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, my mid friends.
It's Holly here.
I am jumping in to give you an episode of No Filter that is super special. My friend and Mamma Mia, out loud co host and the co creator of Mamma Mia, Big Boss Lady, Incredible woman Mia Friedman has stepped away from one of her babies. No Filter is Australia's premier interview show and she's been hosting it for ten years. Over that time, Mia has interviewed celebrities, prime ministers and lots of people whose names you wouldn't know but have the.
Most unbelievable stories.
She is the best interviewer and I have learnt so much from her. I've had the pleasure of hosting No Filter a few times. I can tell you it's not easy anyway. Mia has stepped away from that big job. You might have seen that, but you need to listen to what we're calling her exit interview with the woman who's replacing her, the brilliant, wonderful, incomparable Kate Langbrook. Now,
Kate is a literal ray of human sunshine. She shares me as talent of being able to get people to tell you really vulnerable stories without it ever becoming too dark, too heavy. She has this trick of being able to bring the light with the shade. She's the perfect choice to replace Mia if anyone has to. And she'd been trying to pin down our mere Friedman to talk to her for a while for a proper, in depth interview,
and Mia kept avoiding it until she couldn't anymore. So, mids, I want you to enjoy this last episode of No Filter that has Mia on it. It's her exit interview with Kate Langbrook. I hope you enjoy.
Felt like I had noice skin. Yeah, you felt like I was just raw. I was just an open I was just all. Yeah, I had no protection. Yeah, I was just I was a friggin.
Mess for Mama Maya.
This is No Filter. I'm Kate lane Brook. Yes you are, Yes I am. I'm going to introduce us. Okay, I'm Kate lane Brook, and I'm joined by someone who when I have listened to No Filter over the years, I have wanted to talk to this person more than anybody else.
I would like.
To introduce my very special guest, Maya Friedman.
I was easy to get.
Wow, you were not easy to get.
Well, that's also true.
In fact, part of the reason I think we're sitting here is that you've been very hard to get.
I like playing hard to get. Yes, we did have an aborted attempt at this a year ago, didn't we. Yeah, we did. I've been thinking about that a lot when I was thinking about today and how this time last year we sat down before you were going to host the summer summer's edition Summer Season of No Filter, to see how you liked it, because I needed a rest, and well, you were hanging by a three. I was hanging by thread. And it wasn't, in hindsight, a very
good time to do an interview. And I never sit down and do long form interviews, so I hadn't for a long time before that out like years, And I sat down and you thought it went well.
It was great, It was absolutely fascinating. Youth would a well at the time as well. Well, I didn't really think about it a message afterwards. I tried to cancel a few times.
You did try to cancel anyway, This is all boring, but this is all behind the scenes stuff. But I pulled the pin because it wasn't When I say it wasn't me at my best. I just I was a hot mess, And I mean I'm always a hot mess, but I was in a particularly fragile state this time last year, and I didn't I just didn't particularly want to put that out there because I was still in the middle of being in that fragile state.
Yeah, because you were processing something, which I know at the time, but I could tell when I was talking to you, And do you remember the question that tricked your trigger? Do you remember what it was? I'll say it to you now because because you're in such a vastly different place I said to you, because I've been reading your book. I've read your book, and this was you were on the cusp then and waiting for strife
to come out. So there was a lot of there were a lot of shadows that came in with you.
I felt like I had no skin. Yeah, you were I was just raw. I was just an open I was just all yeah, I had no protection.
Yeah, but you were still as you do and as you have to do. You were still navigating your way through this world because you've got so many, you know, plates spinning at all times, and if you drop the plate, there's a world on each of those plates. So I get the feeling you're very conscious of not dropping those plates because you don't want to damage the people that are on the plate.
That's very That's such an insightful observation, and you're right. It's like, I think I probably had some kind of breakdown. I had a sort of a slow moving, ongoing breakdown over the last around that time, before that and probably through to about halfway through this year, which weirdly makes me laugh. Well, it's like, let's just crack into it. Hey, we haven't even have no small talk.
Well, well you may as well laugh.
Oh no, but it is funny. It's like, because I had this breakdown and I probably should have taken myself away somewhere, yes, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. You Hosting the summer season of No Filter was the first tentative step that I'd taken from stepping back from really anything since I wasn't the editor of Mamamea anymore. I know, So yeah it was it was, Yeah, I was just I was a frigging mass.
Because you know, those of us who really just if we knew nothing about you other than your output, if we knew nothing other than that, that is extraordinary and that is exhausting to think about. So you were exhausted and this is this is the thing. And I wasn't doing it. It wasn't a gotcha, it wasn't whatever. It was like a genuine because I just wanted to work out what your driver was, what your engine, what what your
engine takes. And I said to you, because I'd read your book, and I said, it's really interesting because we talked about whether or not you ever reflect on the amazing thing that you built things and you said no. And then I said, you know what's interesting in your book? And you talk about work that's still got to be done and you know what you could have done better? And I said, but you never talk about the concept of happiness. Do you remember that?
Is that all I can say? I can feel? Yeah, done again? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was it was just a yeah. And then that was like, I don't know, It's like someone pulled a little stitch, the last stitch that you were hanging by, and then you kind of just unraveled a little bit.
Oh, yeah, a lot. Yeah, how to we cry? Yeah, it's true. It's like happiness kind of doesn't doesn't really when you're running a business, it's not. Actually, that's a luxury that sort of sits on the side and not to be matter. Like, I also love my work. I think it would be easier if I didn't. You know, I didn't. If I didn't love my work, I would go I'm so burnt out, I'm so exhausted, I need to back away. But firstly, when you've built something this size, it's hard to extract yourself.
But also I love it.
I love what I do like I love what I do.
And it's it's a.
Quo kind of working out when it's time to call time on certainty, okay.
Which has led us to this today. How do you work that out? Because I mean, you are apparently the meya in Mum and Me, well I used to be.
I think there's a lot of people who wouldn't even know who I am anymore, who might experience Mum and mea through one of our either podcasts not no filter, or written content or social content that they might consume or something, and they wouldn't even know, particularly younger people gen z Ds and millennials who wouldn't even know who I was, Which is the way it has always which is what we've always wanted. Jason and I Jesus when
we first started. Our last seventeen years have been about slowly backing me out.
That's a long that's a long reverse.
That's a long driveway, sure is.
That's when you're back into the fence.
Many which I've done many times, many times. My old producer on No Filter, Eliza Ratliffe, knows that I've been trying to quit No Filter for two years, and not because I don't love it, but just because it takes a lot, Like it takes a lot, Yes, it's.
A lot, and for I mean people listening to it, I think they know intuitively, even if they haven't thought in a more academic since about how much it takes that if you're interviewing someone who's got a body of work, you pay them the courtesy of familiarizing yourself with their body of work.
Well, that can be books, what is it can be TV show yes, yeah, or all the different things, and even just getting to understand who someone is like to prepare for an interview, My process is just very immersive, and I can only do it within about twenty four hours of actually sitting down with them.
So because you've done so many new things over the last I don't know, Like you said, there's a plethora of new podcasts, it kind of feels like there's another You're going to another level, which might be the level at which you kind of get to.
I think the business is getting bigger, but I want to get smaller, right if that makes sense?
It does make sense, But do you know how to do that? Well, that's what the.
Last sort of eighteen months to two years has been. It's been setting us up for Jason and I to be able to accelerate that withers like I don't want to completely no buildings to go okay, there wasn't an option until sort of the last eighteen months. So that
it's been finding the right people. When new CEO, when you chief content officer, we've got a new chief revenue officer, all these different people to put in to say, okay, we now feel able to step back further to a point where we don't have to run the whole anymore. That they can take the baton from us. And you know, you want to hire people who are smarter than you. You want to work with people who are smarter than you.
But after a while, when you've done something for a while, it's hard to find those people because you've been in the space.
It's really hard to find those people. And also, I'm free. So you know the reason why I'm like, yeah, oh me,
you can do it. Me, you can do it. Me, you can do it, and I'll put up my hand is that I am free and I'm available, of course, and you know, hiring really good people like you and other and the executives that we've got, and all the people that work in our business, including our head of content, that costs a lot of money, and you have to be you know, people see the front, but they don't know. You know, it's like the dark gliding across the pond.
They don't see what's going on under the surface. And there's a lot going on under the surface.
It's like my husband who own nightclubs, and people always think, oh, you must get cheap booze. You don't, you don't. You're actually get it cheaper at Dan Murphy's. But also they don't know about rent and people and insurance and Capron la la Lah exactly exactly. So what Okay, So here's the thing with you and you're seventeen year reversing out of the driveway. But because it's not just a business, it's also your family. So that is just another mind boggle.
Like when I was here yesterday and you were arriving with Luca and Jesse Jesse, which was gorgeous, and then someone made the joke was at Luca that you just arrived from the Succession helicopter, because it's like it was.
Like we bumped into each other in the car and they drove in together. It's like, yeah, it's a family business. Like there's one hundred and fifty people in it. But Jason and I are the co founders, Luca is the chief operating and product officer, and you know my friend and daughter in law Jesse. I posed a podcast with her, and so yeah, everyone's various people are involved in the business. I mean, my two youngest children just want to get away from it. They'll probably get sacked into it too.
So yeah, that that means that it's not a job you can easily quit.
But also aside from the job, you've also as a human and as a woman and as a mother. You've become a mother in law and that's and a grandmother and that's all happened at the same time as well.
Yeah, and I think that last year was a real unraveling for me, Like on every level of my identity. I turned, I turned, how old, did I added? Whatever I did? Fifty three blurd, I became a grandmother. My eldest son got married, Like all of these things happened. My youngest child sort of, you know, got beyond that age where you know, he turned sixteen. So it's like I officially moved into that age of your kids are growing up in a way, having their own families and
what does that mean? And at the same time, the world is telling you you're irrelevant, you're invisible, you're a carrying.
Your socks are the wrong length, your socks.
Yeah, you're a loser, all of those things. And then it's like, well and then what do you do with your face and what like? And I just I just lost it, Like I just felt really it was like you know when you're doing a software upgrade and you get the like the spinning wheel, right.
The wheel was just spinning.
It was like the spinning wheel. It's like it was before this new phase, I was just really lost. I was lost at work, I was lost at home, I was lost in with my place in the world, all of those things. And part of the reason that I also wanted to find the right person to hand no Filter over to was I wanted to make some room creatively to do some other things, and there just wasn't any room. And I used to think that I could just take on more and more and more and more.
And last year I realized, oh, I'm breaking, I'm broken. Yeah, And I realized that, Okay, I can't. So I had to make some space.
Yeah, and how okay. So, in my experience, when you find yourself in situations like that, if you don't make the decision, your body will make the decision for you.
Oh yeah.
So it's like actors will often say, if they've been in like a long run of a play, they get sick on the last nine they had their rap party and then they got the down. So you had to call it before your body called it.
My body's tried to call it for a really long time, like you know. Jason was talking to someone the other day and said, Maya has passed the point of burnout so many times because it's like it's just not been an option. So it's been I've gone past burnout, past burnout, past burnout, past burnout. And I was sick quite a lot in twenty twenty four. I just got like you know, usual winter thing. Lots of people have just got sick.
My immune system has been okay, but I've also been going through perimenopause and then menopause, and so it's been all infusing to know what yes exactly, and I just I recover very very easily. And I've got a really big engine, I think because I'm quite also forgetful, and I just forget that I'm exhausted, Like don't. I don't marinate in things long, like.
I slate well really well, or what time to go to bed.
I probably I look at my phone until maybe fifteen seconds before I'm before I'm asleep, Like I'll just look at it. I'm not one of those people that need to do special sleep hyjen and everything. I'm fortunate in that way. And then I will just literally turn my phone off, put it on the floor, and within fifteen seconds go sleep.
And how long do you sleep? For?
Probably about seven between six to seven hours. Yeah, I wake up pretty early.
Do you wake up and you're full of ideas? Or do you wake up slowly and step into the day.
Oh I've never been like a jump out of bed person.
No, but sometimes I wake up and I'm like boo, and it's like, all these things have happened in my sleep.
Oh no, all of those things happen in my way. Okay, yeah, no, So often, what I've become very aware of is that I wake up, open my eyes, pick up my phone, and just saturate myself with stimulation. I think that's probably what most of us do, and from my brain it needs that. But I've also become aware that that's not a very gentle weight away here, not a brutal pretty brutal.
Particularly if you're looking at news.
Yeah, yeah, you know. The first thing I'll do is look at my WhatsApp and if any of the chats have gone off, like you know, sometimes I wake up and there'll be thirty messages and it might be that just one of my group chats has you know, gone off night about whatever, but it also could be breaking news that I've missed because you know, someone else was up before me the day starts hard and then on weekends Luca brings over Luna. So you're a great waiter. Yeah, I wake up to her, you know, I get up
and she's she arrives pretty soon after. So yeah, I'm not. I'm not a sort of lying around person. Like my brain just goes all the time, which is exhausting in itself. So you know how you were saying, Jason said you'd gone beyond burnout so many times.
How did that manifest? Then?
Great question? Just despair. I think just like cry most days. Sometimes I'd crying meetings, which is bad.
Sometimes I would out of just out of just full, full, overwhelmed.
It's just overwhelmed, overwhelm, overwhelm, overwhelmed. I'd feel just overwhelmed a lot of the time, and then i'd have to, you know, come in here and I'd lift because I had to live sure.
And also there's distraction then, yeah, and distraction is just so gratefully received when you're like that.
I love coming in into the office and I love you know, I love recording the podcast that Mummy are out loud and then no filter would often be a lot because when you have to meet, like the conversations that you have on this show, not that they're always bleak or sad, but they're always deep and you have it's called no filter, correct, So you have to meet someone there every single time, and it's really intense. But I have this thing where I walk out of the
studio and I won't be able to remember anything. So my poor producers would like try to sit down with me afterwards and like deef, and I'm like, I don't remember anything.
It's weird.
It's like I'm so present at them at that time. But I've got a very efficient clearing system, like my hard drives just constantly being deleted, delete, delate, delete.
Where you don't have the storage, I.
Don't have the story, so I'll walk out and then I won't I actually won't ever want to listen to it again. I want to do ever talk about it again. And this show requires a lot of you know, there's a lot of you've got to take really good care of the people that you interview, and you've got to follow through on that process. And I just wasn't able to do that justice anymore. And I felt what I love is actually I want to listen to you interview people like I loved over summer.
I love the girl I interviewing right now, your lover mayor Friedman. I know you're desperate to escape, but you shall not.
I know where the exits are.
Yeah, no you don't. We've changed them. You're staying put.
I think you're the best interviewer in Australia. I think you are.
Oh calm down, you have because you're playful.
Even when we did that interview which we ended up not publishing, you will so seamlessly because I was being in but I was also observing you, not to judge you, but just because I was interested in your practice. And you did that really tricky thing which you took me from tears and then you knew exactly when to just bridge to something funny and we both laughed and complete gear chap.
But you know, it's an interesting.
It's really rare. Most people can't do that, but.
In friendships you do it all the time. People do it all the time. That's how you get your friends through, and that's how you navigate those moments where someone's really raw. And then you're like, it's true. You know, I'm curious about Jay saying you've gone beyond burnout so many times and because of your relationship with him as a husband and a lover and a business partner.
I know everyone says, I don't know how you could work with your partner. I never could.
What do you say?
I would have said the same thing. I would have said the same thing, But wasn't.
Your intention was?
It was not my idea and it was not my intention. But I certainly wouldn't be here with Mum and MEA wouldn't be what it was. No, if it wasn't for the two of us, like he wouldn't have done it without me, and I certainly wouldn't have done it without him. And I wasn't. I'd already been doing it by myself for eighteen months, and i'd, you know, made no money for eighteen months. I'd built an audience, but I didn't know how to monetize it. I didn't have the skills
or the bandwidth to do it. And I didn't have the vision that he did for the business. It's not I've got a business brain, but not the big picture business and not the you know, I can't I won't say I can't read a spreadsheet. I remember Zoe Foster Blake said to me that when she first started go to and she has a couple of business partners co partners, and she said she'd sit in meetings at first and be like, I don't understand the numbers, and then she's like,
and then I realized that wasn't cute anymore. I don't do it to be cute. But I also like, I just can't things that. I mean, I suppose I could, and she has had to teach herself, but there's no way I could do what I have to do if I also had to do the other stuff. And I'm just not that good at the other stuff. Okay, but how good are you at being a wife? In terrible of all? Right, so bad, so bad.
Let's just have a moment's pause for.
He's very He's the nurture in this in our right. It's not that I don't nurture the kids and I don't love him. I love him. Maddling. We've just celebrated our twenty fifth wedding anniversary.
How did you celebrate for the first time?
We remembered, Oh, and we went out to dinner and we've ever done that before. Really, we're not like that, like when we don't give each other presents we're not present people. It's not our love language. We're real homebodies. We love staying at home. So I often think that if you've got a certain if every relationship has a certain amount of petrol in the tank, yes, until it sort of just runs out. Yeah, working together just you you know, uses up that petrol.
Well, that's why that's why I ask. Yeah, I can't even conceive of Like earlier last year, I was kind of in between managers and Peter, my husband who I also love, who I've been with for twenty one years. He was kind of helping out for a while, and it was really terrible. Not because he's terrible. He's really good at business and he's whatever sexy, but the marrying that, Yeah,
marrying a thing. The fantasy is that you're going to go in like do you ever go into Jason's office, shut the door behind you and just kind of take you because that's great.
Can you imagine if we ever like touch each other in meetings or something, Everyone's like ew, mum and dad, ew. No, we don't do that. And that's why it's probably been the best thing for our business and probably the worst thing for our relationship being in business although I've also seen relationships where both couples are pulling in different directions.
Either one of them has a big job and the other one doesn't, or they've both got big jobs or whatever, and there's that constant competitiveness of whose job is more important or whose role is more important. And a lot of actors, if actors go out with other actors, they have a very similar kind of imagine what that would be like, terrible madness to go out with them. Yeah, and I think, you know, for us, we've at least always been pulling in the same direction, you know, and
in that way it's very efficient. So we've been able to tag team with kids and with work. But it means that you can't, like a couple of years ago, Jace had or tried to have a sabbatical for three months, and he could have a sabbatical from the business, but he couldn't have a sabbatical.
From his wife, who is also part of the business.
And so when I would ring him and you know, want to talk about something or be upset about something that was really hard.
So it's like he.
Couldn't get away from me and from me. And since we've appointed a new CEO this year and he has moved into this role of executive chairman and he is not. We don't work together day to day anymore. That's been so good. Oh my god, we've rediscovered each other. Wonderful. Yeah, it's been wonderful.
Because there are aspects that you I mean, you just can't servi uce all parts at the same time.
And it's really hard to be in meetings with someone you know, so like you behave a certain way at home and like you know, when you're partner shitting you, you give them a look across the table or you whatever, fucked and then we're in meetings and some people here have been in those meetings, you know, many years ago when we would have discussions, we'd have Barney's about work, and they'd be sort of uncomfortable. People get used to
it pretty quickly. But one time I had to say, you know that other people can see the look that you're giving me across the table, and he would have to say the same to me, because you kind of just forget that you've got to behave in a way in front of other people. Yes, and it's yeah, it's really it's been really challenging. But I'm very proud that we are still married, yes, and that we have continued
to build the business together. And hopefully now that we're able to, you know, bring in new people and take a step back, it means that we'll be able to be married again and also just have some space from each other. Yes, you know, y like, it's quite nice to get home and go how is your day and not know, yeah, you know, that's quite nice looking forward to seeing each other.
Okay, So if your plan is to make some more time for yourself, really, and how will you feel that? And it's not gonna be empty time if I.
Know you No, But is that.
Commensurate with what Jace wants for himself as well?
The difference is that he loves Mum and Mia and our core purpose being to make the world a better place for women girls actually came from him. I couldn't articulate it, which is very embarrassing because I'm the writer in the family, but he was the one. And I remember he wrote it down on a piece of paper and he's like, I think it's this, And because I was more just like, it's the vibe, yes, the women and the vibe, because I've like it's the water ice women.
I couldn't even articulate it, but he could. So he obviously feels very strongly about our core purpose, but he's got lots of interests and hobbies and things that he wants to do outside of Mumma behre well. The problem is that my hobby is my work, which is I think being one of the big drivers of Muma mea. But it makes it very hard to rest, it really does.
And so for me, the time that I get closest to resting is I have a day a week with Luna, which being a grandmother is so different to being a mother in that you just can be very present because it's like one day. I know people say that, yeah, I know, I never understood it.
Yeah I don't understand. I still don't understand that.
You know, it is all of the same amount of love. It's actually really weird because it's all of the same amount of love, except they don't live in your house, which is kind of wonderful, but.
Also you're coming to them every time.
But there's no mental load. There's not one bit of mental load. There's no guilt, you know, like I'm not like, oh no, what if she hasn't eaten enough vegetables. Yeah right, bake beans again like she'ing a bickie.
Oh else likes just love. It's just love.
And it's not like she stayed the night. She stays night a lot now, but the first time she stayed the night, and if she does stay and she wakes up in the night when she was a little bit younger, and you know that feeling when your baby wakes up in the night, or you toddally wakes up the night your kid, You've got like there's a lot of feelings. It's like irritation and resentment and a bit of panic and what if this never what if I never sleep?
But then you're also plased to see them in.
A weird well yeah, and then I scanned my body for any feelings of any negative feelings. Not one. It was just like, yay, we get to sniff a little face, I get to like give her a little cuddle and give her a bottle, and you, oh, that's been fraught. She calls me nana, so I thought I didn't want to be called nana. And whole anxiety, which I think is really common in people when they become particularly grandmothers,
because it's about your identity and grand like. It suddenly seems very important not to be called nana or grandma, because I think what it meant for us was a little old lady with gray hair whose life was over. And we don't like that. I don't, you know, like me, So I don't. Really. This is when I was going through my whole identity crisis. I didn't want to be that, and so it became very important to not be called that and to be called maybe.
Me and me, I would decide, babies decide, don't.
Well, she just didn't call me anything. But what you don't realize is that, for the first I don't know until they can talk, it's not about what they call you, or not about what you call yourself. It's about what everyone else calls you.
Because it's like.
Here, you know, let's here's nana or here you go to And so every time they'd say grandma, I die a little bit inside, right, And then I just realized, stop fucking making trying to make me happen. It's not going to happen. No one's calling you that. It's like trying to give yourself a nickname.
It doesn't work.
Yes, And so I just went, you know, I loved my nana so much. My kids call my mum Nana. I'm like, I'll be Nana. There's only two people who could be Nana, and I'll be one of them. And then I had my latest neurosis was that she also called Jesse's mum Nana.
Oh, so how do you different?
I went into a panic and I'm like, then I tried to get her a call because Jesse's mom's so so cruizy, and so I'm like, maybe call her Nan. And I was trying to control what she called her and was just like, knock yourself out, whatever you want me to be called. But now she just I tried to get her to call and Nan, but she won't, and so we're both Nana and I'm just like, who gives a shit?
And you can tell he well, lots.
Of people I said it on out that and lots of it was very funny conversation. Everyone was telling me how they they had two nana's, but one was like.
NANAA husband's got old Nana, We've got old Nana, Lil, We've got Nana Ree his mom and Marie.
So kids work it out. They know the difference. But that speaks to my insecurity because I'm all about leaderboards, and I was worried that I would be low down on the leaderboard of who she loved. This is how I think about things.
Do you think that, because I honestly, if there was anyone to delight a child, it's your elf and energy. Like seriously, well, maybe it's in security.
It's insecurity, I guess. But it's also how I make sense of the world because I'm sort of chaotic and I need to I like rules, and I like to know where I stand. I like feedback, I like I like knowing things. So I was very much well at the top of the leaderboards Jesse and then Luca, and then Claire, Jesse's twin sister, and then Anne, Jesse's mom, and then maybe me. So I'm like, okay, I'm number five.
So Anne suggested that I be called Fine, and I was like, I got really upset about that, And because anyway, it's just I told you often how two years like it's been, I've been all over the shop and I've not known who I am.
I think because I've seen you a little bit fleetingly in those times and always lovely. Actually but it's felt to me like you're rebuilding. Yes, that's exactly right.
I could see it like being in a crystalis yeah yeah, yeah, and not that I was a caterpillar and now in butterfly. It's not like that, but it was like it was a different phase of my life and a different you know, it doesn't You don't just go from one chapter to the next chapter.
And transitions are very painful and no matter where they are, A new job, new, like anything's.
Very hard, very hard you leave behind and fear. But stepping into the unknown is always uncertainty. I'm not good with any of that. I'm really not good with. Butmala, I don't.
I think most people aren't. I just think you expect more of yourself. I get very impatient. I'm like, what am I going to again? I know on the side, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Am I in this new phase yet? Do I understand who I am?
Yet?
And it was years of not not knowing what I wanted not knowing, and I just find that very inefficient.
Mayor Friedman, please stay till after this weebreak twisted my own. I'm just thinking about what you've built and I mean, you built it for women, women and girls, but I think the woman and the girl that you built it for was yourself, Because do you know what I mean?
If you think about if you think about the conversations that happen every day, in the things that everyone exposed to and that you bring to people, and the little nugget of cheese or the dead mouse that the cat leaves at the doorstep, all of that seems like it might have been for you to find yourself or to bring something to yourself.
Yes, I think because I am so basic, I'm very common, and I say that in a way like I'm very i am very ordinary, And the things that I feel and the things that I'm interested in are not the things that everybody feels and they're interested in. But a lot of people feel and are interested in those things too. So often I'm always an observer of my own behavior, and I know that when my behavior is shifting from a consumer point of view, a content likely that correct.
So like when I didn't know how to start a business and I started a lady startup, or when I was interested in perimenopause but there was nothing out there and it felt very uncool and we started the very we did the very Perry Summit, and it's kind of like, what's next, What's next?
What is next? I'm working on something.
Yeah, I'm working on a little secret thing. Oh and it's not secret because I'm Bankoi. It's secret because I just want to see what it is like. One of the things I find I'm not suited to being in a business of this size. I'm just not. I don't have the patience for it. I don't have I just I don't want to be in meetings and I have to go through layers and you need all of that at a company this size. You need processes and layers
and strategies and schedules. I just want to work on a little couple of little things and it's still a bit embryonic. And until it's done, I don't commercialize it. I don't want to and don't jinx it. It's not
even jinxing it. It's just that I'll kind of lose energy for it and lose interest in it because because you know, the economics of making content is that it'll have to be sold and it will have to be sponsored, and we'll have to you know, we'll have to work out when in the schedule it should happen, and blah blah blah, and all of that I completely understand because I think a lot of people don't get that content costs money to create.
You know why now, because we're used to getting it for nothing. Yes, people don't even buy a newspaper anymore.
But do you know what we pay money for water? We understand that water cost money, and yet content is really undervalued. And I think that's both the best and worst thing about the Internet. You know, it's democratized who can make content, which I think is wonderful. I couldn't have built a media company without the Internet with Jays, but you know I couldn't. I couldn't buy a TV license or you know, start my own magazine, buy a TV license.
Now these yeah, exactly, get one for a hundred bars.
But that's been good. But the bad thing is that people think that it doesn't take time and effort and expertise to create good quality Yes.
And this is good quality content, really good quality content. Like if I think about the things that I've got through Mama Mia, and I've not been the most avid consumer of anything online, particularly not through those years of intense child rearing and stuff and leukemia and all of that. So I wasn't.
I've just been like, a, how do you think that that experience of having your eldest get leukemia? How do you think, because I know you're not a very online person, No, how do you think it would have been made either better or worse by having the internet at that time? Both for community, because I know a lot of people who've either the loved ones with cancer of cancer themselves who whether it's group chats, you know, what was your
village through that time. Because you're a said to keep it secret.
Yes, well secret, not to our friends and not to our neighbors, not to in fact, most of the people in the media knew about it.
I found that extraordinary. I didn't know about it, and not that we knew each other well.
Then, and I was in Melbourne, you're in city, yes, But.
The fact that the media, particularly the Melbourne media, knew and it was such an open secret and everybody kept it quiet four years, I thought was such a tribute to how you're the esteem in which you're held in our industry because that was a big story.
It was a big story, really, and at the time I think I mean talk about hanging by three, and I don't think I had the energy to even address it. And it was twofold. It was partly that it was Lewis and eldest son, who was six when he was diagnosed, and partly it was not our story to tell. We were like the custodian of him through this terrible time.
But also I didn't have the energy, didn't even have the energy to like sometimes if I'd bump into someone I saw and they'd go house Lewis, I didn't even have that. Oh so the thought of taking on then the media aspect of it was completely.
You had this circle that closed around you. But similar to you know, so self indulgent me saying I was so burnt out and it was so hard deciding what to be called. You had a child that was battling cancer and you had to turn up at work on breakfast radio every single day. It's not like you could say I'm taking a year off. No.
But also this is why I understand what you're saying about work. Work is a salvation. Work is a salvation for us. I mean, yeah, it is for us, and it was for me, and it just to have a place where, and I didn't tune up every day. And there were a couple of people that were just so fantastic, other comedians who were like call us at any time, you know, Mick malloy and Helliah and will be there.
They had your back. Yeah, they were fantastic. I was doing breakfast Radio with Hughesy in Melbourne at the time, but there were times when it would be the only time. Sometimes I'd only get in there once for the week, right, and it would be the only time in the week that wasn't about cancer, the only time. And so even though I was a bit wobbly, I was very hollow inside.
But the muscles that you train, and I think this in life anyway, and I always say it to my children, the muscles that you train will be your strongest muscles. And because I had been doing breakfast radio for so many years, and doing breakfast radio you have to wake up whistling and it's like you coming into the office here.
Yeah.
So my muscles to be optimistic, to be cheerful, to be funny, yeah, and to be and to enjoy the world are very strong muscles. And so I get really annoyed in my household when people are grumpy. I hate fucking bad mood people.
Yep, but you're not. That's interesting because the downside of that is toxic positivity. But you're not that.
What is toxic positivity?
That's kind of like look at the bright side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, no, no, I no, I don't think I'm that it's like forcing everybody to not be able to experience their full range of emotions.
You're not that, because that can be quite controlling and quite toxic.
No, but I think it's more about, certainly breakfast radio, which is probably a metaphor for life. You're waking up to the world. My job is to give listeners the gift of faith. Faith in the day, faith that everything will be all right, Faith that you are not alone going through this, Faith that once you get out there, it's going to be great. It'll be fine. It won't be without challenges, but you're going to be fine because
you've got me, you've got him, we've got us. And that also things in the world that might be ludicrous, that might be frightening if you stop, if you don't walk into the dark room with your eyes shut because you're scared of what you see. But if you open, actually open your eyes and you look across the room. There's someone else there. You can turn that moment into something humorous.
So who is that for you? If you were that for everyone during that dark time? Who is that for you?
Uh? My mother in law, Marie Peter's mum Peter to a certain extent. But that was also very hard. That was you know, a lot of relationships break up. Yeah. Yeah, and kids also, I'm very you know, cognizant of the fact we had a good outcome, so.
And us touching.
Yeah, and the people that didn't, the children that fell along the way.
Would you sometimes in breaks just cry or you would just be in there and you would be like, right, the shutters are coming up or they're coming down, but I'm like no.
In the break, we'd be talking about what was going on.
Here's it.
At some point go say, how are things?
How's it? Louis?
We talk about it, and then.
You would just clicking to gear and click out.
Sometimes sometimes it was not not so much clicky, but you just have to start the scene again. What are you going to do? Four years?
Oh? Fuck?
In my head it was two four.
Years for boys because of the Lakini he had because it hides. It hides in the lining, in the in the spinal cord, and in the brain lining, and in boys, in the testicles. So for girls the treatment is some good news. For girls, the treatment's much shorter the girls. Four yeah, boys, yeah, four years four years of chema, yeah yeah, lumber punctures.
You had more children in that time, didn't you.
Know I'd had I'd had Yarny. My youngest was five months old when Lewis was diagnosed, so we had four under six, And so when Lewis was diagnosed, I had to stop feeding Yarni obviously our youngest, and like it was just like our daughter went to school too soon, because it was like, everybody's got to get out of the house because we're going to be at the hospital. Everyone's got to get on with things. Chop chop, Like it was a bit like that, and we didn't mean
to be brutal, but it did. There was a period in which anyone else's ailment.
Not a lot of sympathy.
Yeah, because at one stage, Yanni, this is the worst thing in the world, had a broken wrist for two days and we didn't realize it because it wasn't lukemia and it was only when Ray came over and she grabbed him to swing him around by his you know, grabbed him his hands to swing him in a circle, and he let out this curdling yelp and it had a broken wrist from where he jumped off the bottom stamp.
And how did you find the because you know, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, so you know, you are biologically programmed to focus all your attention on the weakest link and the most.
Vulnerable, which was loose for four years.
Yes, So at what point did that stop? Like, how did you get to the point where you trusted his recovery and you could look at your other kids and go mmm, I mean, I'm sure it wasn't like a click up thing, but how did you navigate that?
So when Lewis finished treatment, we stopped doing breakfast radio after twelve years men husy and he wanted to do more stand up, which is the opposite of you know.
Did you want to keep going?
No? No, I didn't want to keep going, but I was happy for him to make the decision. I went unhappy.
Whatever you want, why didn't you want to keep going? The money is amazing.
Because I wanted to have a time at home with yarny apropos around school. Yes, exactly, because he had been like from the womb untimely ripped or from the boob untimely ripped. And I was always conscious of the fact that we had this little one who I had really not got to spend much time with her. If I did, it was in between hospital visits, and you know, so I took that. It turned out to be a year. I didn't know how long it was going to be.
We finished during breakfast Radio, had a gorgeous farewell. It was just beautiful, and I thought it might be forever. You know, when you stry you No, it didn't worry me. No, it didn't worry me.
But you went from making all of this money like the Breakfast Radio particularly then not so much now, but then big best and biggest and most high profile. You guys were iconic. Yeah, did you feel the need or you just felt I need to.
Just catch my breath?
Now, I think so.
And then Peter uttered a phrase which as a modern woman, I had never heard in my life, and it was one of the greatest things any man has. It is the greatest thing any man's ever said to me, He said, darling, you don't have to work. I can look after both of us.
My wowd oh, my god, suck it suck.
It's like so and I remember at the time, had you been the breadwinner before that, Yeah, you wear a lot of bread. Yeah, and you need a lot of bread for six people, Yeah, you do. And so we'd made one of those decisions, you know, the you know, practical decision that because I would earn more money than him, that he would.
So he did that. Probably he was at home for probably about eighteen months, and then it just wasn't good for him. It was never a point of he was never like I don't want to do this. He was never resentful or whatever. But I'm just like, working man wasn't enough for he needs to work. Yeah, like a working dog needs to work. Yeah, so I'm working, I need to work.
Yeah. Yeah.
So anyway, so it actually gave me the liberty to say I'm going to be at home. I'm going to be at home. And it was such a great It only ended up being one year, and it was a very challenging year from what I recall, well, because I was at home.
Yeah, I was going to say, careful, what you wish I was at home. Yeah, did you feel irrelevant?
I probably felt more irrelevant when we went and lived initially, when we were in an Italian class and I said, and I thought, I was so proud with myself. I said, I'm I'm Mollieri, Cassa or whatever. I'm housewife. And if I said that in Australia, at least a couple of people.
In the road laugh and go, oh yeah, katling Brook, because they're like, yeah, it wasn't ironic.
She's a housewife. Yeah. Interesting.
So that was like a stripping back of ego because nobody knew you.
That totally very great. I heartily recommend it, heartily. That's why I do yoga because I need I need the humiliation.
Yes, that's true. To having teenagers, what do you do we're having teenage.
I don't count them. I don't count that.
I don't count too high.
Terrible time. Yeah, grown up children. I know, I bring you, but I just don't. I can't take that on. It's like women. You know, when you go shopping with a teenage daughter. You see it all the time at any Westfield and there's a woman with a certain posture. Yeah, yeah, and the girls with it, and I'm just like, what are we doing?
You do get through that? Like I'm now at the point because I know what you mean.
I've done.
I didn't realize that you would ever get through it. But my daughter, who just turned nineteen, now we can go shopping and it's delightful. I think our girls are the same as it's delightful and I will actually ask her advice and she'll give it to me without making me feel like a piece of shit.
Yeah, because I noticed, because I'm always I think too maybe too aware of not giving them too much power, because you don't want to end up being one of those women whose self esteem has just been totally strip mind like a sloth scratching at a tree truck. There's nothing left because they've had years of should I wear this? And the door's going were the gray one?
Yeah? No, No, I can't give away too much.
You can't, can't. Power is very important, and no matter where you find that power, like you might be the nurturer, you might be the cook, you might be the one who's magical with the grandchildren. You might be doesn't matter, but you need to have a little patch of territory that's yours, and now I've got your fucking patch of territory. God, thank god, no one will try not to break ash.
You're so good at this. I can't think of anyone who is going to be better. I can't wait to be listening every single week. And what an honor to be your first guest. Literally no one else in the building.
Anyway. I love you, I love you, enjoy your secret square well and some suns.
You'll be the first one to know.
So Maya has left the building and you are now in my culpable hands. Come back me. Oh no, she's gone. I'll see you next way. The executive producer of No Filter is Naima Brown, Senior producer Grace ruverret producer Charlie Blackman, Audio production and sound design by Jacob Brown. And I'm your host Caitline Brook.