You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Hello and welcome to Mom and Mia out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the eighth of December.
I'm Holly wayIn Wright, I'm Amelia Laster and.
I'm Jesse Stephens.
And here's what's on our agenda for today. Why Australian women are still obsessed with Oprah Winfrey at least if my social media feed from the weekend is anything to be believed.
Plus, this is the week, this is the week that the social media band takes effect. Why do I suddenly have complicated feelings about it?
And apparently Travis Kelcey confessed to a giant red flag in his relationship with Taylor Swift And I'm not so convinced. But first, Jesse Stevens, in case you missed it, it's the time of the year. Wherefore about eleven seconds, a dictionary and a design service become surprisingly relevant. They have their moment in the sun, we all make a fuss and forget about them for twelve months. The Oxford Dictionary has declared that their word of the year for twenty twenty five is rage bait.
Which is interesting because I thought that was two words.
Yes, well last year was brain rot.
It's true also two words.
There are allegations that this is a classic example of rage bait, given they've broken their own rules.
That's so true.
You can't upset the dictionary people like know your audience. The dictionary people are really annoyed. But use of the term, let's call it a term has tripled in the last twelve months, and the president of Oxford Languages says that the term brain rot from last year and rage bait from this year, they sort of reveal how the digital world are reshaping how we think and more generally, our behavior.
The Internet used to work on curiosity gaps, used to work on what we call clickbait, right, and now it's all about baiting people with the strongest emotion that they can possibly generate, which is rage. Do you think this was the year of rage bait?
I don't think the human race is okay. Brain rot last year, rage bait this year. I do think it shows that we're getting more sophisticated in our understanding of what the internet is doing to us.
Yes, yeah, And I like that it's not meme terms. Like for a while it was kind of these ridiculous, not like skibbety toilet like that kind of stuff that you go.
Through boat face.
Yeah, so for five seconds, maybe that's a meme. But I think that these terms, as you say, describe a real phenomenon, so I have more respect for them.
Yeah, I think they speak to our increasing literacy. Right to your point about us becoming more sophisticated, is that hopefully by elevating and amplifying the term rage bait, we're better at spotting it and that would be a good thing.
Yes, And we saw it like used in advertising this year. Remember we talked about the Elf ad that awful matt Rice, who they knew their audience didn't like because he'd made a really off color domestic violence joke and they threw him in the ad blew up. The other one was the American Eagle, and there.
Was just maybe you could argue the pubic hair, mercant.
Skin rage bait.
There are some very good rage bait marketing techniques now.
But I've noticed in my group chats that the rage bait cycle has abated a little bit. So for instance, I used to have one group chat where we would just send each other links that we knew would get each other worked up about politics. It was called rage bit and now that's thread. We've decided that we're not going to do that anymore. And I think there is a power in naming it and then recognizing, oh, all I'm doing is rage baiting.
I'm being played. And that actually brings us to the color of the year, right, which is kill me. Pantone, which is a printing business, they declare every year their color. Who can remember the color of twenty twenty five?
No, I'm obsessed with the colors.
It was brown, it's round, and I reckon, spot on, I reckon, they nailed it. I saw a lot of macka moose this year. The color of twenty twenty six is white, specifically Cloud Dancer, which is described as a lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection. So what does the color of the year mean. It means that we're going to be wearing it. It means it's going to be the brand palette of a lot of
different places. It means celebrities and red carpets. It means the color of your interiors. We're going to be seeing it everywhere. I want to know if you are rage baited that white is technically a shade, not a color.
I'm raged baited just by the whole idea because A I can't wear white, so I feel like excluded. I feel excluded in every way, like I can't wear white because of my coloring, but I also just can't wear white.
I can't.
Yes, Yes, if.
I was wearing what Amelia was wearing now, I would have spilt something down it, even if there was nothing near me. Yesterday, you know, I was influenced by you, Jesse, And over the weekend I bought one of those stripe tea yeah, you know, the viral strapergy shirts, and mine is navy with like a yellow stripe. Was literally wearing it for five minutes coffee down at all the yellow stripes covered in coffee.
That shirt is dead to me.
Now and I'm a properly grown woman and I still can't wear white now.
All this means is that bibbs are back, bibs are gonna be bibs.
I love that. Or like a really enriching cultural conversation about stain removal, like how to get things out of your clothes. Apparently. I did read an article that said, on Christmas Day, we're all wearing white.
I'm not Amelia.
There's been a lot of controversy over this.
I love pantone color of the year, obsessed with it, generally by a pair of slippers in whatever color it is to set a tone for the year ahead. There hasn't been this much controversy with the color of the year since twenty twenty one, when they named two colors. Do you remember that they named gray and yellow and everyone said, hang on, it's meant to.
Be color of the year.
But people are saying that they're quite tone deaf, or they're calling them pantone deaf. I'm sorry, I didn't make up and it did take me in an alarmingly long time to get that joke, so I'll repeat it again, pan tone death. Some people are saying that the color evokes white supremacy at a time when right wing parties are on the rise around the world. Others are saying it's a recession indicator because we can't afford color anymore.
Oh my goodness, No, because wearing white is a rich person's game. Everybody knows that it means that you can afford to have your clothes professionally cleaned and your sheets professionally cleaned. Rich people wear white a lot. Jerry halliwell only wears white and she's married to one of those richefwondu. Yeah, can you remind me what the name of it is again?
Please?
It is cooler.
Did not have to refer to notes.
I believe it is a cool white rather than a warm white.
It is one of my favorite things to do is in Bunnings, is to go and look at the paint wall and look at all the shades of white and try and boggle my brain about their minuscule differences.
And if you've ever shot for a wedding dress, you do know that there are actually which you haven't hold is sorry, but there are multiple.
Get married because you knew that.
Why it wasn't Mum says, why it's not a color? She wore gold?
No very nice? Of course she did go on steep.
The world is watching Australia this week because on Wednesday, the social media ban finally comes into effect. Now, if you're anything like me, I feel like this has been coming for such a long time, and this Wednesday here, this.
Wednesday, like Christmas for some of us friends.
Now the Quikie has your covered on the nuts and bolts of what is happening, and there are a lot of nuts and bolts in terms of how this is going to be implemented. They also have an interview with the teenagers who are challenging this ban in the High Court.
You can hear that on the QUICKI tomorrow. But I wanted to check in on how we're all feeling.
About it, because I've been on a bit of a roller coaster of emotions about this ban. At first, I felt real unbridled joy and pride in the fact that Australia is really leading the world in this, and other countries Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Denmark, they're all considering doing exactly the same thing. Chris Pratt, he has a movie he's been talking about how great he thinks the social media ban is. You know, the world is looking at us and is cheering us on in large parts of it.
But in the last i'd say the last couple of weeks, I've started to hear some arguments that have given me pause about this ban. One of them came from the Sidney Monty Herald newspaper which.
Reported today that a full two thirds.
Of parents are going to find ways to get around this ban. And I hadn't even considered that there were ways to get around the band, But of course Holly's been implying to me that there are many loopholes and many ways in which parents are just going to say, I can't fight this fight with my teenager, I can't pull an addict away from something, and.
Look, I should say that.
Albow, in response to this kind of criticism, says, it was never meant to be perfectly enforced. It was meant to start conversations, and it was meant to change a social norm over time. But it does kind of make me think that it's being undermined little bit by parents. Holly, what do you think? You know?
I've been dying to talk about this every episode. I'm like, can we talk about it yet?
Like stop it?
Just full disclosure, because if you are a regular out louder, you would have heard my voice last week reading some ads from the federal government about the social media delay as they calling it, and I agreed to do those
because I am a supporter. Like full disclosure, I think it's great, but I think it's complicated, and I think we have to be really mindful in the next few weeks, months, whatever of where the criticisms about this are coming from, right, Because one thing you've got to remember, and we're not getting into the nuts and bots, as you say, But the pressure in this case is on the tech companies to stop kids getting on their apps, rather than it's not supposed to be to stop parents from letting their
kids get on the apps.
Do you understand that distinction, right?
So it's not like if you have a fifteen year old and your fifteen year old is still on snap Chat next week, you're going to go to prison. That's not what's going to happen. And Nora are they and you're not going to get fined, and nor are they. The idea is to pressure the tech companies to make it much harder, if not impossible, for kids under sixteen to get online. Now that's not something the tech companies are fans of.
Right. Ninety nine percent of.
Australian teenagers use some form of social media ninety nine percent, So that is a lot of customers who are being served ads all the time. So there are lots of sort of vested interests without wanting to sound too conspiratorial about this, who are not mad keen on this working, And so I think we have to be mindful of that.
But back to the point, Amelia, of whether parents are going to help their kids get around this man, they definitely are going to because so my kids are exactly in the bull's eye for this right thirteen and fifteen, and me and my friends and most of my friends I guess who you know I see regularly, their kids are somewhere in that ballpark two, probably aged between like nine and sixteen, And say, all the time, what did we fight about before there were phones? What did parents and kids.
Argue about before there were phones?
Because it is the biggest source of contention in every house I know, including my own screen time, phone usage, addiction, social media, all of those things are the things that we have most conflict about. And so in a way, you'd think, oh, well, how great, because now you don't have to row about it because it's just illegal for them to be on YouTube.
But that's exactly what I thought.
But that's not the case, because what it means is you are now going to be fighting about them getting off those things. The thing is Although I'm a big supporter of the ban, I've never been a really big supporter of the Jonathan Height kind of argument that really
parents just all need to get together and agree. Me and all my friends are not going to buy our kids' phones because I think it's a really simplistic idea, given all the forces that are coming at us, that if parents were just just grew a pair and told their kids to get off phones, we wouldn't have a problem. I think this is a really complicated relationship that teens have with these platforms. We've just been handed a really good tool to be able to help us get the
kids off them. But I think that the great benefit of this ban is actually not going to be fifteen year olds. It's going to be for the twelve year olds who are never going to get on these platforms in the first place, or the nine year old who are not going to be handed a phone at eleven and given Snapchat anymore. I think that actually the biggest benefit is going to come from those kids rather than for the kids who are already in the eye of the storm.
That's an interesting idea because even smoking right, like, if you look at they were all different there were public health campaigns, and there was the cost and almost the social backlash towards people who smoked. And that didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen with one piece of legislation or one policy. It happened gradually, and so a lot of the arguments that I hear against it. I think about alcohol, you can say, oh, well, can technically go out and buy
alcohol for a seventeen year old. What if the parent wants to have a glass of wine in their house with their seventeen year old, What if they're seventeen and eleven, Like that's been going on forever, and you negotiate it as a family. But the fact that it is sort of enshrined in law that that's not something that a seventeen year old is allowed to do is in the parents' arsenal,
and it's in the teacher's arsenal as well. Like I'm thinking about all of the teachers who are dealing with social media conflicts every single day as part of their job, who can now probably go you shouldn't even be on there. Even that gives them something, And I think that it chose the Australian government has a backbone I think it's brave. I think it's bold. The rest of the world is
following suit, not identically interestingly, so even Denmark. I think there's a lot of talk about that they're not allowed on without parental consent. I wonder if that is a change that will happen or curfew is the other they talking about.
The problem with the parental consent model is in theory, this only really works if it's everybody. So that's always Jonathan Hight's argument that I referenced before, and if you're not awhere, he is the guy who wrote The Anxious Generation. He's an American, what is his psychologist? And he's very widely credited for It was actually the South Australian premier's wife who read that book here and started pushing her
husband to do something about this. But that's kind of the theory that his stuff about the village, like parents should get together in a village almost and say we're all not going to do phones is really as I say, I don't think that works. I think it's a bit of a middle class fantasy that everybody's just going to do that. But I think that the thing that's really good about the social media benefit works is that your kid is going to say, I'm so isolated from my
friends if you'd kick me off social media. It's like, but none of your friends are going to be on social media, so you're not going to be isolated from your friends, and you'll find somewhere else together on the Internet.
And here there are some really good arguments, as there is with any change in legislation. So there was an article in The Guardian by Ezra Shohl, who is the son of Natasha Shol, who has spoken about on this podcast before. She's a brilliant writer. And he is fifteen and is quadriplegic. He is in a wheelchair. He has suffered the most horrific health crises over the last few years, and the thing that has connected him to the outside world when he has been stuck in a hospital bed
during adolescence has been social media. And I don't doubt that that's his story. And in fact he made some really good points. He wrote, if tech companies have the capability to delete accounts for people under the age of sixteen, they also have the capability to delete accounts that bully, harass or cause harm. And he said that he's been bullied. He gets stuff all the time, and he reports these accounts and nothing happens. And as anyone with a profile knows,
you can get horrifically abused and nothing. So I think this also proves the capabilities that tech companies have to do more than their doing. But I think that ultimately this is about utilitarianism. I think it's about the greater good. I think it's got to look at you know, what this has done to teen brains, and when I look at like I saw this interview with Miranda Kerr a
few months ago. I think you talked about it on Parenting out Loud and the Miranda Curs of the world, who of course are married to the founder of Snapchat. Do you think their kids have access to social media? No, they don't because they know that screens are corrosive and damaging and blah blah blah. So what I've always hated is the divide between the tech billionaires who are very strict with their screen time and just allowing everyone else to kind of fall victim to it.
And let's be clear, those tech companies right now are quaking in their very expensive boots and Holly, I couldn't underscore more what you said before about be conscious of where you're hearing criticism over the next few weeks and who is criticizing this legislation. Because these companies they're not
worried about the fines from the Australian government. They've made the point that look, these companies could be fined fifty million dollars dollars if they're shown to not be making sure that the safeguards are in place to stop children from signing up. Yeah, fifty million dollars is nothing for Mata. Someone pointed out who used to work at Matter in a BBC article that that's the equivalent of a parking
ticket for Matter. They make fifty million dollars in about two hours, so it's not really a problem for them. That's not why they're worried. They're not worried about the fifty million dollars. They're worried that the Australian government is leading the charge in changing a social norm that will make a child looking at TikTok or YouTube the same
as seeing a child smoking a cigarette. You can see a child smoking a cigarette's pretty rare these days, but I'm sure that there are some kids who sneak a cigarette, but we look at it aghast because we have decided as a society that that is not okay. And that is what the social media said exactly.
And the tech companies aren't worried that the poor teenagers won't be able to, you know, really galvanize and have their online communities. They're not worried about that. They're worried that they're not going to be able to serve them ads anymore. And that I think is surely we can hold hands and agree that that's a good thing.
Absolutely, and I do. The only thing I want to say, though, is that the articles that are coming out now about parents aren't going to enforce it, and there will inevitably be a conversation about like, oh, helicopter parents can't be strict with their kids.
That will be.
That's what will comment. Sec Yeah, I want to.
Be really clear, because, as I say, I am in that sort of bull's eye. If your kid is say sixteen or out of this now, it's hard to hear everybody around you saying.
Your kid's brain is damaged, your kid is addicted.
You've been terrible parents who've just let your kids have unfettered access to this Our kids are all going to be pure and great and we're never going to give them screens, and they won't. You know, it's hard to hear that and not get your hackles up, because this is a truth. And I'll put my hand up and
say it's the truth for me too. Technology and phones and all that come along with them, which we are broadly as a culture now sort of holding hands and going not great for kids, have kind of made parenting a lot easier in a million ways, right Like they really have for busy working families, for the kind of parents who which most parents are, who don't have all the time in the world to be policing what their kids are doing every minute, you know, who don't have
the time to be ferrying them around to improving activities and all that stuff.
There does feel to me to be.
A little bit of a snobby divide opening about whether or not, you know, the kids who aren't addicted to social media are in one class and one who are aren't. And I think that that's part of all the arguments we're going to see opening up over the next few weeks. I think we need to be careful not to demonize
this generation that have grown up with their phones. If this van is successful and followed around the world, and you know, as you say, Amelia, the social norm is successful shifted, and let's all hope it is.
I genuinely hope that it is. That's great, But.
We are going to then have in this generational line of like kind of like in the old days we grew up before they knew that it was bad for you to drink when you were pregnant, or not clip
your kids in in the car. I heard you talking on parenting out loud about seat belts and drawing that comparison, like we shouldn't demonize that, just like I think we shouldn't demonize the parents who've got a fifteen year old right now and they're going if they're on Snapchat for another month, is that going to be the end.
Of the world.
No.
And part of that is recognizing that the most powerful people and the richest people the world has ever seen have thrown everything at the wall to make children dependent on what their offerings are. And the more that we can shift that understanding from it's not about what parents have decided or not decided. It was the most sophisticated propaganda machine that had ever been thrown at anyone, and it was thrown at kids. And now the Albanzi government is trying to stop that tide.
And Wednesday I think is the first day in what I think they want to be a cultural, social, worldwide shift. And I don't think if on Friday all of the kids aren't off social media, it's a failure.
Agreed, But thoughts and prayers if you're arguing with your fourteen right now after the break, why Oprah Wisdom is still all over your feed in twenty twenty five. My social media feed, because I'm an adult and I'm allowed to have one.
This weekend has been swamped by a.
Lot of women who've been to see Oprah Winfrey on her tour around Australia. So if you're not on the same kind of algorithmic or bent as I am, the seventy one year old is in Australia right now. She's doing these big speaking events. She's also doing lots of social media. So every city she goes to, she's doing a hike there because she says she hikes every day now and she is eating local delicacies. And then she's having these huge, sort of arena sized shows women are going.
The vibe seems to be very much with their mates, you know, getting dressed up, put your other Camilla or your imitation Camilla, caf done on. Go and see Oprah talk and then post her wisdom. The kind of things I'm seeing being posted are five things I learned at Oprah last.
Oh, I'm seeing all of them, and I'm reading all of them because I would.
Have loved to go.
Are people loving it?
Yeah, so I'm seeing this kind of thing. This is interesting. You cannot be friends with anyone who is even a little bit jealous of you. This is one of the things I saw. This is unfortunate. I've declared in the past, Jesse, I have had times when I've been jealous of you, exactly. Jealousy is a crack in the foundation, says Oprah. The whole house will fall.
Oh gosh, I'm prone to jealousy.
You're in trouble.
Life is whispering to you all of the time. You only go off track when you're not listening.
This is interesting.
I like that.
I don't fully understand it, but I like the vibe.
Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that I'm seeing post. Everyone's saying this is what Oprah taught me last night. The stereotype of the women who are going but I'm sure this isn't entirely true, of course, is that there are a certain age that they're white, that they're into self optimization. But this is largely an audience that's come of age with her, right, So Oprah is a guru to this generation.
Say I will fight you on that.
Good I don't.
I don't think that it is a certain generation. The people I'm seeing are in their twenties. They are diverse, and when I looked into it, one of the hallmarks of her longevity has been the diversity of her audience.
Yes, I mean, I think that's certainly true, because she's you know, she has so many stories to tell. But I think she is seen by her critics as being like a sort of Tamu guru in a way, when really I would argue she's the og.
Yeah, me too.
Anyway, Amelia always says that you're a bit baffled by the Oprah phenomena.
Yeah, like full disclosure.
I wanted to do this today because I did say she was in Australia, and I have to admit that that phenomenon past nearby, and I want to learn. I want to learn why Australian women in particular evidently still love Oprah After decades in the public eye, she is still attracting thousands of people to these shows. They're gathering a lot from it. I want you to explain her appeal to me.
Do you want a little cheat sheet I do on Oprah Winfrey.
Now, this could be the longest cheat sheet of all time, but it's not going to be.
Because we will be here all day.
Did you know the place that Oprah was born, which is in Mississippi in the States, is called Kosiosco.
Nolasco Bridge in New York City.
Yes, so famously.
I guess the Oprah myth and it isn't a myth, it is her origin story is a large part of her appeal right very top line. She was born to teenage parents in Kosiosco, Mississippi, and she had a very tough upbringing. She was sexually abused as a teenager. She gave birth to a little boy at fourteen.
He died.
Despite this absolutely traumatic upbringing, I guess you'd say she started working in media when she was seventeen.
Wow.
And then she started working for a TV station locally to her, and then she was working in Baltimore, and then she most notably made a move to Chicago, which is where she built her empire. Right, So, from a very young age, she was incredibly driven. There are so many firsts when it comes to Oprah Winfrey.
Right.
She was the first.
Woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. She's the first Black American woman to be syndicated, the first Black American woman to be a billionaire, the first Black American woman to own a TV network. She decided that news reporting wasn't really her thing because.
She struggled with the objectivity of it, which is a very.
Self aware thing to say.
I love her, Yeah, it's very self aware, but it also is like one of the foundations for what she then almost invented in a way, which was this like own your truth, Yes, own your truth. So rather than just reporting the news, she wanted to create the culture. I guess, right, So she wanted to be a journal and in nineteen eighty four, she relocated to Chicago to host a low rated morning talk show called Am Chicago. It was immediately a hit with her hosting it.
Right.
They say that because she was authentic and empathetic and engaging. She quickly took the show from last place to the top of the ratings within a year, and they soon renamed the show after her within a year of her doing it by nineteen eighty eight, so only four years. That show was such a hit, and she acquired ownership and production responsibilities for it, making her the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show.
Wo wow, I invented it.
She invented that shit.
She founded Hyper Productions, groundbreaking move that secured her creative control and made her loads of money. It's another big thing about Oprah. She is very, very rich, as we know. And then as we know, right, the Oprah Winfrey Show started off in a kind of it was like, I don't know what we call it, like shock TV in those days, Like she'd have oring family members. I remember very clearly an episode she had the Clueklux Klan.
On god Is how as a child of the nineties, I knew Oprah. She had this talk show that had the scandalous sort of soap operaary elements to it.
See.
I think that you can only understand Oprah in relationship to Jerry Springer like Jerry Springer was the scandalous, ethically dubious, there was no soul to it. It was maybe the original rage bait that was happening, and Oprah was almost the more like morally upright version of that.
But it's the order of things, So Oprah was first, uh huh, And Oprah's TV show did have a fair
bit of that, but she didn't like it. By the end of the eighties, she was over that kind of stuff and she wanted to move in the nineties, which she did into more like it's amazing to think that the infamous Wagon of Fat episode, which is one of the things that is most often used to criticize her for, which is the episode where very famously she lost lots of weight on a diet that she later admitted was incredibly dangerous and basically starvation, and then she walked onto
her set with her Wagon and Fat.
Was in nineteen eighty eight, and like, that is a very long time ago.
So she was doing that kind of stuff and then Jerry Springer started doing it, Doctor Phil started doing it, these other people started doing it, and she was like, oh, I think I've given birth to a monster. And she shifted into self help stuff.
Yeah.
Do you think that part of the reason why that wagon of felt was such a milestone in TV history and for Oprah was because she basically kind of invented vulnerability on TV because before that, is it true that it was much more polished and people didn't sort of open up in that way about their struggles?
Yeah? I think so. They weren't as candid about it. And when you go back and you look at all the times Oprah was asked or mocked or criticized openly to her face on other talk shows about her weight, you can complete understand how she got to that point. And I think that she was trying to use it as a way to help inspire other women, which ironically
now her being in Australia. If you have a really good look at that poster of Oprah's touring poster, it's got a big face of her, and it's got all the dates you can see presented by and it has a brand name that I actually didn't recognize, and that brand is a pharmaceutical company that makes weight loss products, which
is why she's here. They've paid for her to come out here, which is sort of a lens by which a lot of Maybe her social media content makes more sense that she's doing these hikes and that, you know, lots of commentary as they always has been about her body.
The one I saw of her in Sydney after she'd been on a hike and then she went to eat hotcakes said something to the effect of, I've now earned myself the ability to have an indulgent meal. Yeah, it is diet adjacent culture that she is still pushing.
No one has marinated in diet culture more than Oprah Whgfrey like she has been the subject of it. She has been in many ways victim of it. But then I suppose at the same time she's espoused it because that's the world in which she grew up.
I think you've got to remember that, like her peak. So the peak of Oprah's powers in terms of influence were the eighties and nineties, right, and diet culture in inverted commas didn't exist, as in it did absolutely exist, but we didn't have a name for it.
We couldn't point at it.
Air that you breathe.
Yes, it's just every single woman wanted to lose. Yeah.
And so if you think that the power that Oprah harnessed and then, as you say, Jesse, that power kind of got hijacked by lots of other sort of other shows and things. Was Middle America ordinary in inverted commas, people watching television during the day, wrestling with the kind of things that ordinary people wrestle with, which is family dynamics and problems, money, weight relationships. She spoke to people about the shit they really cared about, rather than what
she thought they should care about. That's the secret of her success in those days. And we can pretend, as much as we want, retrospectively or otherwise that women didn't care about losing weight. But women cared, and you could still argue now care enormously about weight.
They just do.
And I think that Oprah, if we think about the Wagon of Fat being nineteen eighty eight, which is a very long time ago, over that time, I think that Oprah's lens on it has shifted as well. She during that time has lost weight, put on weight, written a million different words about it, spoken words about it, decided not to speak about it at all, make a deal with weight watches, make a deal with medical weight loss company,
don't do that. Over that time, she has ridden all kinds of waves with that and she's been blamed in a way for being a paragon of diet culture, when I think that actually she just kind of reflected.
She gave to us shar and she reflects it to us.
And so where she is now here having been brought here by a medical weight loss company, which whatever feelings you have about that, and there are many to have, I think she reflects where weight loss culture is in this moment, which is the GLP one revolution. You can go hiking and eat hotcakes and take like obesity is a disease. That's what she's talking about a lot. So I think it's hard to uncouple Oprah from that, But she's actually a lot more than.
That, right, And what I'm hearing from the way that you describe her extraordinary rise is that she made people who didn't feel very seen feel seen and understood as well, not just seen, but understood at a time when their concerns were seen as quotidian or not important, or superficial or silly. And so, what do you think accounts for both the longevity of that career, because now everyone discloses everything.
So back in the eighties and the early nineties, when she's doing the wagon of fat that's unusual and revolutionary. Now we all know much about each other, as the internet meme goes, So what do you think it counts for that continued fascination with Oprah when everyone's disclosing everything. And also for Australian women, she strikes me so quintessentially American in her rise and in the adversity that she's
had to overcome. What is it about Oprah these days for Australian women that still clearly resonates.
I think she doesn't talk about structural inequality. She doesn't talk about the structures. She doesn't talk about things like corporate power, or the gender divide, or environmental degradation or all the scary big things. She talks about you and your purpose, the.
Scary small things.
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. That actually she talks so eloquently about grief and about friendship and about your goals and your purpose. Which does it applies to the poor person in Middle America? It applies to the rich celebrity in Hollywood equally, And so I think whether or not that's a good thing, and whether or not it's at all true or you can uncouple capitalist structures from how people's
lives turn out whatever. But the reason that she can fill a room is because there's something like fundamentally empowering about that. And I've always had a relationship to Oprah. That's like your great auntie who always buys you a really good present and has great advice and gives you the right book at the right moment. Like that's as simple,
and who doesn't want that? And everyone wants that. And she's even seen as having been responsible for the reinvigoration of reading in the US, like what she did with her book club and her magazine.
Now is she now? Reese and all these other people have come in her footsteps, Quen, all these people wouldn't exist with.
The business empires they do were it not for Oprah.
Yeah, I think it's so true, Jesse.
I think that her appeal is because her story, her origin story, and then all the things she's been through in the past four decades. People are very seduced by stories of transformation. That's true, whether they are, you know, privileged and wealthy but always wanting to be better, you know, like this self optimization culture which you could are You could string together quite a goog argument that Oprah has mainstreamed because therapy speaks self optimization, a certain amount of
wu woo. She's the points of criticism that you can put on her.
Now.
For example, she was a massive support of The Secret. The first time I ever saw The Secret, it was on Oprah. You know, those kind of things. But she mainstreamed all that stuff, and she is in herself. She embodies a story of transformation and she continues to and
I think that's really seductive to everybody. The big points of criticism for Oprah are the weight stuff which we just talked about, toxic diet culture, the fact that she is a multi billionaire who apparently her property portfolio is worth like five billion dollars.
Now.
She is also a massive flat flut. I always fail with this wordlaist.
She did land in Australia on her private jet, she did.
I mean she goes too.
That's a long fly.
Yeah.
She gives hundreds of millions to charities that she supports, and she has an academy in South Africa and all those things. But still you cannot be beyond approach when you've got that level of personal wealth.
She owns large swedes.
That it's the women billionaires who often get this criticism that in itself being a billionaire is not okay.
Well, that's true, although I do have a few problems with some of the male billionaires too. She has had lots of criticism for the people she's chosen to platform over time. You know, we're talking about before racist like the KKK. She got a lot of trouble on her book club for James Fray, remember the guy with a Million Little Pieces. We talked the other week about Jenny McCarthy, the anti vaxxa, various kind of questionable health growers.
But then if you're on Telly for forty.
Years, making content in all kinds of different climates, you are going to get it wrong sometimes. So she gets a lot of criticism for all those things.
And like you said, because she's done so many firsts, there's something by definition pushing the boundaries about what she does.
It's inevitable.
And also what's interesting about opes, as I like to call it because we're such good friends, is one of her pieces of magic, which I think some very famous successful people have, is that even though they are so unrelatable in every way, she sort of feels relatable too. And one of the things that's interesting about Oprah in terms of being one of the most iconic women of a generation, is that her private life is quite unconventional really so she's never married.
She's been with the.
Same and as Stedman. We could all recite this. They have been together for forty years. They once got engaged but quickly called it off, but never broke up.
Okaya, why they're just.
Not into it at that time in her life she was always I prioritize work. You know, her life has been work. She never had children after that tragic death of that little boy when she was a teenager. Her famous best friend Gail King, who is famous now too, goes everywhere with it. In fact, my favorite Oprah detail is that in all of her homes, which is the.
Kind of thing you can only say about billionaires, Gail.
Has her own room, like with her own deck or I'm always like, if I was a moult.
That's what I'd do.
Gayla is the lover of her Gayle is the lover of her life. You know, none of that is particularly relatable business, but everybody's like, yeah, Oprah my position on her, I would have liked to go and see her, even though I do have some issues with the blatant product.
Placement of the aforementioned.
Medical weight loss company in that I don't necessarily like her or not like her, but she's just there's no question she's one of the most iconic figures.
I think it would have.
Been a lovely night. I would have really enjoyed it. After the break, Travis Kelcey just shared an insight into his relationship with Taylor Swift and apparently it's a big red flag one unlimited out loud access. We drop episodes every Tuesday and Thursday exclusively for Mum and MEA subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get us in your ears five days a week, and a huge
thank you to all our current subscribers. If you're not up to date with New Heights Travis Kelsey's podcast aka Taylor Swift's fiance and a famous NFL player, I want to tell you about an episode recently.
Do we all regularly podcast?
Yeah? Yeah, it's a weekly listen. I've never listened to one minute of this podcast.
Oh, I listened to the inter Taylor Holy Smokey's that was great. That was two hours of my life.
Did you ever listen to another one?
No?
But I know.
But the reason I know what you're going to say in a minute is because I did see these social media clips where he was interviewing one George Clooney, who you know up there with Oprah for me.
Yeah, okay, So he had George Clooney on and they got onto the topic of relationships. Travis asked his friend George about something he'd said about a year or so ago, which actually came up on our podcast as well, which is that George Clooney said that him and Amle have not, in their ten years together, had a fight.
Fun fact for you.
They've got twins, they do, and they seem to be thriving.
Well, you just have to be like George in a mile.
Oh my gosh. Okay, that's really inspired.
I asked them to send you some positivity.
Made exactly right. They seem to like their twins. Okay, this is great. Then George replied, I'm not lying, Travis. Shall we ask you the same question? And Travis confessed that while him and Taylor only been together for two and a half years, they have never gotten into an argument.
Not once.
And then came the commentary. So there was a viral tweet that was sharing that headline and it said this is a bad sign. And Nowther said when couples say this shit, all I can think is you're either a psychopath or you view your partner the same way you do a pet a pet. And an article on Mama Mia called their lack of fighting a red flag, Amelia, is it a red flag?
It's interesting that we kind of go back and fourth as a society about what we think the gold standard is, because in my life already, I feel like I've looked through a couple of incoundations of this. There was a time where the gold standard was no fighting, and then it very much moved. I think we all got parrel pilled. That's my phrase for the therapization of our culture by Esther Perel and Esther Pearrel's basic idea is that you
can talk through anything, including an affair. She's basically like, you know, setting aside abuse, obviously, you can work through just about any relationship issue if you just.
Hash it out, have a little chat, go for it.
There's a Psychology Today headline that kind of summarizes where we were as a culture around this issue for a long time, which was if you never fight, someone is hiding. So the idea is that if you're not fighting, it's because you're repressing something, and that's a very unhealthy, even toxic dynamic.
Is it that? Well?
But now it feels like we've now swung back, and now we've got these two probably the two most kind of iconic couples in the world right now, George and Lamar, Taylor and Travis proudly declaring that they don't fight. I think we've seen the pendulum swing back again.
Okay, unpopular opinion, all the money in the world, clean house, not fighting over directions.
But they do have twins, as Holy says.
I know, but I think they would have some support around them.
I think Taylor Travis actually have kind of a complicated schedule to deal with.
He is a professional football player. She just did the most successful tour of all time.
Can you imagine the g Cow for the the g Cow would be intense. But I will also say, Google calendar, Oh.
God, we've still got a calendar in the kitchen on the wall.
Taylor Taylor.
The blue is Travis's.
But you look at all those things and you also go two and a half years, you don't have kids. Do they have a shared mortgage. Yet I don't think they'll have a mortgage, will they, Amelia? Maybe mortgage?
Imagine Taylor Travis.
At the back in there fight for alone. I don't think that they're going to be there. So are there less things to fight about when you're Travis.
And oh yeah, I think that Clooney said, what would we fight about?
Question back? That must be one of the most privileged statement questions we fight about.
Can you w the bench? I'll just get out cleaner. Who's right here to do it?
Great?
George could be like, I hate human rights exactly.
Oh my god, Ama, you're too beautiful. Stop it.
I hate fighting, hate fighting, which is why my preferred method is the much more insidious, toxic, passive aggressive fighting.
So instead of saying that you haven't cleaned the.
Bench, you say something like, interesting, how you chose to just leave that little thing that like, you know, or whatever.
It is, which is a discussion.
It's a discussion, exactly.
Interesting, How you still don't know where this goes in the cobo.
That's an observation, exactly, that's not a fire.
Interesting.
How you didn't put the lid back on the toothpaste. Yes, that's just an invitation to explore your different techniques exactly paste management. I think pass agnes is good.
I don't know.
I think it's interesting.
Tara from Amamea wrote, as you said that this was a red flag and that she was worried about it because she said, a huge part of any relationship is conflict resolution and learning each other's fight styles. But what if your two people who hate fighting? Are you supposed to force yourself to fight? Because it's important to know, maybe your fight style is to your point before Amelia hiding, my fight style might be retreat, not attack.
You know what I don't think Esther Perel is a huge fan of retreat. What's passive aggression with retreat? Well, she has this interesting question.
She says, what most people don't realize is that you're not actually fighting about money or commitment or who does the housework. What you're actually fighting about is a lack.
Of affection, respect, power.
Or some combination of the three, just the two lit Another way of thinking about this is that there's this sort of like adage that every couple has the same three fights and it just manifests in different ways. I very much agree with that, and I guess those same three fights are affection, respect, and power, And now even Taylor and Travis and George and a mile are having to navigate relationship dynamics where those things are flowing back and forth.
This is about our definition of fight, yeah, and it's about our definition of argument. I reckon that if you are the child of parents who fought really openly, you felt like you had to walk on eggshells. Sometimes I think it's just temperament. You don't like to escalate, then you might resist going to that. And I don't think any way is necessarily better or worse.
Because don't you have a degree in psychology.
Us has a degree in psychology, And because you're identical twins. If she's got a degree in psychology, do you psychology?
I thought it was a psychologist.
I have a master's in history.
Gender study, gender studies. There you go.
Both of them didn't give me a lot of clarity on fighting, but I will say it did make me good at arguing. And therefore, if you're I remember thinking this at the time, George Cloone is just a clever man not to fight with a human rights law. Yes, that's what you just need to know.
You so true and son, who's the better fighter between Taylor and Travis.
Taylor by about a thousand.
He's a poet.
Do remember that interview where.
He probably had some kind of brain She.
Used a couple of long words and he went wow.
But I reckon that you.
Can sort of disagree with things and there can be points of tension in the relationship, but you wouldn't define that as a fight, like there can be discussions. I would think that in my own relationship, like we don't like fighting, don't feel so, and even my I don't fight with my mum, that doesn't mean that we don't have moments of probably what would be considered conflict. And I think that conflict management evolves in in that way. But the idea that if you're I just think we
use the term red flag too liberally. Now we just stick it on everything, and it's like, if your biggest problem is that you get along too well, I think.
You're so you're not worried for them, You're not losing any not losing a second.
I'm selfish of you.
I know people who love fighting and it's their dynamic and their relationship. They shout that good and they're shouting at each other and it gets all the sexual juicies going, and they love it, and if you're around them, as someone who hates fighting, you're very uncomfortable. I get very uncomfortable if people are fighting. I get very uncomfortable with retreats.
See that doesn't mean they're right and I'm wrong. It's just different strokes.
But do you feel like that kind of relationship where you are even observing the fighting. It's that sort of prevalent that people in their lives are watching them fight. That cannot actually be good for the relationship.
So then to be fighting that much.
No, But I think people would say we're getting things out in the open. We'd say, what we mean, we clear the air. You know how, there are some people who cry easily, and if you're not a cryer, you see them crying, you're like, oh my god. Yeah, you take it really seriously. And then you get to know them and you realize that it's not a big deal that they're crying. I think for some people, shouting and arguing is like that too, So you're thinking, oh, these
guys are going to get divorced. They're fighting, and for them it's just Tuesday. You know, It's like I think different dynamics. But I think if you, as to your point, Jesse, if various things in your life made you feel like fighting is unsafe, that someone might leave at any time, like you're not going to be fighting.
I read this theory. It's called the Little Fox's theory of couple fights, and it's a bit some quote from the Bible, the Fox's reference, But basically what it means is that most couples, when you get down to it, if you said, Amelia, explained to me your last fight with your partner, it would be over nothing like I wouldn't understand.
Oh, the opposite of that idea that you're actually fighting about affection respect.
Which you know what you probably are. That's the underlying thing. But in terms of what you're of speaking to a friend recently who had a fight with his partner, it's like a misinterpretation of a thing. And then someone snapped. The biggest fight Luker and I've ever had was when Luna was really little. It was late at night and I said you're up. I meant you're up, as in you're awake, could you take the baby? And he heard
it as you're up, like look at you. Finally around to look after the baby, and it was this complete miscommunication of time that was about absolutely nothing. But underlying it was just two people that were really tired or whatever it is. And I think that often those little fights are about nothing at all.
There is another option we haven't considered that maybe George Clooney Travis Kelcey are perfect people who always put the lid back on the toothpaste, who never give their partners any reason and to be angry with them in any way.
Is this a possibility?
Yeah, and seem pretty agreeable and they married perfect people.
That's it.
Maybe that's the life hack that we all forgot.
I wonder if Brent says this about me, because Clooney said neither of us are going to win. I've met this incredible woman. She's beautiful and smart, and she stands for all the most important things I believe in the world.
And I can't believe how lucky I am. So what am I going to fight about?
I reckon Breds, you stand for Hollywayen Right, is George cleaning?
I'm here for George. Well, this has been fun.
Friends out louders, thank you for having us in your ears on this Monday don't forget, of course, that you can watch us on YouTube.
We'll talk to you tomorrow.
Bye. Mum and mayor acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.