yes, Trump's mike.
Trump's mike wasn't working, and he simulated Falatio on the microphone and then he threatened, He said, do you want to go see me basically knock out the people out the back. That was an interesting moment. I was way on the weekend and all anyone was doing was watching videos. They wanted to see the full video of him simulating the Falacio.
I think he also in fact he did also suggest that people might want to go and shoot Liz Cheney, who is one of his critics, a former Republican in the face. And my favorite little morsel of the weekend is that Donald Trump has promised to put RFK Junior in charge of i think the Health Department if he wins, and RFK is excitedly announced on Twitter. He's i think a chair or a big part of the transition committee,
so it's legit. He said that some of the things that Trump will do if he's elected is removed the fluoride in drinking water and ban vaccinations. So if Trump wins, maybe pop the surprise return of polio and measles on you bingo card for twenty twenty six.
When are we going to know the result?
However, our audience is feeling and as you say, we know some people are really into it and some people are like, stop talking about it. What are our plans?
Yes, So, as I said, voting opens Wednesday our time, and experts say where I'm likely to know the result
for four to ten days. But what I predict, because it's going to come down to a handful of votes in about three or four states, what I predict is that on the night of the election, which will be Wednesday our time Tuesday American time, Trump will hold a press conference into claar victory even though no will know, He'll just say I wont and then whatever happens, it will seem like either he did win and he just called victory or he has set up this whole narrative about stealing the O.
It is so possible, though, like some people are saying, we probably won't know till the weekend, but it is possible that we'll know on Wednesday.
If it's a landslide.
Yeah, yeah, So either way, out louders, here's what's going to happen. We are not going to talk only about the American election at you, because I know that some of you will go Okay, we'll tune out about loud this week. We're going to be bringing you loads of distraction,
loads of other content. But of course, the wonderful Amelia Lester, our expert, who is actually on Q and A tonight talking about this, is going to be in and out all week, and we all will do some bonus content either with Amelia and all of us, Amelia and Miya. We're going to be on it for you, So if you care, you can hear. And if you don't care, we've got loads of other gossips for you. All right, So I'm saying goodbye.
I can't be on national television with having my marriage breaking down. I'm going home. I can't say I'll be returning.
You can talk to Brad about the.
Details, but unfortunately I can't do it anymore. I don't need to always be made.
Out to be krabby and the bad guy anymore.
Thank you for the opportunity, and I'm sorry couldn't start talking and I'm just so strung anymore.
Thanks guys, love me. A quarter of a million women have read a story on Mama here over the past week about a very particular drama unfolding on Australian reality TV. Now the block used to be used to be about home renovations.
Was allo fun.
Remember that.
I remember Amity Dry who then released a song. I remember Gari and Was, who were the probably one of the first mainstream gay couples on a huge TV show.
And I'm going to frighten you because that was twenty one years ago. I went and.
Visited that block in Bondy. I was so into that show. Actually went and visited the set.
I liked it before and after particlarly bathrooms and kitchens. Everybody really likes all that. Anyway, I was about to explain to you all what the block is, and then I looked up that it was twenty one years old, and I was like, I think we're across it. I think we're broadly across it, right. But what you might be interested to know is that even though almost everything about TV has changed in the last twenty one years,
the block is still a big deal. It still pulls in more than two million viewers on a Sunday night. It's the highest ratings show that nine has on bvod. You know, like watch it on demand, and because as you'd know if you watch it, almost the entire thing is sold for sponsorship and integration. It makes a lot of money, so it's still a big behemoth that you know, the network's very invested in making sure survives, thrives, keeps bringing in the dollars. But this past week the chat
hasn't been about bathroom grout, which is disappointing. It's about a classic reality show villain who also happens to be a woman, who is almost always the case. And if you've been paying any attention to this, you probably know that a woman called Kylie's personal life is being milked for ratings. And depending on where you sit on this, she's either only got herself to blame or she's being roundly exploited. What happened is Kylie. She's thirty seven years old.
She's a hairdresser from Cans. She and her husband Brad, have four little kids, and they are competing on this season of the Block, along obviously with other people, which is being filmed in Philip Island and in Victoria right.
She said that she and Brad came on the show for a break from the grind of parenting and to make some money, because one of the big appeals about the block is often the contestants do make big money, not always because it all depends on what the house goes for, but it is one of those shows right
where they can walk away with life changing money. Unfortunately, what's been life changing for Kylie, rather than the money, has been her husband openly flirting with another contestant on the show, telling Mimi, one of the other contestants on camera that he would love to follow her on OnlyFans if she has an account, and that he'd like to take her for a drink when all this is over.
Did he know it was being filmed? I mean, I guess they all know they're being filmed all the time.
So his wife, Kylie was napping near him, but he assumed that she was really napping. I think Kylie may have overheard. Yeah, and that was all surprised was recorded, but also it's on TV exactly. There was no getting away from it, and Kylie was pissed off and she left and then she came back and as well as apparently dumping Brad on TV, she also gave Scotti Kam
a big serve. She said under her breath, on the show when he was judging her garden, her back garden, that she fucking hates that guy and may have called him a fat sea word about about Scott cam on the show.
So that never goes down. Well, now, we've all seen this play out before in one form or another, and the audience in the comments in out Louder's show this are very divided. They either think that she's an ungrateful and titled so and so, or they think that she's a woman married to a bit of a dickhead having her personal life exploited for ratings. Either way, it's symptomatic of how so many TV shows, even if they're meant
to be about paving and palm trees, have been gamified. Jesse, you she's sorry?
Why is she ungrateful for not being happy?
Because because if you're watching the show, which a lot about Louders are, they're like, before all the cheating stuff, she she wasn't there that and rude about this and that, and like so there's more drama underneath it, do you know what I mean? And then this has happened, and so they're like saying, well, you know, what did she expect? And she's ungreat blah blah. But then a lot of other people are absolutely defending her and saying she clearly
isn't okay. We shouldn't be watching this on TV. While watching it on TV, Jesse used to write about the drama of reality TV shows that were more specifically created for drama, like Married at First Sight and The Bachelor and all those things. But now we can't have our cooking or our home renovating or anything without it. What is that about?
I reckon it is because the words and it would happen every season like clockwork, probably about oh well, actually, by the end of Claire and I recapping Married at First Sight, it happened multiple times a season because it caused such a spike. But the two words cheating scandal were ratings gold, and it was like, it was incredible what it did to ratings, how it got everyone interested, how people wanted to talk about it, they wanted to
know the ins and outs. The other thing that happened in maybe the final season that Claire and I recapped was the advent of OnlyFans, which became very fun because suddenly and the block is different because it's marketed to a different audience. The block is more complicated because people watch it with their kids.
Yeah, it's a family show.
Yeah, Married at first sight wasn't so when OnlyFans came up and then it started this broader conversation about shame and nudity and sexualization and all that kind of stuff.
So do you mean that the contestants went on these shows and then started only fans accounts, or they had only fans accounts where they could sell monetize.
It was like the discovery the season that I'm thinking of the discovery of one contestant having an only fans put on the table like an ethical discussion about whether or not that was a good or a bad thing. So she was shamed by another contestant who came on and said but.
Ever since, probably the most the only organic season of reality TV was that first season of Big Brother with Sarah Marie where nobody knew about sponsorship deals. I mean, this is even pre social media, right every season afterwards, you know, I was there in the audience when Sarah Marii came out and everybody was wearing bunny ears. She didn't make a cent out of the sale of bunny ears. And then what they found in subsequent seasons is that everybody would go in what's going to be my bunny?
Is?
How am I going to make money out of this? Which is fine, I understand that. So you're saying that only fans wrapped it up again and it has.
Become part of the thing.
Right.
So people used to say they go on for Instagram followers, and you know you do, but also you can go on to build an audience who you think can then sell you only fans too if you're a hot sex So you don't get paid much to go on these shows, do you.
Know, And it just offered another element of titillation. It probably in terms of the rating and in terms of the audience skewed it a little bit more because they were having different compass. But I think, you know, to go granular for a moment into the dynamics of a cheating scandal, like people do want to come to work on a Monday and talk about whether their husband saying to another woman I'd follow you on only fans if you had an account it's cheating or not, Like that's
a genuinely interesting conversation. So look, I think it's coming for all forms of entertainment, which we've seen. But I'm going to go on a tangent because I was watching something over the weekend that just crystallized a whole lot of disparate things that I'm seeing. So I mentioned on the show the other week that I was watching Mister McMahon, which is about Vince McMahon, who is the co founder of WWA Wrestling. And as a kid, did you guys ever watch it?
Yeah? I loved it, Hulk Hogan, Ye, Andre the Giant, Yes, loved it.
So as a kid, I was vaguely aware of it, but I never was super into it. But it's like my whole childhood and adolescence now makes sense because everything from what the boys did in my primary school to terms they used is like, oh, that was a wrestling thing. So I'm going to put a pro wrestling framework on top of the evolution of reality television and then bring that into American polity.
Okay, go Jesse.
This is what my essay is about.
From what next PhD is going to be.
This is a thesis early eighties. You're talking whole Hogan, Andre the Giant. There's a heel. A heel is known as like the villain, and then there's a face who's the hero, and it's all confected, but no one cares right good and baddies, goodies and baddies, And there's an arena. There were arenas I think now still eighty thousand people in an arena just screaming like they're so they want to root for someone, they want to boo for someone else.
There's something almost gladiatorial about the energy in it and the aim of the game. For McMahon, who I imagine now as a modern day TV producer, was what he refers to as heat. So it doesn't matter if they're booing or they're cheering, or they hate you or they have names for you, there is heat. They can they care.
Engagement, there is an engagement.
And so it doesn't matter if everyone's saying iffing, hate the blow. It's really degenerated. Whatever you're watching it, you're talking about it, Yeah, like good publicity exactly, which she is Trump. Yes. So this is the thing that's what keeps you coming back. It's rivalry, it's storylines. It's about seeing the worst parts of ourselves as well. It's like, if the lives we're living is order, we need to see the chaos so.
It's like a soap opera but grafted onto something that is supposedly real, like a reality show, because they've always been soap opera is yeah for a long time. Wrestling is supposedly real.
It's a sport, but people don't really care whether it is real do which is almost similar to reality TV. Nobody really cares if it's real or not, except every now and again. And this is what's happening right now today with Kylie. We all get reminded that there is a human at the bottom of this because one of the things she said, we're all sitting around going is it cheating that he wants? But she said, the thing that really upset me is that he never flirts with
me like that. Now, that is a very human, vulnerable thing that so many of us could relate to. It reminds you that there's a woman at the bottom of all this who is real, no matter how much of a caricature she is on the TV. And she might as well be Hulk Cogan or whoever it's like, she's not.
She is a real pers I reckon that. That's part of what makes it so interesting is trying to work out where the line is where the reality is, where the confected drama is that is incredibly engaging, and the reality is that this stuff works. And so then when we go to the Trump who's been accused of making politics into reality TV, I think he's made it into rest.
He has, and he's a creature of the eighties exactly.
So in the documentary the show actually features Donald Trump. He's really good mates with Vince McMahon. He's just obsessed with wrestling, and I think it has informed his character more than anything else. Like the idea of the mocking the trash talking like crazy Kamala, Comrade Kamala, like he always has a name. They repeating things when the audience likes it, generating heat. He's made it into this circle.
This is why he was He found president being almost weird because you've always got to be not the victim. But if you're the good guy, which he always is, you've got to have bad guys. So when you're the president, he's always victimizing himself because he has to create a narrative where he's fighting against somebody.
Yeah.
Yeah, And the reality is I even thought about him in that rally saying I'm going to go out and you know, hit the guy backstage or whatever. I can't lose my shit at work this week, right, Like, I've got to keep it all together, and I've got to be polite, and I have to act in a certain way, and I have to wear this mask in the wrestling ring on reality TV. In American politics, they get to just rip the mask off. That's what it feels like. I think that's why it's cathartic for us to see that.
It's like it is chaos to our order.
The thing is yes, and that's why we as we've talked about a lot when we've been talking about the election, Trump's great strength is that he is very exciting. At some point, though, this shit has to get old because we've now been living in Trump's world for ten years, right. And it's interesting when you go back to that comparison with reality TV, is we sort of swing between you know, remember when My Kitchen Rules was really popular because everybody
liked watching the couples be horrible to each other. But then that kind of tanked and everyone went back to Master Chef because that was about being nice to each other and people's sob stories. And then you're kind of like, oh, we're a bit sick of that now and we want to It's like back to the tri We all oscillate between them because we know deep down that it's not good for us to marinate constantly in drama and negativity, but positivity is so boring.
Having not looked at the Block for twenty years, probably after since that first season, and I was watching some clips before the show today, I was shocked by how the married at first sight of it all has been transposed onto this home renovation program, or I guess on my kitchen rules, onto this cooking program.
It's like they want their cake and eating it. Though it obviously works to a point, because you know, if you look at what the outlauders said about the Block, they some of them are saying, I used to watch it with my kids. Then I saw this bullying going down this season, and I've stopped. And other people like the drama. But I guess what the producers are hoping is come for the bathroom, stay for the drama, or the other way around. Come for the drama, stay for the bathrooms.
Like it's the you know what.
The only thing it either escalates, which is what we've seen on Married at First side is it has to escalate every season to kind of retain its viewership or sponsors pool. Because if I'm a sponsor, there's a line, there's a line, right, But if I'm a family show, and there's different from Married at First site, because that
makes a lot of money in a different way. But here you've got some of the most big conservative brands in Australia putting themselves inside this show exactly, and that's when it might change.
Yeah.
But I also think the other thing that's so predictable is that today everybody's loving all the headlines about Kylie and all the things, and in about a week everybody will be very sad about Kylie. And it's like we've been through this before, guys.
In a moment, from label containers to life hacks, what has happened to our Sundays? Have you noticed something has happened to Sundays? What is meant to be a day of rest or maybe seeing family socializing. I would argue for sleep ins has been co opted and I, for one, shall not stand for it. You might have seen an article over the weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald by Giselle Onion newan that asked, how do you say I'm in my mid thirties without saying I'm in my mid thirties.
The answer she posited is meal prep.
Oh, I'm so young.
I have only just started meal prep and I'm about to turn thirty four.
There you go, right on time, So spot on, I don't do it.
Actually, she writes that she loves planning out a week of meals, shopping for the ingredients, spending a Sunday cooking it all, and then dividing it into neat little container. It's what all the TikTokers do in the day in the Life videos, and now there are whole books written about it. Sunday meal prep has infiltrated at homes around the world, But I reckon, there's more. Why do I suddenly feel like I need to have an everything shower on a Sunday? I need to dee clean my house.
I need to get ahead for the week, get all the laundry done, and lay my clothes out, dust my skirting boards, journal, meditate Sunday feels like work in order to make the actual work go more smoothly. Do you guys get the sense that you're meant to have totally optimized your Sunday.
Holy yes, I do, and it makes me very anxious. It's supposed to make you less anxious, right, because it's supposed to be if you sort everything out on Sunday, then the week will run really smoothly. But I often find I get very stressed on Sunday afternoons. And it's not the Sunday sads, you know, the Sunday sads has always been around that on Sunday night, as you start getting the dread about the week ahead, because you know, I like my job, I get to come in and
hang out with you too. It's more that rising panic about all the things are meant to have sorted out for the week, and the problem I have with it, well two things. One is supposed to be a trade off, right, So the people who love to get everything prepped on a Sunday say, I'm trading a couple of hours on a Sunday for like a smoother week. But I would argue that Sunday afternoons and Tuesday evenings are not worth the same amount, you know.
What I mean?
Like, what's more valuable, what's more fun, what's more enjoyable, what's better a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday evening.
Okay, Sunday afternoon. But I want to ask it not equal. I keep hearing the term cooking burnout. Do you relate with that term?
Well, yes, because every person who has a family has to cook all the time, so like every night it's like what's for dinner, what's for dinner, what's for dinner? And I understand that this helps with that, but you've still got the burnout of having to plan the whole week. But there's been a shift in cooking right because we all know, we were talking about it last week that the absolute juggernaut that is Recipe to Eats now, who had a new book out last week called Tonight. She
is a very famous in Australia. She was a food blogger, I guess you would say, who has become a publishing sensation. And that's because her food is simple, hearty, works and does not take you four hours. It used to be that all the cool aspirational cooking books were like fancy things for dinner parties and like let's stuff a mushroom and let's like butterfly and whatever. I don't even know what your butterfly, but something you know, whereas that is
not what this is about. This is about simple, grounded, real food that works. And I think the meal prep thing is adjacent because it's like this idea that we could solve all that chaos and aspiration by just doing it on Sundays.
I wonder if Nigie's next book will be called Tomorrow subtitled and the rest of the week.
She does have meal prep sections.
Every cookbook has meal prep sections. Now, I didn't realize that does. I don't own that many cookbooks.
What else is Sunday for? Confused?
Oh my god, it's for enjoying yourself.
I love pottering. My favorite thing to do on a Sunday is to have the whole day free and I potter and doing all of that organization, playing with my clothes, doing all my washing, doing my kids washing, sorting things into piles, reorganizing my bathroom, dyeing my eyebrows. I do my smoothie preps. Not every Sunday, but when I do my smoothie preps, which is my green smoothie, It's what I have for breakfast every day. It requires a lot of chopping of different things.
Every two or.
Three weeks, I'll go and buy all my greens, listen to a podcast, chop all my things up, put them all in little sandwich bags, pop them in the freezer. I feel so good?
You are you about? It's only in the last few months I've heard about this concept of an everything shower. Do you have everything showers? And do you even know what they are?
Of course I know what they are. It's so funny because last night my daughter came looking to pilfer some of my products and saying, I want to have in everything shower. Can I take your cleanser? Can I take you all these? Can I take you that I want to, like, exfoliate and do all of those things. I don't do it all in the shower for me, and everything shower just means do I shave my legs or because I do everything in the shower every time I have a shower.
I wash my hair every time I have a shower. Sorry, every time I have a shower in the morning during the week, I wash my hair and I cleanse, you know, once or twice every day. And I don't use like body scrubs or anything like that.
So I like an everything shower too, And my daughter definitely hasn't everything about every Sunday night. Sunday night is about that.
It's about like, oh, I need it all done by Sunday.
But Sunday is supposed to be fun. And the problem with the stress of the having everything sorted is now if I do what is supposed to be fun on Sunday, like go around for lunch at a friend's place, which is what I did yesterday.
See, that's not fun for me.
It doesn't have to be. But if it is, like if it's a day that you normally catch up with family, see friends, Like, aren't we allowed to have two days where we're all to do what we want rather than one and another one that's just more work?
But again, hold, it's subjective. So what you want to do on Sunday is go and see your friends and lie around. What I want to do on a Sunday is potter and organize my life. So all of this stuff that is just what one does on a Sunday is just my happy place.
However, but that's fine for us to be different. But the thing is is what this is about saying everybody should be doing that, that Sundays.
Should predate yeah, and that it's about optimization and life hacks and productivity and all that kind.
And we all know there's different kinds of rest, right So to you though, right, so it's up to you. There's no one policing you saying that it feels like, don't go to luck. That's on you.
But I feel pressure. It's the guts on you.
I think it's interesting though that meal prepping, Like, to me, that's quite new, right. I remember ten years ago, meal prepping was for the gym bros. If I knew someone, and the dieters and the dieties. So the ones that I knew were like, they would do meat and veggies because they were really into fitness and they became obsessed with what they were going to eat. But now everyone does it.
So the reason is the American Surgeon General, a guy I've been interviewed on No Filter, actually lovely guy, VIVC. Murphy. He released a couple of weeks ago a warning that parenting in the way that society is expecting us to parenting now and the pressure that parents are putting on themselves forget about being bad for the children. This form of intensive parenting is actually bad for the parents.
We're talking about this on the show recently.
Yeah, so to me, this spills into that. So it's like, if you want to be this organized and have everything done and make sure you're spending quality time with your children all day on Sunday, and then of course you're going to feel like you've got less time.
See I disagree because I reckon that meal prepping is also a lot of people who don't.
Have to oh very much a millennial thing.
Oh no, I'm just saying everything in our lives right, everything that we're doing, I'm saying for parents, it's worse. I remember I used to have to do this when my kids are smaller, because it's also frigging school lunches, making sure you them, and uniforms to wash. So there's a whole thing if you've got kids. I mean, also, everybody's got less time because they're on tiktop more and they're on scholar.
Meal prep content.
This is my theory. My theory is that I read this really interesting article in the Cydney Morning Herald over the weekend about how Lifeline has had a record number of calls. Three hundred people are calling Lifeline a day on average about financial stress. Like we've talked about the cost of living crisis and how much Australian families are suffering.
But this is so real, and I think that if you are on a really tight budget, if you cannot afford waste, if you need to think about every single ingredient, and we know that if you go and buy certain ingredients in bulk then it's cheaper. Like I think that families have had to get more organised definitely.
Because of how much it's It saves you money, it reduces food waste, and usually it means your food will be healthier if your meal prep. There's no argument that it's generally a good thing.
It's just two types of people.
It's the two types of people thing, because the thing is it's generally a very good thing for lots of reasons, but it always seems to fall on the women generally speaking, except for the gym bros. And it has taken out another chunk of leisure time which you could be spending on TikTok.
But I just think everybody's always like not everybody. People have always been doing this, just like being sick of cooking because you've had to make school lunches or family meals or I'm sick of cooking for myself and I don't even cook now it's called cooking burnout. And it's almost like we are creating names and sicknesses and conditions and phenomenons. And I know it's interesting sometimes to put a name around something, but part of it is just
how you choose to use your time. I mean, supermarkets have discovered that it used to be that basket size used to be one big basket and people would do a weekly shop. Now people are more likely to have two, three, four, six, ten baskets a week, plus delivery for a milk run or you know, casal or whatever. We're living in a non demand society, so we're not thinking ahead, we're not
planning ahead. And I think the reason that this is a big thing for millennials is that it's like, ah, for all the reasons you say, Jesse, like people have always done this to save money, to save time, and millennials suddenly feeling like they've got less time, maybe because they've had kids, maybe because of cost of living or a combination, are going, oh, now I have to spend my sundays doing all these things. It's like, dude, we've always done it.
Yeah, but there's definitely a cultural shift just in the water about the fact that it used to be seen as a bit of a sad thing, you know what I mean, Like, oh, you're going to eat leftovers through the week. Oh you have to plan your week as if you're worried about money, as if you're worried about health.
Like that.
That was a bit of a sad thing, but now now it's very But also now it's aspirational. It's like all the cool girls meal prep.
But that's because it's content.
It is content. But also I think that it's about control, you know what, you would just saying about this idea that so much of our lives is out of control. Now it feels that way. So it's like, if I can get everything in order on a Sunday, I'm wrestling back a bit of control, which I totally get. But I just think there's an interesting mood shift there about like it used to be a bit of a saddo thing and now it's a cool thing. Yeah, And you're right, Maa.
It actually makes no difference whether you just need to do it or not. But it's like, is it worth taking a picture off in case.
You missed it? Helen Miron's Roman Empire is Kurt Cobain. And if you think that there are too many nouns in that sentence that don't seem to belong together, you're right. During interview last week, the famous actress shared that she feels sad that Kurt Cobain, who was the lead singer of Nirvana in the nineties, She's sad that he's no longer alive because he never got the chance to experience GPS.
And I always say it's so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did because he never saw GPS. GPS is the most wonderful thing to what's my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.
That's the reason that we're sad Kirk Cobain, Isn't it.
Feel sad for so many reasons? And GPS doesn't make.
What's interesting about this is that she uses him often as a way to talk about aging and about the progression of time. For example, in twenty fourteen, she told Oprah Winfrey, look at Kirk Cobain. He hardly even saw a computer. The digital stuff that's going on is so exciting I'm just so curious about what happens next.
Is it that she feels like Kurt Cobain didn't die that long ago? Is it that that it's like he didn't die that long ago? And yet look at all the things she obviously.
Thinks about him all the time, and she's like, what would Kurt Cobain say about this? In twenty fifteen, she said to Cosmopolitan magazine, I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the Internet. And I'm totally blown away by that. And then the year after, she said to The Daily Mail, if I died at twenty seven, the age that Kurt Cobain died in nineteen ninety four, I'd never even have known that
there was an Internet. Incredible things are happening all the time, and I can't wait to see what comes next.
I love her. After the Break, we unpack Anna Kendrick's Lattice movie and what's been called the Blake Lively Effect.
Out loud as If you want to listen to us every day of the week, you can get access to exclusive segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays by becoming a mum and mea subscriber. Follow the link in the show notes to subscribe and support us, and a big thank you to all our current subscribers. Plot Twist, There's a story that made me furious on the weekend, and it's about someone donating a large amount of money to a charity for women. Let me unpack it for you and explain
why I'm so grumpy. Anna Kendrick has said that she donated the fee she got from starring in and directed the hit Netflix true crime film Woman of the Hour. A lot of people are talking about that. It came out recently. It's about a woman who appeared on a nineteen seventies TV dating show and was matched with a serial killer in the midst of his crimes. Here she is, in her own words, telling an interviewer why she decided.
To do this.
And then I was just making the movie, making a movie, and we just barely made the deadline to get into TEFF and then it was like, oh, oh, there's like money going to be exchanging hands, and yeah, Like I sort of asked myself the question of like, do you feel gross about this?
And I did, And so I'm not.
Making money off of the movie.
The money is going to or has gone to RAIN and to the National Center for Victims of Violent Crime, which was a charity that Matt Murphy recommended to me.
So RAIN is a huge charity in the US that supports victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. And look, why am I angry about it rich Hollywood celebrity donating money to charity. This is the reason. And now, of course it's not about the charity and the donation, because the charities have said how grateful they are. Of course they are. Netflix has made a huge amount of money from this. They paid eleven million dollars for the rights to make it and a Kendrick not to start in it,
but she also directed it. It was watched twenty three million times in the two weeks after its release, so
it's clearly a big, big success for the platform. But what worries me about this is that it is an example of something that I've come to think of as the Blake Lively effect, which is, if you remember, recently, Blake Lively made a movie called It Ends with Us where she got criticized hugely for centering herself in the publicity and the marketing of the film, even though she was the literal star of it, and she got attacked for wearing clothes on the red carpet that were too
nice and apparently distracted from the experience of domestic violence victims, and that really impacted on how the movie was received and Blake Clively's reputation, and so clearly, fearing those same attacks, Anna Kendrick decided to preempt a Pylon. I'm not saying she didn't also have these good intentions, and who might doubt them, But my question is, are the actors who play men who abuse and murder women donating their salaries?
Or is it just the women? Is it just the women who play their victims, because the last time I checked actors like zac Efron and David Tennant in Rivals and Channing Tatum, who was in Blink twice recently, all of whom are great actors, but have played men who've murdered and raped women. Did they donate their pay? And is this now the expectation of every woman who tells a story, either in film or in TV shows or in even books that depicts the abuse of women, Because
to me, this does not seem like progress. Jesse, tell me why I'm wrong.
Your instinct was my initial instinct, and now I've changed my mind. Not tell you I Justin Baldoni, who did it ends with us. He coins a production company, Wayfair Studios. He was the director, and he was the director and he played, yeah course, alongside Blake Lively. I reckon that what Anna Kendrick is doing is actually the Justin Baldoni effect,
not the Blake Lively effect. And I say that because he partnered with the No More Foundation to provide resources and information related to the abuse.
To picked it only afterwards, only after people came for Blake.
I thought that, but then I checked, and it's even in the credits. They from the beginning, and he actually had partnered with them and worked with them prior. So he is very much a purpose based every project that he does, he is very much about how do I make the world better. That's how he presents and part of the ethos of his company. And so I think in that way, there is this trend towards if you're dealing with a really big issue like this, rather than be seen to be profiting off at how can you
give back? And I think that Justin Baldoni, I agree with you.
That infuriates me because do you know what's going to happen. People won't make these movies anymore. They won't make these TV shows, they won't tell these stories. Instead, they'll be a movie where they can keep all the tens of mine.
But Anna Kendrick is worth an estimated and this is always highly contested, an estimated twenty million dollars. So Anna Kendrick does need the money, just like Justin Baldoni. And you know what, he didn't donate his salary from.
But are we going to say that every celebrity who's got more money than us doesn't need it? No, no, no, But if that's and shouldn't be paid for their work, if.
That's Anna Kendrick's choice, that she looked at it and went, I've actually got enough money. I'm doing this as a passion project and I want to donate. I agree with you that the expectation on women is a lot higher and that we demand women show us their wounds. In that Call her Daddy interview, I think in order to justify why she would make this film, she had to tell us about an abusive relationship. How long did that abusive relationship that you endured last?
It didn't follow the traditional pattern, which is kind of yet another reason why I was finding it really difficult to identify it and name it as abusive, okay, because I was like reading all the articles and going like, this doesn't look like some of it looks like how they're describing it, but not completely. So the relationship was seven years. It was like an overnight switch.
And you know what, that could also be really helpful to women. But we saw it this week too with Jackie O. Jackie O has released her memoir, which we talked about on the show, and there was a lot of criticism. I saw it everywhere about how she was profiting off like talking about her drug abut and she's only telling us this so that she can make money off it. And she's come out and said all proceeds are now being donated.
It's her story in her life.
Holy what do you think?
Well, I think it's complicated because my instinct is me is too, is that I do think that women like I can't even think of how many TV shows I've seen, the movies I've seen where a man is an abusive killer and nobody it's a whole show.
The director, it's the directed element. It was the fact that she directed it. It's not the character.
No, no, I get all that, but I also kind of wonder if that is the case. I also kind of wonder if she was the star of this. But there are some nuances that are worth mentioning because this isn't actually a movie about domestic violence. This is a straight up serial killer movie, right. It's not about an abusive relationship. The woman involved in it in real life she never went on a date with this guy. In the movie, she does go on one date with this guy,
but that's not actually what it's about. This is much more squarely in the very classic serial killer genre of a movie.
Right.
The thing about that, the positive thing about that, you could argue, is that maybe we finally learn a lesson about the fact that we have been watching culture that hangs off dead women and murdered women and women you know, who are raped and abused and have to start with
a body. We all know those tropes, right, We've been watching unthinkingly and handing over our money to the storytellers of those things for a very long time, and finally we're kind of going hold on, isn't it a bit weird that we're all so happy to just consume this kind of content unquestionably, and often the serial killers end
up almost being pin ups. If you think about Jamie Dornan in The Fall, or like our obsession with a character like Hannibal Lecter or whatever, that we erase the victim, and now culturally we are focused on the victims, and
I think that's a good thing. I think the thing that's a bit depressing about this is if it is a defensive crouch, which it may well be, like as in, if the people who made this movie, including Anna Kendrick, saw what happened to It Ends with Us, which went on to be a massive smash by the way, and make everybody involved a lot of money and presumably also the charities involved a lot of money. So that's a
good thing. But if they watched what happened to Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick was like, I do not want that to happen to me. I do also do not want that to overshadow this entire campaign and me talking about this movie that I really believe in and so we're going to do this. That's a bit sad because we can all feel so helpless about violence against women. So in another way, is the ultimate outcome a positive one for the wrong reasons almost you know.
Yeah, exactly, And I feel that way about it too, But it's more that this will now be the expectation, but only for the women before we go.
I came across this story on the BBC over the weekend about how weird it is that Australians don't wear shoes. It's been called one of the weirdest, perplexing, odd and unexplainable Australian cultural habits.
But this, what do you mean, like where it's an entirely true. This is one of the things that absolutely boggled my mind when I first came to Australia, and I've actually got an American friend who moved home because of all the barefootness. Is like, shall I face Trump's America? Or am I dealing with bare toes in the supermarket queue? I think I'm going back to Trumps.
See, apparently it can be explained right because in the fifties and sixties, Australia was marketed to migrants as somewhere you could take your shoes off because it was warm and the lifestyle was laid back. It was everyone's just walking around badfoot. But for a lot of overseas visitors, this is what it said. It's this odd thing that they've noticed and they really really don't like it.
What don't they like about it because it's smelly?
No, no, no, they just think have some decorrent.
Well they're clearly not on wiki feed no.
Exactly, but like last night, Oh.
My god, Paradise for Food. In fact, Tourre's Australia is missing a trick. This is how we should be marketing Australian feet, the most beautiful feet in the world, and you can see them everywhere.
Maybe I could be the foot of Australian.
Tours because everyone knows it's actually very good for your feet. Holleen, Well, here's the thing that.
Is So when I was young and I came to Australia and I noticed this, I used to love it. I remember going on holiday from work in my first job in Australia and being like, I'm not going to wear shoes for two weeks, Like that's the mark of a holiday, you know what I mean. I'm just going to walk around Barron Bay or wherever I was, like some backpackery town with no shoes on and I'm going to feel so free and now I'm old. I look at people and I'm like, put some shoes on. I'm like, no shoes, no shoes.
I was.
I had to do some shopping, like supermarket shopping yesterday, and Luke came and met me and he had no shoes on, and I went. The journey of my life is discovering where the line is. Because I found myself in a westfield with no shoes on, and I've gone across the line.
How did you get into a west fo So I kind of needed to.
Just go in and like duck in and get something. And maybe I was on my way home from the beach. Because the rule is within two caves of a beach, no shoes within two k's of my house. I feel like, no shoes within five within two k's.
Of your house. Like if I would you walk to the corner shop with no shoes on? Yes? Really on a pavement in the city.
But firstly, what are you stepping on? Second? Have you seen what people do on the footpath? Have you seen that it's a suburban Have you not seen people hoyke one onto the footpath?
Oh?
You know what it'd be good for the immune system. It's good for the foot. It's good for the foot because we shouldn't be in shoes all the time.
Do you know what my kids freak out if I'm wearing shoes in my house.
That freaks out in the house.
Yeah, no, See, it's funny always looking at where the line is. So every night I take the dogs out for a walk just to go to the toilet, I just take them across the road. And I don't like not wearing shoes because then those same feet get into my bed.
But yeah, you got to watch them.
Do you know who's wearing shoes? People who live in the country, snakes. You would not see anyone walking around a proper country as town with no shoes. Thanks.
You also get very rough skin on your feet if you wear bare feet, so then you have to add an extra step to your everything, Sharon a Sunday night, which is exfoliating your feet.
With one of those foot files Thomas Stones.
We ask people in the Mummere office if they're guilty of not wearing shoes, and here's what they told us.
Yeah, I'm guilty.
I'm very much known for being barefoot in the supermarket all the time because I never have enough time to pop up for a shop, so I never put shoes on.
There's a time and a place, for sure.
I wouldn't go barefoot in the office, but I'm a fan of getting my dogs out, which basically means I love wearing sandals or thongs everywhere.
Oh my gosh, absolutely not. I have a bit of tact, thank you. It depends on where, Like, if it's a beach town, then yes. If you're more than three hundred away from a beach, no.
No, that's absolutely vile, absolutely fucking not. People deserve jail time who do that in public. It's a visual assault on my eyes.
Listen, I'm a bit of a shoe person, so the barefoot thing worries me. It's less about what other people think and more about me tripping, hurting my toe or falling over and embarrassing myself.
One thing you made noticed if you follow us in your pod feed, I don't know what you call it anymore. It used to be called subscribing to a podcast. Now it's called following a podcast. Anyway, we have been dropping some little treats, and we're going to continue to drop some extra little treats, particularly on the weekend, just other little shows that Jesse, Holly or I might have made, or things that we think you might be interested in listening to.
But if you're worried that you can't find your Friday episode, scroll back. Promise you it's there.
It's there. That's everything from us today out louders as ever, huge thank you to all of you for being with the three of us on this Monday. As I say, we will be here all week with your American US gossip and otherwise and we couldn't do it without you. We'll be back in your ears tomorrow. Bye bye. Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do it. There's a link in the episode description.