You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on Hello, and welcome to Momma Out Loud and to our Friday show, which is a news free zone where we ignore all the chaos of the headlines and just talk about what we want to talk about. Today is Friday, the fifteenth of November, and I'm Polly Waynwright, I'm.
Mea Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens and.
On the show today. Don't be a dickhead easy to say to others, but what about ourselves? Welcome to the dickhead list. Also, we've got recommendations for your weekend, including a book, a TV show, and a podcast that we're all consuming at pace and a new ral for reading. MIA's Ladies, Grandma Angst and Jesse's Massive Fomo. They're our best and worse of the week.
But first, would you pay six hundred dollars an hour for an orgasm coach asking for a friend?
It depends on I die things got Yeah, I'm okay for the moment, but I feel like if I was in a particularly dry period, the.
Coaching my orgasm itself. Come on stronger, harder to find out.
Okay, there's an LA based person who used to be a personal trainer. He's now called O Man. He is bearded, he's in his thirties. I don't know why the beard is relevant, but it's in my notes, and he's into BDSM.
Can I please tell you Oman's origin story, what happened, because I'm obsessed with this. So basically what happened is that he was dating this woman who said that she had like sore hips, and he's a personal trainer, and they also dabbled in some recreational BDSM, which is relevant, and he said to her, I was like, I think if I tie you to my ceiling and put you in a kneeling chair and then use a vibrator, I
can release your back. And then I did that and her hips didn't hurt, her back didn't hurt, and she came twenty times.
She's never left my bedroom just till there hanging from my ceiling.
That the most from physiopointment I can imagine.
Apparently, his theory is that the reason women are struggling to orgasm it has nothing to do with psychological blockages. It's got nothing to do with how we feel about our own bodies. It is that we all sit too much and the muscles around our pelvic floor are not firing properly, and so we can't orgasm. So what he does.
This person who spoke to him for the times, she actually got on a call with him, and he says things like, put your right leg around your neck and put your left leg here, and then use your vibrator to massage out. Well, he watches to massage out and not in your inner thigh, and by releasing all of these muscles, apparently you have a mad orgasm.
He's helped five hundred women.
It's a very rich.
Madness his hobby. At first, he just helped friends and friends of friends. I was going to say family, but that's definitely not rebound. He used to do it in person, but at COVID times he had to pivot from in person sessions to develop his O system virtual classes. So yeah, he's helped five hundred women virtually, and price to start at twelve hundred dollars Australian an hour. I'm sorry. The six hundred dollars is US dollars.
Oh yeah, no, I think it's pounds. Okay, six pounds.
So ninety five percent of the women that he treats achieved multiple orgasms. Satisfied clients include New Jersey housewives. I don't know if that's the reality stars or just women who live in New Jersey, the ex wives of people who've made the most influential People in the World list. These sound experienced clients, unverifiable and even he says, somebody on vacation here who was a British MP who pretended she wasn't a British MP, let's trust to resume. She's retired.
Now part of the one hundred and twenty five billion dollar org as an industry worldwide. The orgasm industry includes we're in the wrong industry glass. This sounds like a much more fun I want to go to those meetings smart vibrators, libido gummies and mindful masturbation classes. There you go. That sounds great. I'm into Oh man, I'm just saying, why do you need to buy a vibrator and then do a zoom call with a man? I mean, if this turns you on, but to pay him to what
you use the vibrator. I'm sure that is a kink that a lot of people would be into but I don't understand.
So he specialized because trying it to the ceiling on your chair.
He specializes in people who cannot orgasms. Oh so you're saying, hi, Oman.
Oh, he corrects my technique in real time.
Exactly and then he says, put it here, put it there. Move your body, he says, support your glutes.
Wait, you're using it on your shoulder. You're putting it in the wrong place to have an orgasm.
And apparently women in particular, it's a lot to do with our posture and there are a few changes we need to make. But in defense of Oman, I feel like for men when they can't climax, it's considered a legitimate health condition where you might even go to.
The GP right medication.
For women, it's like a nice to have.
But if you an optional extra.
An optional extra, you haven't had an orgasm in ten years, you deserve some help. And I like that there's someone, although he's a little bit, should.
Be tax deductible or a community service. There's a policy for Dutton an Elbow to consider in their upcoming campaign.
Oh Man sessions he's like a stroke coach for swimming. Just don't be a dickhead a great words to live by. And also it's the name of a memoir of a woman I interviewed on mid Lately. You might have heard of her. She's called Casey Chambers. Have we all heard of Casey Chambers?
Yes? Anyway, her book Not Pretty It wasn't that actually a remake?
No? She wrote that song? Ah, she wrote that song. She says now she's like, not pretty enough. Don't give a fuck. That's because she's older and she's got no fucks to give. Anyway.
The books like all these little life lessons.
Right from different moments in her life, from divorce to a eating disorder to ignoring bad career advice and all that stuff. But at the back of this book she shares her Dickhead list, And the idea is is that for every year we live, we gather a little bit more intel and wisdom right about the things we've been through. It teaches us really when we're wrong, like when we're not listening to our lessons, the things we know are
ignoring our gut. And she calls these like her dickhead teals because she says they're the little warning signs that we should learn to listen to. But often we don't because we're too busy feeling insecure about staff, people pleasing whatever we're busy doing. These are what she would consider her dickhead signs. Casey included when she wrote her list down, things like I'm being a dickhead? When is how you start all these sentences? When I convince myself it's not
okay to look my age? That was one of hers. Think that being strong means being an asshole is one of hers. Get my eyebrow peer in a dodgy backyard place in western New South Wales and leave it in until it goes all red and posse. That was another one of hers. So you see, they can be existential or they could be very practical, right, So I wrote one, I'll share a few of mine, so we've got some insp around the group used.
I need you to interpret it.
It's basically like the way I was thinking of it is, when are you with dickhead? So? What I love about this premise, I know it's hard for you to specify.
Would be a shorter list what I win I wasn't.
What I love is that you know how we talk about red flags like we're so good? Yeah, pointing out when other people are being.
These are red flags. Okay, you know what I mean.
And the thing is is in order to do that, so it's a little bit kinder to yourself than rather than like you just fucked because women, generally we do have a long list of things that we know we shouldn't be doing. But it's more to kind of remind you, like, you know, not to do that. Right last time you did that, you ended up in bed with that person. And you know what I mean, that kind of stuff. So I wrote my dickhead list. Some of them are silly,
some of them are not. So things like I know I'm being a dickhead when I don't listen, I just wait to talk. I think that's all of us.
Really, Yeah, that is your idea. You are a dickhead when you do.
I definitely am open the clean dishrusher, take out a fork, close the clean dish washer, classic dickhead mood. Often that is a passive aggressive move. I'm usually trying to send a signal to someone in my house or my office maybe of like I was empty the fucking dish washer, you should do it by making a dickhead move.
I didn't know there was another option.
Forget that my mood affects others. Forget to change my HRT patch see above. Ye, forget my children aren't me. That's an important one. I'm definitely always being a dickhead. When I do that, you have to remember, like, oh, that's right. They're their own people, They're not just me. Refuse to look at my bank balance, start carrying salt sashes in my purse, which I'd stopped doing. Yeah, now I've started doing it.
No, Holly, that's just part of being Holly. Why have you stopped carrying salt sashe because I was.
Being healthy in my body was a and I kept it going for a whole year. And now, like an addict who's fallen off the wagon, I find myself just like involuntarily grabbing salt sachets when ever I'm at a takeaway shop and just tucking them quietly in the back pocket of my bag. Don't let the truth get in the way of an easy opinion. That's the real dickheads, you know, when you're like, I know what I think about that, and then you do a bit of research and you go, oh, I still.
Know what I think about that.
I will not use that fact that it is inconvenient. Jesse Stevens, Okay, I found this task very easy, Yes, very very easy.
Women in we're conditioned to do it.
We should have written them for each other. Honestly.
I know, Okay, I know I'm being a dickhead when I find myself saying how much better I feel since I started doing weight training, like right.
Now, I've been saying that a lot lately.
You know, I nearly said it in the last segment when we're talking about posture and orgasms. I was, like, I actually said out loud last week, you know, my posture's improved, it has I've been doing my weight training. I'm being a dickhead, being an absolute dickhead. I don't hate it, but it's annoying.
We could argue that that's one of those things you needed to learn, so you're like reminding yourself of something.
Exactly all right. I've got one that I catch myself right before I do it, but I'm going to call it a dickhead instinct, and then I've got to suppress it. My dickhead instinct is rearing its head. I'm in this specific stage right now where my baby is napping, right, She's quite a good napper. Anyone else in my circle who says, oh, I'm having issues with napping, I feel it. I feel the desire to give them advice, and then I go, that's your dickhead instinct. Suppress it. You're lucky.
They're just in a different stage, and I've got to shut it down. I know I'm being a dickhead when I get a parking fine and I physically hide it from Luca, like somewhere in the house. You know when you're hiding something in your home that you're doing something wrong. I know I being a dickhead when I am scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and I'm actually muttering the word idiot.
Yes, that's such a good Oh my god, I do that, I mutter. I don't know who you are. That's my tell. I don't know who you are. Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
Why are you talking to me?
I don't know who you are. I'm sorry to put the phone.
Down, but these people are just invading my life with their opinions.
Exactly. I know I'm being a dickhead when I'm not listening to someone because I'm currently on my phone. Yeah, So sometimes I'll even be on the phone to look up. I'll put him on speaker and I'll check my emails, and I know that I'm being a dickhead, and then he'll say something and that I go, but what do you think?
Jessee?
Definitely, And he's like, really, but it costs seven hundred.
Dollars, I'm not sure. What do you think?
Mayo?
What are your tells?
So many? For me giving unsolicited advice, It's a feeling that I get in my body where I think I'm giving someone advice, but I'm just really trying to tell them what to do what I think. I mean, that's what advice is, right, is telling someone what to do. But I know that I'm too heavily invested in them following my advice, and I know that if they don't, I'll be pissed off.
You like to fix things. It's one of your more traditionally male traits. I would say, you.
Know how they say that that's when I'm being a dictatd.
Because you're you do like to fix things, which is.
Good, but I don't like it when people do it to You do it to me, like I just need to vent and then JAS will go in to fixing mode, or someone will go and fixing mode it and don't like it, but I do it to other people. It's really annoying performative kindness when I do something that I pretend is just kind, but actually I want other people
to see me being kind. Like I was in a meeting with someone who was pregnant and there was water, and I was I concerned about her, maybe, but I was like, usually I would just honestly pour a glass water of myself, but I was like, you should be drinking more, which is advice. She wants some water, and I stopped the meeting so everybody could watch me helping
to hydrate the pregnant person. I know I'm being a dickhead when I have the instinct that I love something so much, like a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes, that I want to buy it twice.
Oh yes, I have never felt that.
Yeah, I get so anxious the same thing twice, a different color, the.
Exact same thing. Because I get so anxious. I love it so much. I can't ever imagine not loving it, And I'm thinking about what if I lose it, what if it gets worn?
Out continue it days.
Yeah, like which they do with fashion. That's the whole point that you keep buying it. And then of course I've done this in the past and I never alone. Then you just like, well, I've just got this other thing.
You've got to prove how much you love it by just pressing.
I know, I just am like, no, don't just want That's a dickhead thing to do. I know I'm being a dickhead when I tell my kids' stories about myself in the hope that it will help them understand something they're going through, and I expect it to help, which it never does.
Rerent does this all the time, just outing him as a dickhead right now, but like all the time to our teenagers who are being teenagers in twenty twenty four and or say when I was at school, I'm like, you were at school in the seventy kids, I.
Do not want to hear your stories. They don't. Young people don't want to hear your stories. It's not relevant to me.
No.
Similarly, when I know that I'm just waiting to interrupt that snow globe thing where I'm just waiting for someone to finish so that I can jump in and say, look at my snow globe. Yeah, this similar thing happened to me. Where again I kid myself that I'm trying to make them feel seen, but actually I think I just want to talk.
Sometimes I get in a mood where I'm very taken by myself and like by my and experiences, and I get so excited by myself and my experiences that I think you've got carried away and you can get adrenaline. I'm like, I am so interesting, And then it's just it's such a dickhead move, and you can tell that you've start you go. Actually, no one else's.
They have two glasses of wine, and I get on my high horse and.
You make people cry if they're notes and me, you've been out to dinner with girlfriends.
Oh my god, yes, and I've got confused about where I am. And let me tell you what I think about that thing in a very strident and detailed.
Fashion, Jesse, and I can handle it like what a dickhead.
Oh, I know I'm being a dickhead. When I don't want to cry, I will resist crying, And in my pursuit of resistant crying, I will yell like I will get angry before I cry, and it's like, if you just cried, you could have probably like saved yourself a lot of drama.
See, I'll do it the other way around when I should be angry, but I'll cry and it'll annoy me. But I also know that I'm being a dickhead when I get emotionally dysregulated, as you spoke about last week, and I know a therapist. Numerous therapists have said when you feel like that, when you feel like your reaction to a certain thing is outsized and you have big feelings, go for a walk, take a breath. And when I think about that advice and I just go, no, this time is different. I love that that.
Hey, I wanted to ask you because you weren't here last Friday when we did emotional dysregulation. I wanted to ask you if there's anything you think that you've learned about how to emotionally regulate when you think the big feelings are overwhelming. Because we talked on the show about how it's a real thing, particularly for putting neurodiverse people, like it's a real thing and it can be an actual, real hindrance.
And strategies are really important.
I have seen you do that thing. When she just talked about where, I'm like, are you sure you've you can?
You can set her eyes going yes, I've been told that I need to take a walk. And then you see her do a little like side to side and she's like and then I'm like, nah, I'm not doing it.
This is a very legitimate feeling. This is not emotional dysregulation. It's almost like when I used to get PMT and I'd be shocked every time it would be like, no, I don't have PMT. The world's just fucked and everyone's incredibly irritating. It really always feels so genuine in that moment, no matter how much there's a tiny voice that goes these are big feelings. What's going on for you now? Right now? Pet? And I should go for a walk.
And then I'm like no, And what I know that I need in that moment, and what I look for is for someone to match my feelings. That's the only thing that can dissipate them other than time. And time is really boring to just wait it out because I know that they always do dissipate. But my dickhead move and my destructive move is that I will go and try to get someone to be as pissed off as me.
You need someone else to be equally as pissed off about that thing.
To validate it. So I need to go, Jesse, can you believe that blah blah blah happened? And you to go, oh my god, that is just so bad. But no one ever does that.
Yeh, because they're seeing your emotions here and they're going, what's helpful is to bring her down.
And ironically what brings me down is someone meeting me there, and then I just immediately fall down, someone going oh my god, no, wonder you've pissed off about that, and I'll.
Just go, this is very good, very nice for anyone dealing with the big feelings people.
Yeah, you've got to match them, and otherwise you're like, you become desperate because of course what people try to do is talk you down and go it's not that bad. Here's why. But it has the opposite effect because then you feel like the word gaslit is of used, but you feel like you're not being validated and you've got to convince them. It's like you don't understand the sky's falling.
Well, this is what we're talking about last week in terms of you feel like you're being told to calm down, which is.
Has ever calmed down, so they don't need to like be is agitated, but to just go, oh my god, that's fucked.
Do we think it's useful to know what our dickhead tells?
Are? Yes?
Absolutely?
I found it self awareness, isn't it?
Yeah? And also to go dickheads aren't They're not another species all of us? Are you? Last Shuesday? They walk among us in that they are sitting behind three microphones.
They walk in our shoes because they are us. No, I think that that's really crucial. Not that you won't find other dickhead tells, but I think that that self awareness. I think women have a lot more because we're programmed for approval and to have other people like us. But I think that it is a really good quality. And I think that the only thing you've got to know is that when you're aware of your dickhead signs, you
then go into shame. That's so you know when you've had it, Like when we've done a record and I've been very excited by the sound of my own voice, and then I've driven home and just gone, I just feel that yucky, you know, I just can't bear myself.
I think the ideal situation in which to use a dickhead list is like, as you say, we're all going to do that, yeah, is to try not to get to the shame stage, right, but just go like next time, next time.
When I catch myself. One that I've been thinking about a lot this year is that I'm being a dickhead when I assert my boundary through bitching, when that's the only way that I can say what I want or what I think is by venting, And so I catch myself in that and then to go, ah, okay, you're having issues with boundaries right now, Like that that actually really helps.
I think I agree with that. I think hold back to your shame thing. I actually think that a small amount of shame is very corrective. Yeah, because if you don't feel shame, you'll just do it again.
It's just how long you let yourself live there for. Yes, the barnet, Yeah, the drive home is okay. Yeah, The narrative in your head of like I should have said or shouldn't have said it? Why didn't I let them say?
What?
Very quickly you pull into the driveway and you're like, oh, forgotten about that?
Okay anymore.
It's a really good interview with Casey Chambers, if I say so myself. On mid we talk about all kinds of stuff divorce and re partnering and step parenting and all that stuff. Anyway, we'll put a link in the show notes and you'll find it in the midfeed out loud as.
In a moment, something for you to read, listen to and watch. It's recos for the weekend and beyond.
It's Friday, so we want to help set up your weekend with our best recommendations.
Maya, you can go fir Okay, I'm watching a show. This has been my bar through the last few weeks. One of our favorite columnists is Marine Hyde, who's a columnist for the UK Guardian, and she has been working on a show called The Franchise. It's like a comedy about behind the scenes on a superhero franchise, but not one of the good ones, you know how there's like the main one and then there's all.
These ant man yep.
I was about to say, right, okay, so the ant Man and it's about this kind of beleaguered director who's trying to make this piece of art. Marina is one of the writers on the show and producers. It's by the maker of Veep, Amando Ayinucci and a bunch of other things, very very funny, So it's got that same veep vibe, but it's more dry because it's British. I'm first assistant director. There's my job to keep the actors from killing themselves. I might be having a few side
effects from my human growth hormones. And I work with the director assisting his vision.
I'd like to fare the sun.
How you can't do that?
This wearing the indoor scuff.
I thought only directors were the indoors scuff?
Is he mocking me? The way the show came about is that Sam Mendez, who's a phenomenal director. I used to be married to Kate Winslet, but he's like a quite a fancy pants director.
MoMA Aret Loud. We identify men by who they've been married to.
Yeah, it's just the other way around. And he was pitching some TV ideas to Amando Ainucci and they just got talking about Sam Mende's experience. I think he was doing one of the James Bond movies. He was just telling some stories about what that was like. His other ideas were shit, but Anucci was like, Oh no, I think there's a show there. It's laugh out loud, funny. Ooh are you watching it? It is on Binge and I never do this with a show. I'm watching it twice.
So I watched it by myself and then I've gone back and watched it with my teenage son. And there's no one that wouldn't like this Because I don't watch Marvel movies. I don't really know the canon, but WI is hilarious.
Oh okay, I'm gonna I've.
Been hearing so much about that. I'm dying to see it too. Am I going?
Yes, your turn.
I'm reading a book. I'm written a book that I would not expect myself to be reading. We talked about this when we talking about It Ends with us in Colleen Hoover and how there are some authors who are really big, but sometimes people aren't proud to say that they're reading them, right, because we all think that we're
reading one we like Jillie Cooper. Yeah, like we don't necessarily, but people think you should always be reading the latest like very literary tone, you know, so commercial fiction commercial fiction, which is actually what I write anyway. This book is
by Ellen Hildebrand. Now, if that name is familiar to you, you have either read all her books and she has written like thirty she is an incredibly prolific novelist, or you just watched The Perfect Couple on Netflix earlier this year and became obsessed with that because she wrote that, and obviously her back catalog's got a big boost from that.
I have learned because I was looking into her that she has written so many books and they are nearly all set in the same place, which is Nantucket, which is where The Perfect Couple were set. So we all have a visual picture for that now, right because we watched it so posh island, you know, with fancy people living on it, beautiful like gray shingle roof beach houses,
all that kind of thing. Money then the people who live there to work for the rich people, so not money, so lots of like gossip and intrigue and summer it's really busy. In winter.
It's quite kind of like the Hampton's, Yes, very very.
Much on an island.
It's on an island, and it's quite near Martha's vineyard where Lucra and I got engaged, and that's where the Obamas have a beach house. And it's also Jaws World.
It is Jaws World. Jaws was set on a fictional version of Nantucket. Anyway, Ellen Hildebrand lives there in a big, fancy house, which tourists literally go and find because they're so obsessed with her books. You can go and do Ellen Hildebrand tours of Nantucket and stuff. Anyway, Well, I think she is part of her brand, right. But I have started reading her most recent book because everyone was talking to me about her. And it's called Swan Song.
And in the same way that the franchise has maybe been a barm for you in the last few weeks, it has been just this glorious.
Like a little bit silly, but not looking for a book like that.
Yeah, Like I think it's actually the last in a series, but it doesn't matter because she's built a world, but the plot stone or you don't have to read them in order. And this is the most recent one and it basically is about that. It's the Swan Song because
it's the Chief of Police. There's last summer at work, and of course there's a mysterious incident and it involves all the people on the island and there's a new family there and they're throwing these glamorous parties and everyone skinny and fornever, and it basically is told from these different perspectives on people on the island and it's just fun, perfect sexy, not sex sexy, but you know, like fun, lazy, sexy, like and pervy. And I'm just absolutely loving it. I
can't stop. I want to go to bed read.
Oh, I'm going to read that. I have a question for you about how much you loved have you read Jilly Cooper and has it made you want to read her other books?
So I read Jilly Cooper back in the time, which was the eighties. Yes, the one I remember the most is Riders. That was the first one, and they made that into a thing and it was crapy, Yes I heard. I don't know if it's true, but maybe Marina Hyde told me not in real life. I wish that they're going to remake all of those books, those Rotsheer books, if they've got the funds to do so. It hasn't really made me want to go back and read them. I just feel and I know that anyone who loves
books feels like this. There are so many books out there, like, it's hard to prioritize, and I am trying to get into some of the more current commercial fiction. Why I'm reading this So I don't know. Maybe yeah, but you know it's interesting because I love Love Love Riders. But it slowed down too much in the last couple, didn't it. Don't you think Rivals? Yeah, the TV show like it slowed down a tiny.
Yeah, I think everything is like that. Did you watch Disclaimer?
But I'm enjoying it. Don't ruin it.
That final episode dropped on Friday, and that is such an example of a show that should have been a movie. I felt that way with Fleischman was in trouble, like it's a taking too streamers, where of course it's more financially viable to stretch it out over six hours than to make a one and a half hour movie or a two hour movie. So what it means is that, yeah, TV shows, some of them end up feeling really bloated.
Well, speaking of Flashman, my recommendation is a podcast episode Sentimental Garbage, which is a podcast we love with Caroline o'dono who, but it has been on a break for a while, and she released an episode which remarkably came out at the exact right moment with Taffy Brodessa Akner. It's Taffy Brodessa Akner is a Swiftocrat.
And I think you recommended her lay this book a couple.
Of weeks ago.
Yeah, I compromise.
Long Island Compromise, which I do.
So I love Flashman and I really want to read Long Island Compromise. And the reason this is so fantastic is that it's two women. Caroline is a millennial and Taffy is a gen x at different life stages, and they're talking about Taylor Swift. And what I love about this show is the unashamed earnestness of it. Like that's the whole point.
I think.
The thing I thought the other day was that if you were a baby conceived on the first night of the Aras Tour, you are now a person in the world who can talk.
That's nuts.
You can walk and talk if you weren't even a thing.
And she's not done.
She's not done.
This is her job.
Her job is to be Her job is to be on the Aeros Tour, a concert that has gone on for so long that it now contains an additional segment about an album that was written during the Aeros tour and contains a song about how hard it is to be on the ara.
Yeah, they're so earnest and analysis.
I mean they also have a laugh, but they don't like.
How much they genuinely love something.
Treating it like literature or the great works of art.
Yeah, and I'm not a swifty I wouldn't call myself a swifty, but I loved how clever this conversation was and how they were able to dissect it to say things about feminism and heterosexuality and all the different things. It is just such a good listen to very very smart.
Women and how they was interesting. The name of it being swifty versus a swiftercrat, Caroline explained it that she and her best friend made that distinction. So swifty is someone that knows everything about Taylor in her life, and a swift decrat is someone that kind of uses Taylor's art, her songs, and her lyrics to understand their own life and to interpret and make sense of their own life and process it.
I'm obsessed with the war.
So interesting.
There's some good bits of gossip dropping it too, actually, because I also listened to this loved it sick, even though I'm not a massive, massive Swifty myself. Like the stuff about Tom Hidlson that Taffy drops about how she interviewed him just after the Taylor's.
Situation, that was an iconic I know I knew it.
But like, well, I mean, what the good bit of gossip was her just talking about how much she adored him and what a wonderful guy was, and how he called her kids and like all that kind of stuff, Like it's just a great chat. I love.
I didn't get to tell you guys either that when I went and saw Dolly Alderton the other week, she had the best Taylor Swift theory I think I've ever heard, which was the reason why everyone is so obsessed with Taylor Swift, particularly teenage girls, is because fame, which really she's only written about fame for the last five ten years. Fame has been the thing is exactly like being a teenage girl, and instead of it being like, you know, Stacy's bitching about me, it's like you can over relate
as a teenage girl. You overrelate to being famous because exactly how it feels.
You go from being kind of invisible to being very visible as the world. Yeah, it was interesting.
It is a glorious hour and a bit of your life that show.
After the break, Maya has a nuanced that she wants to share with the group. Is she being a dickhead? Only you can decide.
Probably. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we drop new segments of Mom and Me are out Loud just for Mum and Me as subscribers. Follow the link in the show notes to get your daily dose of out Loud and a big thank you to everyone who has already subscribed. It's time for Best and Worst, which is the part of the show that explains itself. We share a little bit more from our personal lives. I'm going to go first my worst of the week. I've made peace with being
called nanas so part of my big thing. When Jesse announced her pregnancy, Everyone's like, what are you going to be called? I was like, I don't know, and everyone has to make up funny names. I was going to be me Me and that didn't take. So then I was like, it's awkward giving yourself a nickname. I was like, okay, you know what, Nana, I'm fine with Nana. I loved my Nana. My kids call my mum Nana. You know.
The other day I was in the park and this quite hot woman who might have been early forties hot, was in an active way walking towards us, and Luna got her finger out. She said, Nana. She thought that hot woman was Nana, and I said no, no, no, Nana's much older.
Or did she? Because what I've recently learned is that Anne Stevens, Jesse's mum out Louder extraordinary mascot in the out Louder's.
Facebook group, so she needs to be muted.
Also called Nana.
She has nanas and this has.
Sent me into this existential despair because I was very anxious at first about my position on the leaderboard and where I would be, because I realized I would be quite far down beneath Jesse Claire. Oh sorry, Jesse Luca. I always said, Jesse Claire, that order, Jesse Luca Claire, Jesse's twin Ann, and then I'd be next. I felt, do.
You still feel that there's a leader board does not have family?
No, I don't know. I don't feel like there's a leaderboard anymore. However, my piece has been thrown into disrate nice sledge on Anne. Anne's amazing, But I'm going to petition that maybe she could be called Nan because I think it's confusing. Because I think it's confusing to have two people with the same name. What if I was called Mama.
I think somebody's already called Yes.
Funny that someone has already called that.
How many babies though I.
Don't want to share my name.
Babies have two mums, Babies have two dads that don't get here, but they.
Always call babies. I know babies with two moms or two dads, and they have different names. They're not both mama. Really, no one will be like Memu and one will be Mama, or one will be mummy and one will be Ma. So I want to know, if I want to know if this is a thing.
So I need you gonna do this. This child for out louders who are intimately involved in our lives as we are this personal question. Here is one right, sixteen months old. Luna is one as the ship sailed, I think, so she knows Nana and Nana as far as I can see, loves them both, spends lots of time with them.
Both. I'm not worried about my place. Life will make How are you going to make her child? I tell you so. One of the things I did for Luna when these guys were not way earlier in the years, I made these little albums with everyone's photos because I remember my kids loved them. And her favorite thing to do is to flick through the photos and name everybody. And now she's got quite a good strike rate. She points at your mom. This is how I learned, right,
because I thought your mum was grandma. And she pointed at Anne. Her face lit up, which makes me so happy, and goes Nana, And I was like, so Nan, temperature in the room, plut. So now Anne.
Stevens's face is got out of every photo in the photo.
So now we go through the album together and I go, Nan, we yah Na, that's no. We love man. But she's called Nan. It's not taking at all, but I'm still working. It's what all we do when she comes to my house. Now, it's all we do. We just look at the photos and we learn that that lady it is called Nan.
Oh my god.
She's insane.
She is insane. How did you react when this information came your way?
Well, it only just came my name, didn't She's.
Like locally your mum's Bankay, isn't it funny though? How I have like I've always got to find something to be insecure or anxious about it. We need to pick that up with my therapy.
Yeah, okay, I'm the best. Today we have read oh my best.
Sorry I forgot about that. My bears this week was interviewing Jackie Oh who. I just bloody love her. She's just a really good chick to interview. She's just no bullshit. And she came in and I wanted to interview her about her addiction, which she's written about in her memoir, which is Another Wreck. I great read that book.
Everyone who's read it. It's really good.
It's really really good to she narrate the audio brilliant, and I invited her in with Gemma, her best friend, and they spoke about Jemma's experience of Jackie's addiction as well. But what's so interesting about her is that because everyone in here was pretty excited. You know, Jackie's a big
deal and an incredibly successful woman in media. So afterwards we said, would you mind staying for another like half an hour and just doing a Q and A with the staff, and she was like, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem. She's just so easy. She comes in just with Gemma. And then afterwards it was a pretty heavy interview. There were tears. It was like an hour and a half, if not two hours probably, and she'd comes straight from doing four hours that morning, and I'm like, do you
need like a drink? Most people come out of this studio, including me, after a no filter, like unable to speak, and she's like, oh no, I don't need to unwake. You need a weed, you need a tea, We've got snacks. She's like, no, no, let's just go. Let's go. It's fine, no problem. And then she'd answered questions and was so delightful for her another half an hour and then I was like, oh, look, Jack probably has to go, and she's like, no, no, there's more questions.
Can answer more questions. She did selfies, if everyone who wanted selfies. Just a delightful person. Nicole her works and people in Contububa nearly helped her.
When you're as famous as Jack, I've met a lot of famous people and you don't always have to be that generous, but she's one of those people that knows she has the power to make or break someone's day, week, month, year by just giving them a little bit of her. And she was just so generous with her time. When everyone wants a piece of you, that's a big ask anyway, great book loved saying.
I'm excited about that, and I feelter My worst.
Of the week is.
The thing about having kids is that sometimes you don't notice milestones exactly as they're happening, but a little bit afterwards you go, oh, that's new.
That's new though that was the last time.
Yeah.
And what I've noticed is new in my house with my twelve and fourteen nearly fifteen year old is closed bedroom doors for ages when your kids are little. Maybe everyone's house isn't like this, but their bedroom doors are open. You're walking in and out. Everybody's walking in and out, and they don't actually spend that much time in there anyway. They'd probably rather be around you a little bit, or out in the world or whatever. And I've just got to that point with the kids where Billy only just
a little bit more, but Matilda very much. Where they want to be in their rooms and the door is closed, and I don't think they're doing anything nefarious in their Oh no, they probably are. But what I remember is I remember very intently being about the age that Matilda was, and my bedroom was my world, right, like the posters on the wall, you know, my music. Oh, she's always printing out new pictures and putting them up. Your room
is your sanctuary, right, and it's your thing. And when they're little, it's not like that you control, yes, And when they're little, their room is just the place where their toys are, you know. But now the door is closed, and I was not before I go in, But I'm like, oh, this is the new era and it's very normal and it's exactly how it should be. She is literally closing a door between me and her.
Do you have your bedroom door closed?
Not very often, which we should do more, just for sexy times, but we don't like I'm a bit funny with closed doors. I think I'm a bit claustrophobic. I don't really like doors being closed either door, and so I'm much happier to have doors open. I agree, And I always, yeah, I always feel like I'm breaching my parental responsibilities.
But it's not even a should. It's that when my kids are in the house. Yeah, part claustrophobia and also part I want them to be able to have access.
Yeah, and you can hear a little bit what's going on, so it's very normal. But it made me. I was thinking about it this week and just noticing how many times I'm going up to the doors now, you know, with like fricking washing or snacks or come and do this, you lazy buggers or whatever it is, and the doors are closed, and I'm like, oh, and it made me realize this is one of those moments where they're just a.
Little bit further away. Yeah, so so interesting.
It's great, Like I mean, obviously there's a lot of joy in watching them grow up, but it's also a little bit My best is and I was talking before about how I'm reading this very fun book and I've been really really getting back into reading in a big way lately, which is great because it's always been one of the joys of my life. But when I'm really stressed and busy, it's one of the things to go and do.
You also stop reading when you're writing, Well I used.
To, but I'm actually trying not to do that. What
I've realized is ever since I was a kid. The whole reason I want to be a writer and work with words is because I've always loved books, right, But then as you get older, books become a luxury, like, oh, imagine having the time to sit around and read a book, you know, and certainly in the very heavy busy years of kids and working kids and work, like, the idea that you might sit down for twenty minutes and read a book just seems like you can't even imagine it.
But what I've realized lately and as I'm writing things too, that it's the only thing that a makes you better at writing is reading pushes you into new places with what you're doing. And also it's a form of rest.
You know.
We've talked before about different forms of rest, Like people say rest and you're like, well, I'm not a line around doing nothing kind of person. But reading is rest a certain kind of rest.
Oh yeah, and it can be creative rest.
Yeah, it's creative rest for sure. Anyway, the reason it's my best is I've implemented a new routine. You like this, just you like a routine. We'll see how long it lasts. Probably a couple of days because it's been going for a couple of weeks now when I'm working at home or I've got days at home where I've got some work to do. Some of the things I make lists. That's what I do. I go right between ten and eleven today we are answering emails. Between this time and
this time. We're writing a script for the mid intro. Between this time, maybe we're doing some exercise.
Where do you write this on a piece of paper?
Usually literally so I can literally cross it off, but the schedule helps me. Yeah, And what I've been doing lately is I go and then between one and one thirty we're reading a book.
Oh wow, So not just because I usually my reading time is when I get into bed, but then I just fall away.
The thing is I because that's always been my reading time too, and sometimes it gets hijacked by our phone addictions, right, which obviously we're trying whatever. And then also I often just fall asleep. It's like either look to break up or maybe five o'clock or half past five, or you know,
like some really random time of the day. And even on weekends, if I'm like trying to get I'll go this half hour here is reading a book time and I sit on my chair and I read the book and then I cross it off back.
And it's also like you've hacked it into feeling productive because it's on the list what must be.
Done well I have.
But also actually reading is part of my job. I mean not like now like sorry me, I we're not recording a show, I'm going to go and read my Allen Hilda.
Brown, I can expect it.
Not that, but like it is actually part of my general job to be reading.
And so why have I liked the weird thing about.
Carving out time? And I know that obviously not everybody can do it like that, but if it's like six till six thirty or early in the morning or whatever, you've got it, Like it's somehow writing it down and putting it in your schedule gives you permission to do it. And you shouldn't need permission to spend twenty minutes reading a book, but somehow you do.
Do you know what I mean that instead of like just cramming it in the spaces.
I'm like mindfully taking a moment to read a book. And it's working for me and that has been my best this week.
I love it. Jesse ste My worst is not going to Coldplay.
I'm sick.
I'm not going Darling like every time I have them With Taylor Swift too, everyone's like, I'm going to Coldplay, and I'm like, excuse me. Firstly, when did we get tickets? Secondly, when do we learn Coldplayer was here?
And I agree with you apart from Taylor or firstly, I don't like going to concerts a part of Taylor, but I don't understand how everyone knows that when people are here, if.
People are just so on it. I've never gotten into a que anywhere.
How are they on it? Like it was different with Taylor because it was just everywhere across media. Sorry, I just bang the camera. It was just everywhere. Everybody knew it. It was like a cultural event, certainly in our workplace. The world stopped. But how do people know?
I vaguely remember the Coldplay thing popping up and my mum bought tickets.
How long ago?
I reckon it was like a year. Mum bought tickets, and I'm always like, well, where am I going to be in years? That's also true, you just don't know, and so didn't get them. And then I see everyone go wondering why or not at all exactly, and everyone has this spiritual experience, and I'm like, well, I'd have liked to go, but I am at home on my phone.
Did you ask your mom how she knew they were touring?
She had that thing where she got tickets and then she like told a bunch of friends and her daughters so that everyone would kind of fight for the tickets. And I don't know who took but didn't take me. I kind of assumed she would ask me last minute. Let's just say she didn't. I don't know who she.
Just because you haven't given her own grandma now exactly.
Everybody did say that it was a transcendent experience, that concept. I had great things.
My best is Book Babies. So there's this thing at my local library. It's a nine thirty If I can, I try and go twice a week, but at the very least I go once. Yeah, just me and the babies. It is maybe a four minute walk from my house the library. We go up in our little pram and we go to Book Babies where we do our songs, a big story, like read the story. Someone like a volunteer from the library, and there's maybe fifteen or twenty other babies, and I just love it, like it is
such a vibe. It is like watching Luna watch other things and just getting out of the house, because you know, it's one thing to sit there and read stories on it, but to have someone else do it. She's always in such a good mood once we do it. Then we go the toy library. It's part of our routine where we borrow and return our toys. Sometimes Cousin Matilda joins us and Auntie Claire. And it's just such a vibe. And so I've been really leaning into it lately, and
I just love that there are free things like that. Yeah, the mast that's a great thing about.
Library's absolutely nailed it.
I think that what I've found hardest about being home with babies is being home with babies literally home. I found it very hard to get out of the house because it just seemed like too many steps, and I found it really hard to have to be anywhere at a certain time and all of those things. But the days are long, the days are really long, and doing something like that gives you short You just have to
walk there it every day. Because I always found it hard to make arrangements with friends because I didn't know how that night would have gone on or how that day. So I never wanted the claustrophobia of anyone depending on me.
Yeah, and this is literally twenty minutes and I turn up with the breakfast, not turn up date of me when I show up, and I'm like, who's going to judge me?
Activity? You need activity in the morning and activity in the afternoon.
It's funny how you rediscover libraries in a big way at different times in your life, and that's one of them when your kids are little and you remember, like, this is amazing, it's free and it's in my neighborhood.
Does everyone know about libraries? Like libraries? You can get books there, They're super cheap.
You can work there right there.
You do it your borrow and then you give them.
Back, then you get another one. Have you heard of that?
Okay, lad As, I think we've gone a little a little cuckoo. That is all we have time for today. Big thank you to all of you for being here with us this week. Of course we're going to be back into His next week. Maya read us.
Out A big thank you to our team. Executive producer Ruth Divine who owns being a dickhead when she machine guns instructions at her husband and sons and expects them to do it all now. Senior producer Emmeline Gazillas is a dickhead when she waits for the nicole of her friendship group to organize catch ups or maybe by coplay tickets, maybe even suggesting to the nicole, Hey, we should all come as a catch up soon, but never organize. Oh my god, I do that. That's so true. And of course,
our audio producer is Leahpaordos. Her dickhead list includes when she forgets to eat and then wonders why she is angry and snippy with everyone. Our social media producer Isabel Dolphin, has a bit of a reputation amongst her friends for being a dickhead when it comes to packing for a girl's trip, always assuming they'll bring all the essentials, she forgets.
The dickhead never packs toothpaste.
Or a phone charger. And Josh Green, our video producer, his dickhead list includes getting too absorbed in his hobbies and forgetting to spend time with his wife.
Oh byeity bye bye. Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening. If you love the show and you want to support us, subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do it. There's a link in the episode description