The Sibling Estrangement Story We Can't Stop Thinking About

You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on. So I'm editing a video about Labia and you guys are all saying it, and then I've got my phone and all of a sudden it goes silent, and I'm like, why isn't volume working? So I turn the volume up the loudest and I'm just like, why isn't it And I hear Maya's voice yelling LaBier from my car on the street.

Hello, and welcome to MoMA.

Me are out loud and to our Friday show, where it.

Is a news free zone.

Today is Friday, the twenty first of February, and I am Jesse Stephens.

I'm mea Friedman, and I'm Amelia Lister.

And on the show today the sibling feud that sent me out down a week long rabbit hole and left us asking is sibling therapy a thing?

Should it be?

Plus recommendation, something a bit sexy, something a bit controversial? And the book Amelia can't stop talking about and our best and worst of the week. From an embarrassing moment, one of us thinks she's beautiful. That's not me and the genes that transformed or wardrobe, but first meya.

In case you missed it, languishing is back.

You might be triggered by that word because it was a mid and immediately post pandemic term for that feeling that everything is just a bit well. You'll be surprised to know, or maybe you won't. It's officially a thing again. Australians are doing it very very well. We are champion languishers at the top of the leaderboard. A study of sixteen thousand people following their well being over a five

Jesse, isn't this just called February?

I think that might be part of it, but I also think there's something else going on. I was reading an article by Adam Grant that he wrote during COVID about this languishing phenomenon, and he said that it is the emotion that sits between depression and flourishing, and that a lot of people who.

What's a pretty broad spectrum though.

Yes, but he was saying that one of the biggest predictors for depression or anxiety in the future is that you're languishing in this moment. You don't feel like you're flourishing. And I was thinking about it in the work context, and how when you have a job that is very pecy, say it's very You're constantly distracted and pulled in different directions. It's really hard to get into a state of flow.

But Amreilya, isn't there a case to be made for languishing being just a symptom of we need to just stop and catch our breath for a second.

Yeah, I've heard a lot about languishing lately like you have. Sometimes I hear gen Z refer to it as bed rot. I think that's part of the same phenomenon. I just sounded really old. And I also recall Megan Markle when she was interviewed on her Chua to Africa in twenty nineteen, and she distinguished between surviving and thriving. And really that's what we're talking about here, the difference between surviving and thriving.

But we can't be flourishing and thriving and kicking goals and inflow all the time. Have we just become completely unable to accept any form of stacey No, no, no.

But languishing is about numbness. It's about not actually feeling anything.

I think this is all a little bit overrated. I think a lot of these trend stories, Oh we're all feeling one way.

It means that the.

Writer is in a certain life state and they feel that way.

I have to be.

The annoying one here and say I'm not currently languishing. And that's because, as of a couple of weeks ago, I have both children in primary school. Both of my children and I talk to women about this. In the lead up to this event, and they got this far off look in their eyes, and they would say, everything's about to change. You're about to discover your life again. You're about to feel in control again. And it didn't fully make sense to me because school still ends at

I wonder if, and it's interesting because it's languishing in your professional life. I wonder if this is what I was referring to a few weeks ago when I talked about not wanting anything. I was really I was at work and going, I'm really it's not like I'm not enjoying it when I'm here, but I don't have any clear goals. You're living two distinct lives. You don't feel fully in it.

I think languishing is maybe I heard Glennon Doyle describe it once when she was talking about in a slightly different context, being on the landing where she'd actually had a relapse in her eating disorder, and she said, I was sort of you know, if you look at that, or sort of falling down or going down the stairs, and then I'm at the landing where I'm not falling anymore, but I haven't started going up yet and recovering, and I like that idea of a landing. Languishing is almost

Yeah, I reckon, it's about how long you in it. I think that if you feel like you've been languishing for four years, you feel like your life isn't going anywhere and you have no control over what's happening, then that's probably a sign there's something wrong, whereas languishing, I've had it described to me as ebb and flow, like sometimes you're in flow and sometimes life ebbs. That's okay to sit in that too.

When have I every time? I always say how great your house looks? Say look at all your new ship. You show you a meeting. This isn't here to sit and talk about this? What is that your.

Seriously?

What is wrong with you?

You know what?

David, you get murdered first for when it's no, you get murdered.

David, you get murdered first.

No you vote for me?

No? Why? No?

Why?

What?

Just?

I love you? I really I love you, but I cannot stomach you.

I'm the other spot.

Sibling relationships, one of the most significant attachments of our lives and also one of our biggest blind spots, are having a moment. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame, who had a fight fifteen years ago and then publicly feuded for more than a decade, have recently reconciled with their tour coming later this year. But the story that got us thinking about the complexity of sibling relationships this week, with the explosive accounts being shared by the Murdocks who

The weekend was like my super Bowl because twenty eight thousand words of Murdock gossip or succession really gossip, dropped

Miya, can I just interrupt and say, it's so interesting he chose to talk to that particular writer, Mackay Coppins at The Atlantic, because that writer is most well known for writing very sympathetically and very fairly about the Republican right in the US, and specifically about the influence of

Right, So he didn't choose a well known liberal commentation.

Yeah.

Right.

The whole thing was just extraordinary because, you know, in succession was huge, as it has been for the last few years, there've been a lot of speculation that it was based on the Murdocks and that people within the Murdoch family suspected of each other of leaking to the writers. It's now alleged in this one of these articles that perhaps it was one of Liz Murdocks, one of the

This Cree show, as it stands, right, So they didn't tell Ruper. I read some of this over the weekend. So as it stands, there are I think six siblings, but the four so you've got Prue, You've got Liz, James, and Lachlan, who all have the same those three have the same mother.

Yeah, those four eldest children.

Prue his first marriage, and then Liz, Lachlan and James are from his second marriage to Anna Murdoch.

So those four are part of a trust and they get sort of a vote in what happens to the Murdoch.

Correct, So all six of his children, this trust was written before his youngest two children with Wendy Dang, Grace and Chloe, were born. They're now in their early twenties. But it was the way for Anna Murdoch when she divorced Rupert. Wasn't her decision to divorce. She wanted to secure the future of her three children and stepdaughter pru who she'd raised as being the equal beneficiaries of Rupert's

Okay, so it comes down to voting rights, and the big fallout, as far as I could see, is between Lachlan and James.

Yes.

And what was really revealing and James and father, Yes, was James saying the falling out with Lachlan wasn't an accident. My father kind of wanted this. He brought us up to be at each other's throat exactly.

So Rupert, who inherited his company from his father and grew it enormously, has always played particularly his three middle children, Liz, James and Lachland. James and Lochlan are only fifteen months apart. They're both in their early fifties. Now, but since they were in their sort of teens or early twenties, he's always played them or the three of them off against each other as to who would be the heir apparent, exactly how it goes in succession. It's interesting it never

He then had to stand down from the board.

So he's become more and more estranged, and at various times he's also been astranged from his siblings. But it's very much a couple of years ago, Rupert pretty much confirmed Lachlan is the heir apparent. He's now in charge, and the reason that this has all come out is that because the all four of them have equal voting rights.

Further to the left. And Rupert, who's very conservative and Lachlan shares those views, thought that was a very bad idea.

So he tried to basically rip up the trust and say to the other children, no, Lachlan is the only one I'm crossing you out.

Oh so he underlined recently underlined or crossed out shit, and they of course took him to court and they won.

The Murdocks, as I've always said, are just like us. We have so much in common with this Australian dynasty because one in twenty five Australians are affected by family estrangement, just like James, and up to thirty percent of people

I do, And this came up for me just last week. I had dinner with a friend. She and her sister are twenty two months apart, and I bring that up because Lachlan and James are only fifteen months apart. So I'm talking specifically about siblings with not a lot of time between them, I imagine the twin experience is a different thing again. And she said that they had this

Because therapy has historically focused so much on the parent dynamic.

Right, But yeah, people think of therapy as being for romantic relationships or for self discovery and self help.

Yes, but the thing about siblings is that that's where you learn conflict.

Yeah, family dynamics.

I think that's a much more exciting and emerging area in in clinical psychology at the moment. A therapist told me once that families often delegate the emotional processing within the family to one member of the family, which really resonated with me because I think that's usually the daughter in my family, but you're the eldest daughter, there's me and my brother. But in the Murdoch family, I think

Because the funny thing.

About that delegation of emotional responsibility is that it doesn't mean that people are grateful to you for being the one who processes the emotions for the family. It can often invoke really complicated feelings for everyone else, and I think that's sort of what James is going through. He's the one who's been processing in public and he's been punished for it.

I also think that interesting.

There's something about sibling relationships that feels like incredibly stifling, that you can't evolve within them, that you are always pigeonholed as a particular type of person that you were when you were five, and life is about changing and feeling as though in different contexts you're a different type of person, and I, at two and a half was identified as the bossy one. I was the bossy one,

Well, that's exactly what happened with the Murdocks, because so James, according to the Atlantic article, was pigeonholeders the rebel.

Early on he died his hair.

He was clearly very brilliant, but sort of enjoyed doing things like drawing cartoons instead of studying hard at university.

Lochlin was much more the.

Apple of his father's eye, the one who fell in line with his father's expectations, most.

Like him, the most likely values point of view. From a lot of yeah, he modeled himself on his father a lot more than any of his other siblings.

But then when Lochlin escaped the Murdoch Empire to come back to Australia, when he and his father had a big breach in the early two thousands. James tried to inhabit the role of father's apple of his eye and tried to dress like his father and act like his father, and his father hated that because the family dynamic depends on people continuing to play that role even as they as individuals change and rebel against it.

Yeah, that's so so interesting. I also had a therapist once tell me that a lot of people go to therapy and their siblings come up in therapy, and a lot of people feel very guilty and conflicted about the fact that they don't have close relationships with their siblings as adults. Might have actually been Esther Perell who talked about this, not my therapist. I'm getting them confused. But then she said, it's actually really uncommon to have a close relationship with a sibling when you're an.

Adult, probably precisely because of this. Yeah, exactly.

And it's almost like Jesse when you were saying about how you got frozen. You know how people say celebrities get frozen at the age they became famous. There's something about having siblings. A dynamic gets frozen in your childhood. I don't know, necessarily in what part of your childhood because those dynamics can change, I guess, but that dynamic you don't get the opportunity to grow out of them exactly.

I've heard it referred to as a shadow relationship. So you have this defining relationship with certain dynamics that include behavior that probably wouldn't be legitimate anywhere else in your life. The way that siblings fight, the names they call each other would not be appropriate often between a partner or a friend or a boss, but siblings kind of get away with it. But the shadow is that you then bring I was reading this therapist say, you bring that

That's fascinating.

One of the things I always ask people with multiple children of any age really is what's the dynamic like between the children, because I always find that fascinating and it can be so different why do you think it is that so many siblings when they fall out, they fall out in ways that are kind of can be catastrophic.

It's because it's so deeply painful. And I speak from experience, because my brother and I went through a period of estrangement earlier in my life. We probably only didn't speak for about six months, but I think it might have been the most difficult six months of my life.

And why do you think that?

Because it's such a primal relationship. You assume that, like your parents, your sibling is always going to be there and you're going to get that unconditional love, and I suppose you do in a certain way, but it's also more volatile.

Always a relationship based on competition, competition for your parents' affection, time love.

I don't know if it's necessarily that, or if it's just so complicated because so much is unsaid, like there are so many entrenched dynamics. I think there's also an element of My mum has lost two siblings recently, and we were talking about how it feels like the death of childhood, and I think that estrangement does that too. There's such an innocence often to your early years in a nostalgia if you had a pleasant upbringing where it felt simple that then you get into adulthood and all these,

It can also cascade down when your siblings have children and you see how your parents are with your children versus your siblings' children, and you can see sometimes that that can cause like that jealousy and that rival, which is feels silly to another adult. I've seen it play out in families where they get jealous of the grandparents' relationship with certain grandchildren. I was talking to one woman once since she's like was talking about her favorite grandchild.

I think at the.

Heart of your relationships with your siblings, particularly with estrangements, is that we're all just wounded children, right, And when you're in your wounded child self, you're not thinking rationally, you're not perhaps behaving in the best or most mature way. But it can be really hard to be anything other than that wounded child when you're dealing with your siblings.

And to be a child is to be in a state of narcissism. My childhood I refer to it as my childhood, and Clari always laughs at me because it's as though she wasn't there, But like, I have these memories and there were side characters, but really, Jesse's childhood is a narrative that is told from Jesse's point of view.

It's funny you say that because when my father is with his siblings, he taught about my mother.

I do the same. I do the same.

And then you have a brother say that this thing happened or that they felt as though this dynamic existed, and you're like, well, that fundamentally conflicts with my memory of my childhood, and you can't reconcile that you lived in the same house and yet lived totally different lives.

And then of of course being a parent watching dynamics established between your children, watching those sibling dynamics and sometimes really hard to know when to intervene and when not and how much you just have to let play things out, and watching allegiances change over the years and dynamics change over the years. Like Remy and Luca, for example, they're eleven years apart, so for most of Remy's life, Luca was like a third parent to him, and they kind

Gap has just closed.

I think Luca's gotten less mature and Remy's got more mature, and they've kind of met in the middle, and so that's that's like a delight. But at the same time, I also know people whose children are estranged from each other, and it is apparently gut ranging for them.

Amelia, did you know that Maya has a real complicated relationship with her parents' dog, that she has a real jealous relationship, like it's the other sibling, Like Maya has a real you should look at Maya looking at this dog.

I was kind of bring up maybe a more interesting example, which is the Kennedy family, you know, the American political dynasty, and we'll talk about them a little bit later in this podcast.

But John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy were two American politicians. John F.

Kennedy was assassinated and his wife Jackie and Nassis started an affair in the aftermath of the assassination in her grief with Robert F.

Kennedy, his brother who was then also assassinated, who was.

Then also assassinated. And you might remember also that Joe Biden's son Bo died of brain cancer, and then his other son Hunter started a relationship with Bo's wife. And you look at those stories and they seem kind of preposterous almost, or.

Just that, but they're not.

Because the thing about siblings is, and to your earlier question here about why they cut so deep when they go wrong, your sibling is like a carbon copy but with some key fundamental differences, and so it's like Uncanny Valley looking at that siblings. No wonder this often happens where siblings end up in relationships with their siblings' former partners.

That is so true so the Murdocks did go to therapy just like it was depicted in succession. In about twenty ten, Rupert called them all to like a weekend of therapy in the Southern Highlands, Yes, in New South Wales, and it was according to James, it went very badly. I think it came up in the court case as well. But they all felt like they were just being manipulated and it was all just like gas lighting and recriminations

Can you there's no therapist who is qualified.

No.

I had to bring up Rupert is clearly a man of astonishing pettiness and I know we love microaggressions on the show. One amazing revelation that I had to bring up with the group is did you hear that when Jerry Hall moved out of their bell A home after Jerry Hall was married to Rupert for a time, he sent her an email divorcing her.

Actually she has micro that's a bit micro petty.

She had to provide receipts of her belongings to prove that they belonged to her.

I wish you could take them out of the house. No therapist could compete with that.

No one is cheaper than a rich person, No one.

Out loud is in a moment.

We've got some recommendations that were a little excited about, and one of them is a little bit sexy.

Vibes ideas atmosphere, something casual, something fun. This is my best recommendation.

It's Friday, so we're going to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations.

Amelia, do you want to go first? I would love to.

My recommendation is something that I mentioned before, which is a book called Ask Not The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed?

Is this a new book, because I think I've heard people talking about.

This new wish.

You told me you were reading a book about the Kennedy women, and I went and bought it, and I bought the wrong book.

But I'm deeply engraced in that.

So this is by Maureen Callahan. The reason I wanted to read it. I was never that interested in the Kennedy's camelot political dynasty. Knew vaguely who they were, but would never have thought to read a book about them.

Two things changed. The first, Robert F.

Kennedy Junior and his deep weirdness. You recall the stories, the worm in his brain, the dumping, the bear in Central Park.

He's a weird guy.

And then he had the relationship with the journalist Olivia Nuzzy. I wanted to know how he turned out so weird.

Because I kept going, isn't this a respectable fan like.

Exactly family is going on? Yeah.

Fun fact, if you're watching White Lotus Patrick Schwartzenegger, who plays Saxon, the eldest son of the southern couple in White Lotus, he's a Kennedy.

You can tell that by looking at his hair and his jaw.

The second is that MEA and I have developed this all abiding love that I know you've spoken of on the show. For Carolyne Bassett Kennedy, who was the wife of John F. Kennedy Junior. They died very tragically in a plane crash in the late nineties. She very much embodied nineties style. I love the nineties. I grew up in the nineties. I want to inhale everything about them. So those two things made me think I need to learn more about the Kennedys and this so called Kennedy curse.

You hear about it. I've ever heard that expression.

These stories in this book are extraordinary. The weirdness of this family, the depravity of it, really just blows your mind.

It was like a ton of children, right, big Catholic family.

There were eleven children in the family of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, the original ones, and they have always treated women badly, both women within the family, women who have married into the family, women who have dated members of the family have ended up dead, mentally unwell, deeply depressed.

It was not one of the eleven siblings, a girl who had a mental illness, and she was just sent away for her whole life.

She was sent away for her whole life. Her parents never visited her and silent her away to an asylum and in England they were living in the US, they never saw her again. You just learned something in every chapter. So, for instance, I had no idea that both Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy were both having an affair with Marilyn Monroe at the same time.

So did they know.

Yeah, it was part of the whole the whole shebang weird. There was multiple instances of this in the family. Also another crazy story is Ted Kennedy, who was the brother of Robert and John and was regarded as a bit of a screw up, but when they were both assassinated, all the political hopes turned to him. The problem was that he when he was very drunk one day, as he often was, he he drove off a bridge and a woman was in the car with him, and the car drove off the bridge, sunk to the bottom of

It's a succession, and didn't tell anyone.

Didn't tell anyone until the next morning, and they could have rescued her if he told someone. And during that night he was staying at a hotel, he complained about how much noise the people in the room next to him were making.

Couldn't sleep.

So he's just can I asked, JFK was nice guy?

Right?

No, none of them was JFK.

The dad, No, no, no, heng one, the one who married Carolyn Kennedy. It's interesting because I'm reading the book about Carolyn that really goes into a lot of detail about him.

He wasn't a.

Terrible person, and he had chronic undiagnosed adhd that I've diagnosed by reading it, and I think that's part of you know, he was a chosen son. He was the Lachlan Murdock of that family. I mean, JFK only had two kids. He wasn't necessarily the guy you wanted to be married to. I don't think he was a cheaterah like his dad, but he was fairly volatile. And yeah, I think he was pretty selfish in terms of the Kennedy men are all about themselves.

I'm fascinating apart from the sort of tabloidy interest of it, which is definitely there for me. As I'm getting older, I'm finding that I'm more interested in reading nonfiction. I never used to read nonfiction, and now I like to read about how children are raised, why people turn out the way they do, family dynamics. There's plenty of family dynamics to analyze here.

By all accounts, he was a lovely person and given the life that he grew up in, was very very normal, Like he liked to just go rollerblading in the streets of New York and everyone said he was a really nice, good person. So he wasn't awful, but was complicated.

Yeah, they're all very complicated.

He saw his father get shot and die when he was four years old, so that's going to be a.

Trauma, intergenerational trauma, maya, what's your recommendation.

It's very different.

Do you know that the most searched for term by women looking for porn is lesbian and threesome. They're two of the top terms. And we know this here at MMA MEA because we have just launched a new it's not really a podcast, it's like an audio erotica series. It's called Butter and it's basically we're sort of dropping the episodes in batches with spice ratings.

It's sort of erotic fiction.

I don't know if you remember back in the nineties there was a big surge in erotic fiction.

Now there are the.

Fourth Wing books, which some people refer to as very smart. Of course, there's fifty Shades of Gray. So there's a long history of women being interested in erotica instead of you know, close up bits of porn, which some women are into, but a lot of women like a different experience. So we have got these stories. They're all from a

Are a thing.

What a princess like?

Bdsm It's a nice word for a butt plug. Some people are into that. All of those are either already released or coming ha ha. Here's a little excerpt as to how it sounds.

She knows she's caught me out. She leans forward, gaze fixed on mine, her full lips tease a smile as she stands and holds out a hand, tilts her head slightly, a silent invitation.

I make my way to the bar, flashing the bartender. What I hope is a confident smile. I'd like a red wine, please, I tell him something I don't know bold.

These are, honestly so, they're so good. Producer Ruth has a little tip. Make sure if you're listening in your AirPod. It's probably not something to listen to you on speaker unless you're alone.

But if you're listening on your eropods, make sure they're charged.

Because she was listening in a public place and then she didn't realize that her AirPods had run out of bat trees and it just was coming through the speaker. We did this survey and we wanted to find out what fantasies women had and what sort of language did women want to use. So, for example, nobody liked the term velvet mound.

You know, sometimes you can be yeah, so it's all.

Just you know, the favorite I love this favorite places for a fantasy to take place. We're in your own bed, followed by hotel room. There's some languishing going on. It's fantasies for lazy girls. So we will put a link in the show notes or just search Butter, Yes, Butter wherever you get your podcasts.

My recommendation, Amelia, have you seen the movie The Apprentice yet?

No? I can't tell me why I should. Okay, yes, Hello, this is Donald Trump from mister Cohne. Thank you so much, Donald Who Roy Kohn, nice to meet you, the Roy Cohn You're brutal, guilty as John.

How You'm always went Who's rules. The first rule is attack, attack, attack.

It's going to be the finest building in the city, maybe the country, in the world.

Have you heard of it, ma'am?

Yeah, but I can't bear it. I can have to work out needs to sell that interesting.

So I'm the one who's not actually very interested in Donald Trump and who really leans out of the news cycle. And yet I had seen articles about this movie and how it was struggling to find a distributor in the US because Trump's lawyers were saying, you can't show this movie.

Now.

It stars Jeremy Strong, who we know from Succession and The Apprentice is I went in knowing nothing about this story. Jeremy Strong plays Roy Kohane and Cohne was essentially Trump's mentor, and it follows a very specific period of Trump's life, like his ascension through New York socialite kind of life. And it is so revealing to see those relationships that he had, the way he treated his mentor, his relationship with.

I think it was his first wife that it.

Follows, Avana. That was Avana Trump.

Yeah, it is really really interesting. I don't want to tell you too much about it, but it's pretty damning in terms.

Of I'm so shocked.

Does it show that he's not a nice guy?

You know what?

It's like.

I had heard a lot of stories from us.

And you were like, I'm not sure. I do my own research.

You know what, You hear the big stories, but sometimes you just need to see the little.

Story and a lot of my cropettiness, you just need to.

See the little way that he engaged with this mentor and his relationship with his father. Again, it is very the Murdocks. It is very the Kennedy's in terms.

Of he never had his father's approval.

Oh what happened to his Like, I didn't know any of this.

So it's brother died of our colorism, right, Yeah, that's why he doesn't drink yep.

And so except for Dieko.

Jeremy Strong and a bunch of others from the film were nominated for Academy Awards, like this is a very in terms of reviews and stuff like this has been very very highly reviewed. So it is called The Apprentice. It is on stan It is definitely worth a watch. After the break our best and Worst of the Week out loud as.

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It's time for Best and.

Worst, which is the part of the show where we share a little more from our personal lives.

Amelia, you're the guest. Yes, go okay, I'll start with worst. It's a little bit heavy.

I have a son and a daughter, and as mentioned, they've both started school four and six twenty two months.

The four year old, who was a girl.

Had an accident at school about a year ago, and she has a scar on her forehead.

A couple of things have happened recently that are very upsetting to do with this scar.

So I've had two men, i'd say probably in their fifties in my suburb say unpleasant things about the scar. The other day, I was walking down the street with her and a man walks past and he.

Says, nice bra.

And I think that's weird because I'm wearing a black crew neck T shirt. You know, sometimes you wear something and you're a bit conscious it shows your bra. But I thought, no, I'm wearing a T shirt. Doesn't and also shut up.

But I was a little unnerved, and then it hit me he had said nice scar to my four year old daughter.

And then a couple of months before that, we had been getting her face painted and a man walks past and he says that it's an improvement that she's getting a face painted.

Oh my god, what sort of a grown man to comments on the appearance of a child little and negatively.

So those are what I would deem matcrow aggressions. But I've got some microaggressions to share too. The other day, I was sitting at the bus stop with my two children, and an old man who I'm sure meant well, says to my daughter, I like your skirt. And she's very shy and as is appropriate with a man she's never met before. He's talking to her in public, and she kind of, you know, looked demure, and then he said,

If not, I will give her some feedback.

And boys, already at six, we're taught that boys don't get that kind of feedback. Boys are a little bit more serious that they just have a little bit more of that. To be clear, I don't want people chiding my son any more than I want them reprimanding my daughter or commenting on my daughter. But it's very striking to me that they are treated so differently in public.

I keep thinking about the scene in Barbie where she comes to Earth and she's like, I've got this weird feeling I've never had before. It's like awareness, but of myself. It's like what it would be like to grow up in a world where you weren't aware of being perceived, which which is being a boy essentially in our society.

As a girl, you learn it. It's the soup wes women, right.

Yes, Wow, what's your best?

My best is that I have finally settled on my mum uniform. It's taken as discussed many years. What I struggled with after having children and figuring out what to wear is I didn't want to wear ath leisure to say do school pickup, but I didn't want to what's.

Wrong with jesse toe? What's wrong with the camel toe? Jesse happy with that?

Leisure?

Has he ever felt right to me since the pandemic? Maybe it's because I watch too much of it then Now it just feels like too much in public. So now I've hit on a item of clothing I always scratched my head about, and that is a barrel leg gene. I am accepting questions on this. I know it's controversial. So you might know these as horseshoe jeans cowboys, we know them as barrel jene. I mean, it's not a good name. And they look ridiculous. The concept of them

No, I read an article the other day. You know what the headline was, side part it's back.

It's because they're actually more flattering.

I think they are too hot.

Take I need to know where you got those janes.

Where you got She also.

Wears white barrel jeans. I can attest they look really good on you, so inspired by you because you or them to a dinner that we had, I was like, they're amazing. Okay, I'm going to give them a guy. So before Christmas, I went and I tried on some pairs of barrel leg jeans.

Do you feel good? And them? I looked ridiculous. I just looked ridiculous.

You know what, Melia is tall? I think you can get away with it with a bit of heart. I think you're too short for.

That's too I think I am. And what's also interesting that I thought the white was a bold choice, especially from other of young children. Bold choice white, I was phenomenal.

I love white jeans too.

Bo Yeah, okay, So I got them In Brisbane. I went on a girl's trip away and we went shopping because I never have time to go shopping anywhere, so we finally had time to sort of try on clothes as opposed to sort of walking into Vinnie's and grabbing anything that fits me and walking out. So that was a nice novelty. They're citizens of humanity. Okay, they're the white barrel leg and I wear them, and I'm just like I'm wearing a side part. I'm wearing not very

I love it all right, I'm going to do my west.

So we were recording this podcast at a separate studio recently, and for some reason when we're at that studio, every one of our cars somehow got damage.

Dash about it driving reversed into trees. Okay that other people like cars swipe.

Mine was swine side.

So my little mirror was knocked off anyway. So I just send the car blah blah blah. I get a car back, drive it home, go to turn on the next day, battery done. So to get the NRMA to come over. So Anna Ram comes over and sort of side plot. My big job for February of this year has been mummyer out loud socials. So I've been having so much fun on TikTok and Instagram.

And you're not languishing, you are.

I'm flourishing, not with my socials. So anyway, the NM gets there and I'm like, look, I have a baby napping. I went inside and did some work while they got the car started. Anyway, I'm sitting on my phone and you know the video that I did about how apparently we'd been mispronouncing the word labia.

Yeah, it's labia. Did you know that I didn't.

Okay, apparently it's labia. So I'm editing a video about LaBier and you guys are all saying it, and then I'm I've got my phone and all of a sudden it goes silent, and I'm like, why isn't my.

My volume working?

So I turned the volume up the loudest and I'm just like, why isn't it And I hear Maya's voice yelling LaBier from my car on the street because it's coming through my car.

Radious, it is.

Literally an urban nightmare. That's not a safe work place for that man.

That man was just trying to do his job, and he's got you yelling LaBier through my car.

Play at least now I know it's now to pronounce it.

And the thing was. I was still like, this isn't working. It's getting louder and louder.

And then that man was so traumatized that he somehow disconnected my car play and it's just.

Never gonna work again.

Did he say anything to you?

I just stayed inside and I was like, clearly it's ready, but I don't want to go outside.

I can never see him again.

And then he was like to speak of babies away, I've got to go bye.

Do you know how to say labia?

Now?

So that ruined my day?

That's so good.

My best is swimming lessons. So we have started a swimming lesson.

I thought that was your worst last week.

Well, last week we had lesson one and Luna was would we say expelled? I think we'd say expelled.

I think she's self selected out.

Yeah, so she had a total meltdown, like your little girl shy. Lunar is shy, and part of the swimming lessons is being held by the instructor and Luna is like, absolutely not.

She got very clear boundaries.

She's got clear boundaries, and she just went, let's get out of the pool.

So we needed to get out early and we just watched the lesson all week I was trying to bring up swimming lessons and be like, waking up so much fun.

It's overell, I'm learning this, yeah.

I thought.

I was like, I don't know, warming her up to it, and every time I'd bring it up, she was like, oh, wait, all done, all done, and I was like, no, no, we got to go on Friday. So we get there on Friday. She sees the pool, she doesn't cry, and I'm like, this is good. And then we get in the pool. She got a little bit upset, she was a little bit not happy, and then there was no languishing in that pool. She flourished. She loved it, she was smiling. I was so crowd and I was like, this is resilience.

When Jesse was describing how badly Luna hated the assuming lesson Claire was like Matilda. By contrast, exclusively experienced joy in.

The pulpit loves it.

My worst was Monday's show. I'm hoping that out louders won't go, yeah, it's pretty shit.

It wasn't the show that was shit.

It was me, and I know that our incredible production team will have edited it to make me sound better. But what's interesting, I'd say I'm pretty good at podcasting. I've been doing it quite a long time. I would say I have way more than the ten thousand hours that you require to become good at something. But what's interesting about this job is that sometimes you can I can surprise myself with being absolutely rubbish, and I just was, and I don't know why. Sometimes there are different reasons

Sometimes it's too much preparation.

Sometimes yes, you have to just be like Goldilocks and get just the right amount.

I was using a bit of AI for my preparation. I think that contributed to it.

I just couldn't find my groove and I just couldn't say what I and I also my medication. I'd had too much tea, so I was feeling very sort of jittery something.

Thanks for making me feel better, but I think it.

Was just me.

What was your best?

My best is very superficial and it is my hair. Never in my life would I've ever said my hair is my best. I don't think my hair is exceptional hair, but in terms of my hair's individual life cycle and how I have felt about my hair during my life, I'm really happy with it at the moment. If a color our colorist l who cuts O colors my hair and your hair and Holy's hair, now, I just leave it to her. I'm one of those people that are like, what do you think it looks great?

She just does it.

Yeah, I really like it. I think that that color is quite in.

I don't even know what she does to the color. I have no input.

I'm growing it a little bit, so I'm liking it. For a long time, I had it quite short and Bobby and I'm using I bought a dice and air straight, which I'm no I'm converting everybody.

To you know that.

I came into the office a few months ago and you just looked at me and said, you need a dyceon estray to everyone.

And I don't want to make my recommendation because it's really expensive and I don't want people to feel bad.

It's like seven hundred dollars. Apparently the shar is really good.

What exactly, I'm sure there are dupes, but what it does is that it blow dries your hair and straightens it at the same time, and it goes from wet to dry.

Yeah, all in white.

And you know how some people like you and me, we're just never being good at doing I no, no, no, no.

No no no, It's just not something. And I'm not interested in getting blow dryes.

I hate going to the hairdresser, so it's now become my I would save it in a fire purchase. So the combination of my mine Air Straight and Elle has just been making me very happy.

That's all we have time for today. A big thank you to you the out louders for listening to today's show. We will be back in your ears next week.

Maya, do you want me to read us out?

Yes?

I do, Okay.

A big thank you to our team, who we will now name Group Executive Producer Ruth Divine. Executive producer Emmeline Gazillas. Our audio producer is Leah porg Just, our video producer is Josh Green. Our interns at Tessa and Coco.

And if you are looking for something else to listen to, may I suggest yesterday's very naughty subscriber episode. It was so naughty we couldn't do it here.

We're a bit inspired by butter.

A little bit, a little bit. Have you seen Baby Go yet a million?

Yeah?

Loved it, loved.

It, Thank you.

So we have a theory that a I'm trying to think how many letters it has in cases listening letters.

Type of sexual act is back.

It's going to be big of the digital the digital variety. There is an act that's back, and apparently there is one generation that is having the best sex. And we have a very sexy discussion we do. So you can listen to that by the link in the show notes. Bye bye.

Shout out to any Muma Maya subscribers listening. If you love the show and want to support us as well, subscribing to Mom and Maya is the very best way to do so. There is a link in the episode description