Mamamia Out Loud: Every Unpleasant Experience Is Not Trauma

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud,

what we're going to actually talking about on Friday, the 2nd of June.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

I'm Becky Stephen and I still have toast in my mouth.

I'm about to swallow it.

Mia, she is so unprofessional.

The tummy wants what the tummy wants and I hardly endorse eating of toast at any time.

On the show today.

Yesterday, an untouchable Australian hero fell in the most dramatic way imaginable.

So what do we need to understand about what just happened to Ben Robertsmith?

Plus, the pop psychology meme that has really, really struck a nerve.

So who are we so mad at?

And our best and worst of the week, which ranged from an unpopular opinion about a long-awaited finale

to doggy birthdays and finishing something important.

But first, Jesse Stevens.

In case you missed it, Samantha is coming back.

This party just got a whole lot more excited.

Woohoo!

News broke yesterday that Kim Katral will feature in an episode of the upcoming second season of

And Just Like That.

If you're thinking, hang on, didn't Katral say that she would never?

And I remember the quote, it's great wisdom to know when enough is enough.

Then yes, you are right.

It's a great negotiating point.

Yes.

I'm walking away now.

Watch me walk away.

Here I am walking away.

Has of course been longstanding tension between Katral and Sarah Jessica Parker who plays Carrie.

And Katral said that after the second Sex and the City movie that basically her lack of storyline

and character development meant there was no reason for her to come back.

She was quite vocal.

It was a terrible movie and her character was terrible.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean we don't make a third.

I would have loved a third.

Oh yeah.

And then And Just Like That came out and she wasn't even approached because they were like,

well, she's made her position firm.

Well, she was incredibly incendiary in the media about Sarah Jessica Parker and about Michael Patrick King.

She was not getting along with the cast.

But there were some conditions to Katral's comeback.

She didn't just come back and stand on set.

According to Variety, she shot all her dialogue in New York City without seeing or speaking to the rest of the cast.

It sounds like the scene involves a phone call with Carrie, but it wasn't actually Sarah Jessica Parker on the other end of the phone.

Holly, are you excited?

I actually spat my coffee out yesterday morning.

I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe that it was really happening.

And then I read the details and I'm like, oh, she's not like back, back.

But is this going to be like the most expensive phone call ever made?

Because what would they have had to pay Hermia to tempt her back just to walk around Central Park talking into a phone?

So much money.

So the head of HBO called her because she would not have any communication at all.

And she was apparently open to the idea because I think she says that she dislikes everyone involved with the show,

but she feels a lot of fondness for the character.

It's not that she didn't like the character.

It's she didn't like what they were doing with the character and she didn't like the other people.

She said they were not nice to her and left her out and she also wanted more money.

She was very open.

She said, we were not all treated as equals in this cast.

I think what's also interesting, another little bit of fine detail that I loved is that Patricia Field,

who was famously the costume designer of all of the Sex and the Cities and all the movies,

was not involved in and just like that.

Premier, the first season, she posted a photo or Kim Cattrall posted a photo of herself and Patricia Field out to dinner.

So it was very much she was the only one that sided with Kim Cattrall out of everybody involved with Sex and the City,

which was very interesting and very political.

So instead of having the regular costume people, one of Kim Cattrall's stipulations was that Patricia Field dress her.

So she has her own wardrobe person.

The cost of this would have been in the many, many millions.

There is no one in the entire world with firmer boundaries in Kim Cattrall.

She clearly was like, I'll do it, but I won't speak to anyone.

I'll be on the phone.

I will be dressed.

I'm looking at her going, she is who we all need to look towards as a guide.

Oh, we got to talk about boundaries later in the show.

But yeah, that's true.

We create firm boundaries.

She's certainly clear about what she wants and doesn't.

We couldn't have done it without our brave colleagues in the newsrooms.

We couldn't have done it without our editors.

And we couldn't have done this without the best legal team in the country.

The Nine Network will now seek legal costs of up to $40 million.

And questions remain this morning on whether Robert Smith could face criminal charges.

The defendants have been able to prove the truth of most of the imputations that were pleaded by Ben Robert Smith in his statement of claim.

Ben Robert Smith is a murderer who killed unarmed civilians.

A federal court judge has found that in a comprehensive defamation decision.

Yesterday was a significant day in Australian history.

Australia's most decorated war hero, recipient of the Victoria Cross Medal,

former chair of the National Australia Day Council, Ben Robert Smith,

has been found in a civil court to have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

Like most Australians who probably dipped in and out of this story over the last five or so years,

the court case has been ongoing, but because of COVID there were delays.

And so you've probably seen this name, seen stories, seen his face,

but might not fully understand what's happened.

Basically what's happened is that a court found yesterday that Robert Smith,

on the balance of probability, murdered an unarmed man named Ali Jan

by kicking him off a cliff in Afghanistan and then ordering a subordinate to shoot him.

They found that he committed murder by machine gunning a man with a prosthetic leg

and then he took that leg back to Australia where he encouraged other soldiers

to use it as a novelty beer drinking vessel.

That while deputy commander of an SAS patrol in 2009,

he authorized the execution of an unarmed Afghan by a subordinate.

Basically these go on and in total there were six allegations of murder

across five separate incidents.

There were also allegations that he bullied other Australian soldiers,

which included threats of violence.

It's worth noting that a civil trial is different to a criminal trial

and the burden of proof is lower in a civil trial.

The unusual thing about this case is that Robert Smith is actually in Bali right now.

He wasn't there to hear what happened or to hear the findings.

And at this moment in time he is not facing any criminal convictions.

That's because this was a defamation case.

It is the most expensive defamation case in Australian history.

He brought it to the federal court against Fairfax and three individual journalists

who basically accused him of being a war criminal, a murderer,

and he went, no, I'm not. I'm taking you to court.

His resounding loss is being called a triumph for investigative journalism.

And interestingly, I only learned this when I went really deep

because there are some claims that weren't verified.

For example, the domestic violence allegation.

But the way defamation works is that you can't defame someone

whose reputation is already in tatters.

Like if you're a war criminal and the domestic violence thing is not quite proven,

basically his reputation is so damaged already by what they think he did

that, you know, he's not going to win that part of the trial.

Mia, what do you think all of this means?

I took a few things away from it.

I think it's important to note that this was Ben Robert Smith's idea.

Like the fact that he's now looking at criminal charges for war crimes

didn't have to happen.

But what happened was in 2018, two journalists,

one of them being Nick McKenzie and the other was Chris Masters,

who's a very well known investigative journalist,

used to work at the ABC, 40 years of investigative journalism experience.

So this was an extraordinary piece that they wrote.

Ben Robert Smith, who was at the time working for Kerry Stokes,

obviously Yoan's Channel 7, he's a big, you know, media billionaire.

I think he has the single largest private collection of war memorabilia in Australia.

So he's always been very interested in soldiers and the army in war and things like that.

So Ben Robert Smith at the time that he launched this lawsuit

was working in a very senior executive role at Channel 7 in Brisbane,

which is a job that he was put in by Kerry Stokes.

And Kerry Stokes, in fact, was the one that bankrolled this lawsuit.

Because the money...

$25 million, roughly.

And what happens, Mia? Like that money's just gone, right?

Well, no, not necessarily.

Channel 9, who now Fairfax Media is part of that,

is asking for costs to be awarded to them, which is what happens because...

It cost them a lot of money to go to grand time.

Yeah, it's $25 to $35 million for both sides,

because this has gone on for years, many, many years.

And so they obviously want their costs paid for

because he instigated this court case, which he's now lost.

Now, is Kerry Stokes going to pay for that?

As he's bankrolled this whole thing, unclear.

The fact that Ben Robert Smith, he was there every day,

he's a very imposing figure.

He's like six foot seven, or he's an enormous man.

You know, I was reading accounts yesterday.

He was in court almost every day.

There were photos published yesterday of him lying on a sun lounge

during Bali in his budgie smugglers.

The fact that he didn't even come to court.

Do you reckon that means he knew he was going to lose?

I don't know. I actually don't know.

He must have known, don't you think? He must have known.

I think that the details of this case are fascinating.

At its core, it's a deeply depressing story

because a hero is a dangerous thing, right?

Like he was unassailable.

A few years ago, we literally saw anyone who said anything bad

about this guy, torn apart.

Umi Steins very famously made a gag about him

on morning television and was roundly canceled.

And that was sort of before cancellation.

He was an unassailable hero.

And so one of the things that's worth noting

is that the people who spoke against him

to Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters,

the bravery that it took

because they were within the military,

within the SAS, within the same organization as Robert Smith,

where loyalty is everything.

You know, as you say, Mia, on a million levels,

he was an imposing figure.

The bravery and courage and conviction it took for them to speak out.

And I saw Nick McKenzie talking about it.

Today is a day of justice.

It's a day of justice for those brave men of the SAS

who stood up and told the truth

about who Ben Robert Smith is.

A war criminal, a bully and a liar.

These men couldn't live with themselves.

The trauma of having seen these things

and knowing what the truth was while watching Robert Smith

and various other people being so celebrated

was just something they couldn't stomach in the end.

The other really big point here, of course, is what happens next

because there was an inquiry, a big report in 2020

that did find out that there were several cases of criminal charges

being brought against Australian soldiers for actions in Afghanistan.

And Robert Smith's one of those, it seems.

But Nick McKenzie described him as kind of like a lance arm,

strong figure of the military.

It sounds like a flippant description, but who's the hero?

Also, he was an absolute fake, as it turns out, in many ways.

He also is going to now be pointing a lot of fingers as he falls down.

So it will be a very deep period of reckoning

for the Australian military in lots of ways.

Holly, I'm going to challenge you on the idea

that this is altogether depressing.

I reckon the fact that other military personnel came forward

and actually spoke out about what this, you know...

Pretty inspiring.

...that a war hero had done is pretty remarkable.

It would have, as you say, taken a lot of bravery.

And I think that there are steps now,

and this is going to be really interesting,

because Nick McKenzie and other journalists have said

this isn't where they want to stop

because this isn't justice for Ali Jahn and his family.

So that Afghan man, he had kids and he had a wife

and he had a family and he was an innocent civilian

until he is on trial as a war criminal,

which I think has to take place in an international court.

I think at the Hague.

Yeah.

And that has happened to Australian soldiers before.

Until that happens.

I mean, it's quite interesting, even the fact that there's rules of war.

Yeah.

Like, you know, some people might be saying,

but hang on, you're in battle

and how can you kill one person and it's okay,

but you kill someone else.

But it's like, even in war,

where the whole objective is to kill other people,

there's still rules.

Well, of course there are.

Like, there have to be.

I mean, it can't possibly be.

I mean, this is why this is so important.

I think there's almost a section of the population

that thinks we should turn a blind eye to this kind of stuff,

because they're like,

these guys are doing an impossibly difficult job

under impossibly difficult circumstances.

And that's true, right?

This is an incredibly complicated world that they're operating in.

That's why it's so important that the standards are so high for them.

And this is why this is such an important story to be uncovered.

And the investigative journalists,

I've heard people say,

well, you've never been to war.

So as if you'd know,

and then I turned on this morning,

I was getting in the car and I was listening to ABCRN about this.

And then my radio did its own thing

and turned on Kyle and Jackie.

Oh, and they were having a conversation.

And Kyle said, this is what one judge thinks.

I've never met the bloke.

So I don't know what he did.

But you go to war, you meant to kill people?

Like, who were we to judge?

And I was like, okay,

I don't think you've looked at the particulars of the case.

But the whole point is that we want our Australian military

to be held to a standard.

You don't just kill innocent people.

You don't kill people whose arms are bound,

because the Australian army are not the Taliban.

Just because you go to war with the Taliban

does not mean that you start behaving like a terrorist group, essentially.

And so that's why I find this a little bit hopeful,

because this is what we want.

We want Australia to have rules and standards when we are going to war.

And I don't think that this is an indictment on the entire military.

It's a few people and it's cultural, absolutely.

But there are some people who...

Well, it's one person.

Yes, yes.

That we know of, yes.

Exactly.

I absolutely echo what you say, Jesse.

I think that it's really, really important

in the same way that when there was a case last week

where a police officer tased a 95-year-old woman

in a nursing home who subsequently died,

not all police and not all military.

And I think that the vast, vast, vast majority of our defence force

and our police are doing incredibly hard jobs

and literally risking their lives.

And there will always be bad apples.

There will always be terrible people like there are in every profession.

But I also just want to bring it back.

And I know this feels really secondary and probably specific to us

because we are the media,

but the media get a really hard time, a lot of the time.

And sometimes it's very justified.

In this case, the fact that this defamation suit was bankrolled

by a media proprietor against journalists,

and Kerry Stokes actually came out and called them journalist scumbags.

Now, what they were doing was really not brave in the same way

as being on the front line in a military situation,

but investigative reporting is really hard.

It's really unglamorous.

It's really, really, really expensive.

It costs a lot of money and it doesn't make you a lot of money.

So we rely on our media organisations to invest money into doing those stories.

And so I think that Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters,

you can only imagine, I saw Nick McKenzie,

he was asked, he didn't volunteer this,

but he was asked by Sarah Ferguson on 7.30,

what was it like for you going through this personally?

He's a young guy, looks like he's in his 30s.

And he said, you know, I'm not going to lie.

There were times when I was curled up in a ball on the floor

just thinking I can't do this.

And this is years that they've been working on this case

that Ben Robert Smith brought forward.

And that's years that they haven't been able to do other investigations.

So I just think it's very, very hard for the media to win a defamation case.

In this case, they did.

And I just think it's not always black and white.

It's not always all the media are bad guys.

I mean, of course I would say that because I'm the media,

but you know, so is Kerry Stokes.

Thank you for feeling comfortable to share that with me.

But I will respectfully be withdrawing my engagement on this specific issue

in order to maintain the emotional bandwidth required

to keep my growth and health and well-being furthering in this current period.

There was an Instagram post by a UK psychotherapist that caught my attention a few days ago.

So I shared it on my Instagram and it turns out a lot of people

nodded their heads off in agreement.

Now the psychotherapist who wrote this is a woman called Sirat K Chawla.

She's London based and she's done this meme.

It says, pop psychology is not psychology.

Everyone you dislike is not a narcissist.

Every unpleasant experience is not trauma.

Having needs does not make you codependent.

Disagreement is not gaslighting.

Conflict is not abuse.

Taking offense is not being triggered.

Everything does not need to be normalized.

Speaking like an HR memo is not self-awareness.

These terms kind of make up this sort of therapy speak

that we're used to hearing across social media.

It's funny because since leaving the Royal Family,

Harry and Meghan have become almost a poster child for these kinds of terms.

The mainstreaming of this language,

which is very much the language of therapy,

and it's obviously very big in LA,

but now it's everywhere and particularly on Instagram.

Sirat K Chawla is very anti-this.

She says that pop psychology like this is cultish thinking

that reduces the vastly complex human experience

to these very few shallow ideas.

She says you don't need to scrub away at yourself healing.

It's okay to people please have needs and not go on a healing journey.

Jesse, are you feeling triggered by this conversation?

I really liked this.

That was my first reaction.

I find that these terms and the way that we are explaining

all experiences as trauma to be flattening,

I find that it reduces us to something that is almost less than human.

Real trauma exists and it has an actual definition in the DSM

which is used by psychologists.

And this is my problem and this is what she's saying about pop psychology

is that if I was a psychologist right now,

I'd be so angry at what is being done,

like the bastardization of the study of what is a science.

You were at an Esther Perrell talk with you and she,

because you would think that she would be a proponent of this kind of language,

but she's not.

Yeah, she's not either and she was critical of the term narcissist,

which we just hear so, so much.

I agree.

I understand it is prohibitively expensive to go and see a psychologist

and that is why some of these ideas are being simplified

and spread like wildfire on social media.

But in so doing, we have a lot of people who are not qualified

giving a lot of advice and using terms in the wrong way

and I don't think it's broadly good for us.

Holly, is that fair?

Right.

It's really interesting because as soon as I saw this meme,

I thought of Mia and I thought she will love this shit.

She will love it.

I put it in our out loud Slack channel and sure enough, she did love it

and so did many, many other people.

I actually am conflicted by it because there are bits of it that I'm 100% like,

yes, people say gaslighting so much.

I just can't bear it, right?

But on the other hand, isn't this inevitable?

Because when I was a young person, so let's say 20, 25 years ago,

people who went to therapy full stop were thought of as dickheads, right?

It's like, oh, how self-involved.

Imagine that paying money to talk about yourself

and then people took the piss out of therapy speak then.

You just have to watch movies from the 80s

and see how everybody was already rolling their eyes about it.

Therapy, as you've mentioned, Jesse, then was kind of a privilege

of a very few people who could afford to go

and wanted to go and were motivated to go.

And isn't this inevitable that everything gets diluted and spread around

and that that's got to have some good things about it, right?

Is that now all kinds of people can access it?

No.

What it is all in the service of is victim culture.

This is why I wanted to throw to you the question of, right?

When you posted this meme, Mia, and it went nuts,

and lots of people I know shared it, who were you aiming it at?

Because we can sit here and say, oh, it's about the democratization of therapy

and maybe people are using words they don't understand.

But I think the reason this hits a nerve is because a lot of people

are very irritated by people talking in this way for very specific reasons.

So who were you aiming it at when you shared it?

You know that I'm Team No Trigger Warnings and I'm Team Anti-Snowflake

and I'm not going to say it's generational,

even though I do think that there is a generation that is more prone to this.

You're right in terms of the good side is that people are more open

to talking about feelings.

On the downside is that not everything has to be pathologized and catastrophised.

If someone tells you something that you don't want to hear,

that doesn't mean that they're bullying you.

If you have a poor relationship with someone, it doesn't mean that they're toxic.

I get all that, but the flip side of this, because to me, this narrative,

the one that you're spinning out now, the Anti-Snowflake narrative,

has become so cliched and so like, that's what Generation Xers think,

that I almost stop listening to it.

Although I have sympathy for it myself, you know me,

I'm like a stoic normal, like whatever, get on with it, pull your socks up kind of person.

So although I have sympathy for it myself,

there's a little alarm in the back of my head that always sounds that is like,

isn't this just a lot of people who didn't used to have to listen to anybody

now having to listen to people?

You know, you didn't used to have to listen to people saying,

being treated like that at work or in my relationship or systemically or whatever,

was difficult for me and it was traumatic for me and it made me feel like this.

No one had to listen to that before and now we do and it challenges power

and it challenges power dynamics.

Like think about the way that women now have all this language,

they can talk about relationships that they've been in that made them feel awful,

coercive control, you know, and financial abuse and all these different things

that now they have language for.

It suited the patriarchy much better when no one had that language

and we didn't have to listen to women whinging.

So although I kind of have sympathy for this argument to a point,

I always have a little kind of flag going like,

is this just people in powerful positions not wanting to listen to people who aren't?

I think what's difficult about this too, there's an element of that,

but there's also some wisdom in knowing that a victim complex or seeing oneself

as always being victimized by the world is not going to make someone happy.

And so I think that that's also what you're responding to, Mia,

is that you're looking at this going, this isn't going to end well for you.

These infographics are doing exactly what they're criticizing,

which is that they are again pop psychology simplifying really complicated ideas

because a lot of these could be pulled from Jordan Peterson.

In fact, a lot of them are almost word for word what Jordan Peterson says.

Like it might not be your fault, but it is your responsibility.

I respect you enough to be truthful with you.

I will help you help yourself, all that kind of stuff.

And that's exactly why it makes me a bit uncomfortable because it's kind of like

we used to just say to women, like, get over that experience you had,

who gives a shit?

Like deal with it.

Whereas now women can say, well, no, that actually really affected my life

and it made me make these choices about this.

And I mean, what's wrong with that?

A lot of these things are not just talking about your own experience as a victim

because if you want to see yourself as a victim, that's fine.

But what it does is position everyone else in the world as a perpetrator

or a bully or a narcissist or a gaslighter.

It pathologizes other people.

Like you have the right to say that anything made you feel however you wanted to feel.

But I also think we do start to lose the meaning of words.

Like if someone says, I'm triggered by Jesse eating her lunch because I don't have lunch.

I like, I don't even know.

Like it's just, there's other words.

It's like irritated, annoyed, frustrated.

There's a million different words and this idea of the extremity of it all

sets everybody up that Jesse by eating her lunch is doing something to me that's bad.

And she's just eating her lunch.

Yes.

I fundamentally agree with that.

And there was even something that said like, you are not a powerless child.

You're an adult with agency, which is a great thing to say.

But for a lot of people, that's three years of therapy that will maybe get you there.

Like there's a lot that goes into that.

And even with the pseudo help, there's one kind of infographic that says a bunch of things

that aren't helpful to say to people such as it's not your fault or responsibility.

Well, there are lots of circumstances where that is an appropriate thing to say to someone.

I'm not going too deep in this particular woman.

I think it's just the reaction to it was really interesting because sometimes I'm like,

am I just a grumpy person?

And then it's like, no, I think there's a lot of people who are feeling like,

I just think the pendulum swung too far and it often does and it'll swing back.

But I feel that we're in the midst maybe of the start of a correction fingers crossed.

If you want to make out loud part of your routine five days a week,

I'm going to release segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays just for Mamma Mia subscribers

to get full access.

Follow the link in the show notes and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

Best and worst time.

And I'm going to go first because I have an unpopular opinion for my worst today.

And it hurts me more than it's going to hurt you, believe me, to say this.

My worst of the week was the finale of Ted Lasso.

Now, not because...

I'm so sorry this happened to you.

I know.

I know.

We did say it was a stupid show.

In order to have this conversation, you two have to put aside your feelings about Ted for a moment.

You're not speaking from a place of knowledge.

You're not speaking from a place of understanding.

But there are a lot of people listening to this show for whom that show was very important.

You know what you do at Tough Cookies, don't you?

No.

Dip them in milk.

Right. You say that football is life, right?

Football is life.

Yeah. Well, then your defence is death.

Oh.

The only person I've seen lose a man more often is Carrie fucking Bradshaw.

I love you guys so very much.

On three.

One, two, three.

I love you guys very much.

And the reason it was my worst of the week is not because it's finished, but because it was terrible.

I said it.

Holly, why was it why?

So the thing is about season three and I've swung around and round on this.

At first I was like, oh, I don't think it's as good this season.

And then it kind of won me around.

Episodes three and four were really good.

And I was like, no, we were just deluded and we've just the public mood has moved on and we don't need it as much as we used to.

So we're seeing it differently.

But by the end, even me, who loves that show, loves a bit of well-placed sentimentality.

It just was not as good.

It was a show that became a victim of its own success, which is something that happens really often to really successful shows and shows like Succession clearly managed to avoid.

But it became a victim of its own success in that the things that people loved about that show was it's like refreshing depiction of masculinity, the fact that it was optimistic, the fact that people did and said surprising things.

Like I would never forget in season two when Keely, who's one of the characters, she was busted by her partner masturbating to a video of him crying because she found his vulnerability so sexy.

Like that was the kind of stuff that you saw on that show that you didn't see in other places and it told these stories with a light touch.

But because they knew that everybody liked that so much and I hate criticizing this kind of stuff because I know how difficult it is to make anything worth watching or reading or whatever.

They knew that people loved that so they just lent into it too hard and by this season we got lectures about why revenge porn is bad or why people will never change or very much like the conversation we were just having about the tick box of psychological topics of the day, gaslighting, narcissism.

So it became overly moral.

It got overly moral, the writing got flabby, the plot lines weren't as surprising and it really does break my heart to say it because I kind of loved the show anyway.

But the last one, I saw your mum post Jesse like you would have laughed and cried and you know what I did a little bit.

I did laugh and cry a little bit like I cheered for them to win a game.

I cried at the airport but I saw everything coming and it just wasn't as good and I'm sorry Ted people.

I'm sorry but it's a good thing that it's finished.

It's a good thing.

What was your best?

My best.

I'm going to be quick.

It's that tomorrow it is my son Billy's birthday.

He is 11 and I am so proud of him.

I can't even tell you.

He is a remarkable kid in a million ways who doesn't always have the easiest time and tomorrow we're having a little party for him where he has like five friends coming.

You know anyone who has a kid who isn't the kid who always gets invited to parties knows how amazing it is that you are now at a place where Bill can have party with friends coming.

He's so excited about it.

I'm just so proud of him.

My best of the week is that my little boy is bloody awesome.

I will go next.

My worst is I've just written down terror.

Everyone knows he can't sleep towards the end of pregnancy and I'm just laying awake at night going.

I'm so scared.

Not even about birth anymore.

And I don't know if this is the internet.

I don't know.

And most people are so good and they've been so lovely but stop telling the pregnant ladies the horror story.

Yes.

Why do people do that?

Because it's like.

You used to love listening to those though.

You made a whole podcast about it.

I did.

I did.

And now I am going.

I just want to yell at the world.

I get it.

I'm never going to sleep again.

Breastfeeding is going to be the hardest thing I ever do.

Bombed my relationship.

Hardest time of my life.

Lose your identity.

Work will never be the same.

You'll never rest until the day you die.

Like I get it.

And then everyone's like, are you excited?

And I'm like, no, I'm fucking terrified.

Because it's a lot to do with the internet.

You keep getting confronted with like, I thought I'd love motherhood and I absolutely hate it.

And I'm like, wow, that's not good.

And like, I just feel like my mind is this sponge that's seeing all of these things.

Stop.

I think you need to.

I have a thing where I'm preparing for an interview and I don't know if it's the same with exams

because I can't remember.

But there's a point where I have to stop preparing or it's going to be worse.

And you have to just go, okay, finished now.

You've done everything you can.

You've made a whole podcast in the bump about it.

You've read all the books.

You've done all the things now.

Stop.

Yeah.

Just stop.

Maybe my expectations are so low that any joy I get, I'll be like, oh, there will be joy.

And we've said this before, but people don't tell you about the joy because it's hard to talk about that without sounding like an asshole.

But there is so much joy on the other side.

I promise.

I would go back to that in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity.

I would go back in a heartbeat.

And I've been looking at like baby things and going, oh, I just can't wait.

I know that it won't be the same that if it's mine, nothing beats that.

Like, oh my God, it's going to be great.

Just stop.

Enough now.

Stop the terror.

My best is that I finished my book.

Yay.

I've got just like a few kind of extra little typos.

I thought you already finished your book.

So what you do is you submit your manuscript, which I did.

And then I got my edits back and then you go, basically I'm at the stage now where it's all type set.

It's all ready.

And you...

So it looks like a book.

It looks like a book and you go through and I'm having my last read of it.

So there are kind of a few things where I'm like, oh, I'll just fix that up or whatever.

The editing process of this has been so much harder than my other ones.

Sounds like hell.

It flashes between times.

I'm not very good at maths.

So it's like, and she was 32 and they're like, no, she's not.

She's 29 and this child has aged 14 years.

And I'm like, guys, can you fix that please?

Cause I don't understand.

You know, people say you have to write a book you like because you're going to have to read that fucking thing 20 million times.

Holly, I hate it.

It's so true.

I just, I'm looking at it going, all right.

So I absolutely hate this and I can't even look at it anymore.

So I think that it is a finished and ready to go out into the world.

So I think it's out in maybe October.

I keep forgetting.

And then I saw that bloody Trent Dalton is releasing a book in October.

Which is really annoying.

That's okay.

You can take Trent.

You guys are pals.

Yeah.

Well, when you're in the bookshop buying Trent's book, look for mine.

We will be buying your book.

Thank you.

Mia, what's your worst?

My worst of the week is that Bonnie seems to have developed a new problem,

which is taking a dislike to black dogs.

And they pulled me aside when I went to pick her up from doggy daycare.

She goes a couple of times a week.

It's actually training school.

But they said, look, we've had to separate her because there's a black dog and she doesn't like it.

And she growls at it and she's not an aggressive dog.

And then a dog came in because it's, there's a vet there as well.

And it was this really old sweet Labrador and it was black and she started growling at this dog as well.

And it makes no sense because her best friend is a black dog called Chilly.

My dog.

And so we don't understand.

But then I spoke to my mum who used to have a black dog and she said their trainer told her that it was very common that dogs often don't like black dogs because they can't see their faces properly.

And so they don't recognize them.

They can't see what's going on.

So they can't tell if it's a happy dog or a sad dog.

So black dogs will often be very skittish because they're used to lots of dogs not liking them.

Oh my God.

So I just preferred it when dogs were just dogs.

Like I just, that was easier.

It really was.

My best is that I am going on a holiday.

I'm going on a second honeymoon next week with my husband.

It's quick.

I'm going with my husband with my first husband on a second honeymoon.

We are going to Paris and then we are going to Italy.

I haven't been on a like a city holiday.

I reckon for 15 years.

Are you going to go full like Harry Bradshaw?

Are you going to wear like Paris kind of?

See, when I'm packing, I always, for holidays, I always imagine myself as being a different person to the one I actually am.

And I imagine myself wanting to wear really nice clothes.

But I've got a weird thing that when I'm actually on holidays, I then just go into goblin mode.

But you might go to fancy restaurants.

Cities are different.

Cities are different.

You need to be walking around, not looking like a tourist.

And also it's hot there.

Get your husband to take like lots of pictures of you.

Like under the Eiffel.

Like really hot.

I'm a hot travel blogger.

Should I go hot travel?

Please do.

Please do.

Well, out loud as all know, I have a complex relationship with holidays.

Sometimes I go into holiday mea mode, which everyone in here is in fear of because I lean into work when I'm on holiday.

Do we have permission to completely ignore you?

Yeah, you do.

You do.

I'm going to try to delete all my work apps and try to enjoy my holiday.

Okay.

I'm still here on Monday, but Elfie, Scott, our wonderful executive editor will be filling in for me while I'm gone.

And how long are you gone again?

About two weeks.

We've got to get back before the baby comes.

It's like our baby moon, but it's like a grand baby moon.

Oh my God, are you going on a baby moon?

I love it.

I really didn't like my honeymoon the first time.

So I'm hoping that this will be a corrective experience.

Just don't have the baby early, please.

I'll try.

I'll try.

It's legs crossed.

Mia Friedman, you've got a recommendation.

One of my favorite shows, The Great, is back.

We've had some difficulties.

Apparently marriage has challenges.

There was some bloodshed.

She tried to kill me.

I did.

Well, that shakes a man.

How can we trust each other?

Faith.

Annoying answer.

Agreed.

I love this show.

I'm in full period at the moment.

Because you watched that Charlotte.

I watched Queen Charlotte and I was really wanting to stay in that moment.

So I went and watched the new season of The Great.

It's on Stan.

And here's a fun fact.

One of the writers on that show,

which is Australian Names Fiona series,

she also wrote Love My Way.

She was one of the writers on Love My Way.

I love that show.

And Tangle and a lot of other amazing Australian dramas.

Now she lives in London, works on this incredible show.

Other than air crash investigation,

my dad has never recommended a show to me.

And yesterday he called me and he said you should watch The Great on Stan.

It's very good.

I haven't said what it's about.

It's described as an anti-history comedy.

So if you think, oh, I'm not that interested in period things.

I'm not.

I'm not like a bonnet drama person at all.

But it's basically a satirical take on the story of a young Catherine the Great.

She's played by Elle Fanning and she marries the Emperor of Russia,

who is played by Nicholas Holt.

And he's this completely incompetent selfish brat.

And she's attempting to overhaul 18th century Russia

and bring it into the new world.

And it's very, very funny and it's satire.

So the period parts just kind of by the by, but highly recommend.

You can go back to the beginning, seasons one to three,

they're all streaming on Stan at the moment.

And we'll put a link in the show notes.

If you're looking for something else to listen to,

we had a conversation yesterday,

which I hope isn't relevant to me as holiday.

It was.

The subscriber saying what we yesterday was a discussion about a woman

who'd written to The New York Times to say that her husband

always booked himself in first class

and her and the kids in coach on a plane.

And we were discussing whether that man is the worst person in the world.

And I said, I thought he was a new to disagree.

We had exceptions.

And I think that we put an impossible dilemma to Holly,

which revealed her true character.

So if you want to know more about Holly and who she is

and what she values, then may I suggest you listen.

Link in the show notes, clickity click.

Thank you for listening to Australia's number one news and pop culture show.

This episode was produced by Emma Gillespie

with audio production by Leah Porges.

And we'll see you next week.

Bye.

Bye.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.