Mamamia Out Loud: More Free Bleeding, Less Soft Trolling

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Friday, the 8th of September.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Claire Stevens.

And on the show today, free bleeding is all over the internet.

Literally, it's letting your flow flow, the logical end point of period pride.

And are you a soft troll?

The answer is almost certainly yes.

And we wrap up the week with best and worst, which include sitting down shoes, burnout

and dance.

But first, Mia Friedman.

In case you missed it, women called Karen, and I know there are a lot of our loudest

called Karen, or you've been vindicated because a list of the top names of people most likely

to complain has been released.

And Karen's not on it.

Yay!

You know who's at the top of the list?

David.

Ew, no, David.

David is not happy Jan.

New figures have analyzed one star reviews.

So that's how they've worked out, like the people who leave a one star review on a site

called Trustpilot.

And they've analyzed tens of thousands of one star reviews over the last 15 years.

And they've found that men called David, or maybe just a couple of very angry David's

who are leaving lots of reviews, have left more negative reviews than anyone else.

You're like a big dirty raccoon, David.

This is the list, right?

So they've done 15.

It goes David, Paul, John, Chris, Mark, James.

Okay, so no women at all.

Then Sarah makes an appearance at number eight.

Steve, Michael, Andrew, Peter, Richard, Sam, and then Emma unexpectedly at number 14 and

Alex at number 15, which could be male or female.

Yeah.

This surprised me because I was certain there'd be a Bill or a Bob.

They're very complaining.

Leave Bill alone.

I've got a Bill.

But they're very complaining names to me personally.

Did you notice the tone of this article was very like, these are the people businesses

need to listen to.

The people leaving one star reviews and it's like, well, when it's a Karen, we all make

fun of her for complaining.

Yeah.

David, apparently his grievances are very legitimate.

Someone was free bleeding all over my Instagram this week.

I opened the app and there was a very glamorous woman dancing at a music festival with blood

all down her leg.

This is what went on in my brain when I saw that picture.

I went, ew.

And then I went, no, Holly.

Remember, there's nothing wrong with period blood.

This is the most natural thing in the world and we have rewritten the rules of period

shame and now girls and women don't have to pretend that it's blue tinted water that

leaks out of them once a month and isn't that marvelous.

And then my brain went, ew.

Then I started seeing stories around everywhere about free bleeding, probably because I stopped

too long looking at the bloody leg on my Instagram.

Here is a little grab of what free bleeding sounds like on social media.

I need all of the free bleeders to come to the front.

How exactly does that work?

Free bleeding is definitely not for everyone.

I will definitely say that.

I didn't think it was for me until I started doing it.

I only do it at home, okay, before anyone comes to me for that.

I'm not bleeding on public things.

I don't really leave the house.

I'm just bleeding on things in my own house and on things I mean my underwear.

Why?

I'll tell you why.

It's a bit of a pride movement on social free bleeding and it's about a few things.

It's about this movement to not use what they term obstructive period products like tampons

or moon cups.

In some corners, this is a bit of an anti-capitalist protest because it's saying, you know, this

is an unfair tax on women to have to buy this stuff.

And then there's also other corners that believe that it's unnatural.

So a radical free bleeder might not even use period pants, but a sort of more mainstream

free bleeder would use period pants when they're out and about, but at home they'll stay home

and sit on a towel.

Oh, this is ridiculous.

On TikTok, the main gist seems to be, on heavy days, I stay home, so I'll work from

home, I'll choose to say no to social things and I sit on a towel and I let my body do

its thing.

Oh, that's terrific advance for the feminist cause that women should halt their lives for

several days every month.

That's great for women.

It's interesting, isn't it?

Right?

Because if you think about when I was young and the adverts for tampons were all very

much about, you can still go swimming, you can still play tennis, go, go, go.

But there's been a cultural swing to like, well, why should women have to pretend that

their life is going on as normal when they are bleeding heavily?

Some evangelists of free bleeding say that it shortens periods and reduces cramps.

There is no scientific evidence that that is the case.

But one thing I'd love to know is we've kind of in an age of de-stigmatizing periods, as

I sort of joked about before, which a lot of people are saying is great, but is bloodstained

everything the logical conclusion of sort of de-stigmatizing periods?

Okay.

Firstly, you say there's no evidence that obstructive things to catch your period has

anything to do with cramping.

That is not necessarily true.

There is a little bit.

Sorry, I meant there's no scientific evidence to say that free bleeding is necessarily better.

Yes.

But there is some evidence that tampons, for example, because it's a foreign object and

it's hitting against your vaginal walls, that that can actually exacerbate preexisting

cramps.

I thought that was a fun little fact.

And if women even anecdotally feel like tampons increase their period pain, then all power

to them for not using tampons.

I reckon we all need to be honest with each other.

I think we're all free bleeding a little bit.

Like, I never know when my period is starting or finishing.

So it's a game.

It's a game.

You're trying to get Marina.

I'm like, I don't know.

Sometimes it comes and then sometimes I decide on day five, I go, you know what?

It's over.

And my period says, excuse me, I'm not over.

And I say, yes, you are.

All my undies have weird stains.

And so I kind of think that this is the next logical conclusion of that.

Also, I think the increase in free bleeding is from period undies.

I think they've revolutionized the way that we think of periods and that it's not

necessarily the case.

I mean, there are some radical people who want to sit on towels and not leave their

house, but there are other people who are just thinking there's got to be more

economical ways for me to deal with my period.

And also now that we're very aware of the climate and what things like pads

and tampons do for the environment, we're taking on new ideas.

The closer I looked at this, I think there's something really profound to it

because menstrual activism has been a thing since before the days of Jermaine

Greer, but she particularly made it popular with the quote in the female

unit, which was, if you think you are emancipated, you might consider the idea

of tasting your own menstrual blood.

If it makes you sick, you've got a long way to go, baby.

Jermaine, I'm in trouble with Jermaine for my who, aren't I?

Oh, shit, I'm a bad feminist already.

I remember seeing that and being so disgusted and thinking, well, there's

absolutely no way I'm ever going to feel comfortable consuming my bodily waste.

There is an idea that we are so disgusted by our own bodies, by our

own hair and our own fat and our menstruation.

And a lot of it is to fulfill a capitalist agenda.

Like we need to feel disgusted in order for there to be an entire industry around.

For us to then go and buy all the things that will make us smell more acceptable,

look more acceptable, not leave bloodstains all over the place.

And then there's the whole feminine hygiene industry, which we know we don't even need.

Sorry, I do need it.

Like, I'm quite happy with the feminine hygiene industry.

No, but there's a lot of products that we know are actually bad for women's vaginas.

My issue with this is I just think it's gone too far.

It's gone too far.

I think that it's one thing when women felt that they couldn't say the word period.

Without everyone going, you know, or boys or men going, you know, that's disgusting.

But it is an excretion.

It is a bodily fluid in the same way.

Sweat, snot, wee and poo and mucus and all of those kinds of things.

Boys eat snot.

Well, it's not as some girls.

Come on, hashtag not all men are snot eaters.

But my point is that it drives me a bit nutty when things that have been

designed to help us to make us live easier lives, more convenient lives.

Are we going to get rid of nappies?

Are we going to get rid of toilet paper?

Are we going to post pictures of ourselves weeing our pants?

Are we just going to not use toilets?

Are we just going to like go home when we need to wean just we on the floor

or we in the garden or we in the shower or poo in the garbage bin?

OK, firstly, we in the shower is very normal.

Secondly, I think I don't mean what?

Yes, of course, I mean like you going, I need to go to the toilet.

And instead of sitting on the toilet, going and weighing straight into the shower,

you're doing a very slippery slope argument, which I love for you.

I love for you.

But I know that you are very evolved.

You are in terms of even like your feminist beliefs

and your self actualisation about your body.

You may be more evolved than other women.

And the fact is there are a lot of women all over the world

who feel shame and confusion about their period.

There are people who believe that it's dirty

and how many women worldwide would get their period and believe that they were dying?

Like there are still so many girls and women.

I don't think that's what we're talking about.

I agree with all of that.

But what's it got to do with free bleeding?

It de-stigmatises it.

Oh, come on. But does it, though?

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you.

I examine my own ick at seeing visible period blood on my Instagram feed.

You know what I mean?

Like my ick came first and then I'm like, no.

But also, why do you need to see blood on your Instagram feed?

Like why? I don't need to see it.

It doesn't emancipate me.

I think it's attention seeking.

There's a difference between stigma and private.

Like there are some things that not everybody has to see, like toilet things.

I really get that it's kind of rewriting a narrative.

I was thinking about this the other day, that I went through a phase in my life

when I was a teenager obsessively reading about Marilyn Monroe.

And there was an anecdote that was in one of those books when I was young

about her being in a tight white dress walking away from some photographers

and her having a period stain on the back of her dress.

And the reason that anecdote was in that story and really stuck in my head

is it was trying to say she was messy and out of control.

It was kind of being used as a code for a woman who was chaotic.

Like she couldn't keep hold of her period.

You know what I mean? She didn't know.

And I entirely understand we need to very much unpick that.

And I think we have gone a really long way to it.

But I also, I don't know, I kind of agree with me that there are some things

that I don't know we need to fly the flag for.

However, I say that I am delighted that period ads on TV now

don't use the tinted blue water anymore and actually are admitting

that that's not what comes out of our parts.

Because I think that confused a lot of a lot of young girls.

But blood pride, I don't know.

I think it's one of those things where it has to go

really, really far in order for the norm to land somewhere in the middle.

So we need that quote from Jermaine Greer saying, taste your own menstrual blood.

And you go, I personally don't think I need to do that.

But I get what you mean.

That we need to examine our own disgust.

Yeah. And we are also more aware now that everybody's period is not the same.

So like a woman who might need to stay home on the days when her

flow is really heavy and she's struggling a lot, that is easy to dismiss.

It's like, oh, for God's sake, are we meant to just let women isolate themselves?

But some women need to.

So maybe it's good that that's normalized too.

But even the fact that that Marilyn Monroe story, that there is shame,

like we have probably all had that moment where we've either been paranoid

that we've led through our clothes or we actually have.

And the shame you feel and you wrap something around you.

And no matter how confident you think you are,

it's this moment that just elicits this huge, huge embarrassment.

And I think the more that we can tackle that and examine that and think, hold on,

it's not women's fault that they're bleeding.

Yeah, but it doesn't have to be this binary of I'm just going to walk around

the party with blood running down my legs and stains on the back of my dress.

Or I'm going to be mortified and hate myself.

Like there's a middle ground, which is where I think most of us live

and most of us would like to live, where it's like, oh, God, that's a bit mortifying

because it's a private thing in the same way that we can talk about

like bladder leakage and whatever.

But if I, you know, do a wee in my pants,

I don't really want everyone to be able to see it because it's private.

Is it a stain on my character forevermore?

No, you don't have to be proud of everything.

But if we are kind of obsessed with keeping it private,

the fact is it's not always going to be private.

I wonder if any of this content is reaching men

and if it's de-stigmatizing things for men.

Because if you're a heterosexual man

and you are having sexual relationships with women,

you may come across a period at some point and you shouldn't be disgusted by it

because it is not a bio hazard.

It is not going to make you sick.

It is not going to spread a disease.

It's just blood.

Every man who's had sex with an adult woman has encountered period blood.

And I've yet to met a man who's horrified by it.

Oh, I think there'd be some pretty interesting chats among among men.

Tell us out louders.

What is a soft troll and does it describe precisely all of us?

This week, I came across an article in Stylist called Rise of the Soft Troll.

Why do we privately pick apart strangers on the Internet

that explored this concept?

And I'm ashamed to say I recognized myself immediately.

The article begins by describing perhaps it's an influencer trying a bit too hard

with her relatable content.

Maybe it's a colleague who relentlessly overshares in her Instagram captions.

Someone from school who won't stop sharing Facebook posts

on what is surely a pyramid scheme.

We might know them in real life or just critique them from afar.

But we follow them for one reason, to judge and share screenshots in the group chat.

The author of this article, Katie Rosinski,

speaks to a number of people who admit to soft trolling

and discusses whether the phenomenon is just the natural evolution of a modern

form of gossip.

She acknowledges that gossip can serve a social purpose

when the information being shared is socially relevant and protective

and it can galvanize and unite vulnerable people.

But is soft trolling at all valuable or is it just completely toxic, Mia?

I mean, it's got a new name, but people have done this since the beginning of time.

Like it's just bitching about people, really.

I think that the Internet's changed a couple of things.

Firstly, social media has meant that you can take those mean things that you say

and turn them into performance for an audience.

The difference between doing it privately in a group chat and doing it

publicly is firstly, the person who you're saying it about won't know.

So it's far less harmful.

And secondly, your intention is still not noble.

I'm not going to defend it as noble.

And yes, of course, I do it too.

But it's less cruel than doing it in a performative attention seeking way

to invite public ridicule and to say something about yourself

that aren't you clever, social media can be the worst of that.

But I think it's human nature.

There's a woman I went to uni with who's now fully into like a pseudo

scientific MLM and I can't look away and I am constantly sharing screenshots

of what she's posting and I've analyzed why I do it.

And I think it's to get validation for my own world view and confirm

that what she's selling is bullshit.

And I want to whinge about how these sorts of businesses exploit women

who are desperate to make money quickly.

I do think sometimes there is a bit more of a noble reason.

And I think that I do it from a sociological and psychological perspective.

I just like to analyze people nonsense.

It's just gossip, right?

And gossip serves a purpose.

We all know this.

They say that one of the reasons why negative gossip is more bonding

than positive gossip is because it builds a bridge of trust because you have

to trust that the person who you're gossiping to is not going to rat you out

and say you'll never believe what Claire Stevens said about you.

So we immediately build a bond when we're gossiping negatively.

And I think that we all recognize ourselves in this because I'm certainly guilty of it.

We all do it all the time where you're like, look at this thing that this person posted.

Look at this thing this person read.

But I think that the rebrand of it is soft trolling and putting it in sharp relief

to hard trolling, which I guess is public trolling, which is public criticism.

There's no doubt that it's less harmful, me or a hundred percent right.

But it still isn't great because we all know that everybody does this.

It kind of creates this thrum of anxiety all the time about what people are really saying

and what they're really thinking, which any schoolgirl would recognize as like

people bitching about you behind your back instead of to your face, right?

It's still bitching and you still know people are doing it.

So just because they're not saying it to you and we all have had the experience

of it sort of peeking its head above the calm water.

Do you know what I mean?

So you'll see somebody might send you a message by mistake or oops, wrong chat.

And you'll see like, oh, shit, we've sort of touched on it before.

But there's a whole site dedicated to this on the Internet where people go

and bitch about people on TV and all those things.

And they're pretending that they're doing it in a private group chat setting.

But everybody knows it's there.

So it still just makes people feel insecure and worried all the time

about what people are really saying about them.

Having just teased you for taking moral high ground, Claire,

I think that ultimately we should be trying not to endlessly bitch negatively

about people and we would feel better.

I reckon what this article didn't pick up on is the intersection

between soft trolling and hard trolling.

The writer of this article tried to say, there's no evidence

that if you're soft trolling, you're then going to become a hard troll

and, you know, leave mean comments on somebody's posts or send them DMs or whatever.

But I think the nature of the Internet is that passive trolling becomes active.

So if you are clicking on Daily Mail articles about an influencer that snarky,

you are contributing to a machine where they're then going to write more articles.

If you're listening to a gossip podcast that is, again,

another form of just direct trolling, then you're telling that podcaster,

yes, I care about this.

I'm listening to it.

So I think a lot of us think that there's an innocence and a passiveness to our trolling.

But it's far more active than we'd like to acknowledge.

I want to ask the difference and for some clarity between gossip and trolling,

because I don't see them as the same thing.

I think trolling is...

Negative.

...snarky and meaner and there's more of a like screenshotting, poking fun at it.

Whereas gossip is like, did you know that someone so did this?

Yeah, the classic example of soft trolling is that I post a picture of myself or whatever.

And instead of you coming on to my feed and going,

who do you think you are?

You stuck up bitch.

You screenshot it.

You post it in your group chat and go, look at this stuck up bitch.

Who does she think she is?

That's the difference.

No, I know what that is.

But then how do you distinguish that from gossip?

Because to me, gossip is more this is the town that I think

Holly Wainwright lives in or I heard that Claire and Jesse are fighting

and that none of those bitches on out loud like each other.

To me, that's really different.

Yeah, I want to go back to what you said, Claire,

which really stuck out at me because I think this is true.

You want confirmation of your worldview.

So I find that when something upsets me or I have a strong reaction to it,

I will go and post it in one of my group chats because I want somebody

to meet me at that same level of negativity.

Yeah.

And that feels validating to my worldview.

And that gives me a little hit of dopamine or serotonin.

But then I feel a bit dirty.

I think that ultimately gossip does make us feel dirty.

It's like eating too many salt and vinegar chips.

Like the first ones are the most delicious and fantastic thing you've ever eaten.

You get to the bottom of the bag, you feel sick, right?

That's how I feel.

I know personally.

And of course I do it.

I'm not pretending that I don't.

That if I've been engaging in too much negative, even in our group chats or whatever,

then I literally it will keep me up at night.

Like it will literally keep me up that level of like, oh, the things I said.

I don't know.

It's just it's not good for us.

It's because you're a nice person fundamentally.

Engaging in that behavior, that soft trolling does reframe the way you're

looking at everyone.

So I'm then scrolling through Instagram and instead of saying something

and going, that's annoying and continuing to scroll, I am screenshotting it.

I am going into my photos app and getting the text to thing so that I can

circle the bit I find annoying and I'm drawing an arrow.

And then I'm having a five minute conversation about that.

And that is terrible for my well-being and my and the way I look at the world.

Based on insecurity.

Yeah, I know that whenever I want to soft troll about something,

it's because it's poked something in me that I feel insecure about.

Or particularly among Australians, it's people who are trying.

People who are trying hard.

I'm like, oh, look how hard that person's trying.

And I bet people say that about me.

Like, it's such a horrible way to look at other people.

The other point this article made that I thought was an interesting point was

is soft trolling water cooler gossip for the working from home generation?

Of course. I took that bit out too.

I think, yes, we're all living online in such a way that, of course, it is.

It's like, this is office gossip.

This is exactly the same as water cooler, except that in a water cooler setting,

you still have to watch yourself a little bit because you're still

in an open setting where you may be overheard.

People might see you.

People might go, whereas in a group chat, you feel possibly mistakenly

really safe to let your, you know, your flag fly

until somebody screenshots that and sends it to your friends,

which happens to school kids all the time.

And we've also seen some really unfortunate examples of when people's

phone records are subpoenaed in court cases and defamation cases.

And you look at it and I think everyone thinks, oh, they're but the grace of God,

go I, because when you think about what's in your text messages

and how it would look, how hurtful it would potentially be

if they got released into the world, that certainly gives you pause for thought.

So should we try and do less soft trolling?

Is that out loud? Is is that what we should all take away from this?

So I would just be aware of when we should.

But then what am I meant to do with my feelings?

I don't know where to put them.

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

we release segments on Tuesdays and Thursdays just for Mum Mia subscribers.

To get full access, follow the link in the show notes

and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

It's Friday, which means we're wrapping up with our best and worst moments of the week.

And we've got a few doozies.

Holly, can you kick us off with your worst of the week?

You two live through my worst of the week.

Had a little bit of a meltdown on Tuesday morning

because of this, in fact, it was very silly, worst and entirely on me.

We've been doing the up front says out loud as no,

which means basically Claire Mia and I and others of the Mum Mia family

have been traveling and presenting to market about this is what Mum Mia's got

coming up. This is what, you know, all that kind of stuff.

It's been fantastic.

You have to look a bit fancy when you're standing on a stage in front of lots

of people talking to them.

And I have one pair of very fancy shoes that I have worn twice during up front.

They are what we call sitting down shoes.

They are not under any circumstances, walking shoes.

And I have lots of pairs of heels that you can walk in, but not these.

Tuesday morning, the Uber that was taking me to where we were doing our thing

dropped me off a block further away from where it was.

And so I had to walk in my sitting down shoes for a block and it was hot.

When I got to the venue, I had a little meltdown.

I'd only walked in them for like 10 minutes and my feet were in agony

and I had these massive blood blisters on my feet.

Oh, you were doing some free bleeding from your feet.

And I was in such a state, people tried to talk to me and I was just like,

I can't, I had a little meltdown.

I want to tell a cry.

She did.

Completely beside myself all because of this stupid pair of shoes

that I am now going to ceremoniously burn.

They looked really good, though, and they went with your top.

And so that's what was hard, was you kept saying my blood blisters.

And I was like, but they look really cool.

I think there's a place and a time for shoes that you can only walk short distances.

Oh, not at all.

Like you need to be carried.

What I actually needed by that time was to be carried from the backstage room

to the state.

And Mariah Carey moment, yes.

Afterwards, our head of marketing, Rob, was like, come and do this interview.

Come and talk to these people.

And I was just like, I can't walk.

It was so modifying and I have so many nice shoes.

Anyway, that was my worst.

My best.

And I know, look, I was just singing the praises of positivity.

It's not really nice that my best is that a man lost his job this week.

Shaden Freud, Holly Wainwright.

But soft trolling.

Spanish football coach, Jorge Vilda, lost his job this week.

You might remember he is the coach of the Spanish women's football team

and Spain just won the women's World Cup.

So they reached the pinnacle of achievement.

In their sport, the biggest success ever.

Their coach has just been fired because as we have talked about on Out Loud,

he is not a nice person.

More than 15 of the players on that national team all refused to play

while he was in charge.

The Football Federation, obviously, decided to keep him in his job

long enough that it took them to win the World Cup.

Now he's been fired.

Important distinction.

He is not the guy who kissed the player.

So he is not Lewis Rabialis, who is still refusing to be fired.

Even though he has been told to resign and stand down,

he is like a little boy sitting there with his fingers in his ears going,

he is not stepping down, but the coach has been fired.

And it made me happy because I thought that's progress.

That's what should happen.

And interestingly, the Spanish Football Federation didn't comment in their statement.

They didn't say why.

They just didn't.

Actions, not words.

I think it's great.

That was my best.

What were your worst and bests of the week?

So my worst, I am on the record as being a lazy girl.

I'm very, very, very lazy and being lazy makes it hard to get things done.

I ordered a rug weeks ago, not a fancy rug, not an expensive rug,

quite a cheap rug, and it is meant to be coming to my house.

But the thing is, there's something broken with the post in Australia,

and it's that things only get delivered in business hours.

And I'm at work in business hours, and so is my partner.

And then they come collect it from the post office during business hours.

And I'm like, that's a problem in that I'm still at work.

And there is physically no way for me to get my hands on this rug.

And you might say, Claire, actually, you work three days at Mum and Mia,

you freelance the other days, you actually do have some time.

Well, no, because I forget in those hours.

And I only remember when I'm in the office.

So true.

And it's so stressful.

I just don't know where this rug is.

I think it's been at the post office and then being sent back.

I have lived through this several times, being a fellow lazy girl.

Yes.

The thing is, in the last place I lived,

you could kind of leave a package out the front.

And the postman would be like, it's probably going to be fine.

The current place I live, you could not leave something outside

because it's going to get stolen.

It's like a thoroughfare.

I almost just want to leave a note every time I order something online

saying, leave it outside.

If it gets stolen, that's on me.

It's more likely for me to get it if it's just left there.

And I trust the kindness of strangers.

What I don't trust is myself to collect the thing I've ordered.

Hard relays.

So if anyone knows where my rug is, please let me know.

I just need somebody to come to my house when I'm there

and when I can be bothered to answer the door.

I think it's tricky, I agree.

It's really hard.

So anyway, any lazy girl solutions to those kind of life dilemmas, very welcome.

But my best is we had Father's Day at my parents' house last Sunday.

And Father's Day is a big one in my family

because it's also my pop's birthday.

He turned 96.

96. 96.

And it's Simon's birthday, my cousin, who a lot of people have probably heard of.

So he turned 38.

He was very excited because he got tickets to Wicked.

Neither me or Jesse could take him.

He's Kara talking, he had the best time ever.

But it reminded me that day, kind of looking around,

that our family is changing with partners and babies and dynamics as,

you know, cousins are growing up and, you know,

a cousin might actually cook something, not me, but some of my cousins,

that the nature of those days are changing.

And it was a good reminder that even though I can get very nostalgic

about how, like, my family is not the same as it was when I was a teenager

and sometimes I really miss living at home

and I miss all the time I got to spend with my brothers,

there's so much to look forward to.

Yeah.

There's kind of another, another era of family to come.

And I think those days remind you how important it is to turn up

and to keep doing those days, even when, you know,

you're going through tough periods and people might be sick

or it might feel like that things are changing.

It reminded me things are changing in good way, positive direction.

Simon was in great form.

He met Luna for the first time.

So they had a very big cuddle.

And he also did a jig when his birthday came out.

So he just had the best day.

It was really nice.

And it was Lucas first father's day.

It was iconic.

My worst this week is burnout.

I'm so, so tired on such a deep level.

As Holly said, we've been doing our up fronts.

And so I'm tired on a surface level because we've been doing a lot of

traveling, a lot of talking at these big events.

And it's quite stressful and I'm tired, tired and drained, drained.

But also like the level under that, the level under that, the level under that.

And it's because, I mean, a lot of people will understand this.

Like when you run a business, you just have to keep going.

You can be burnout, but it's not even an option to just take a holiday.

I'm not that I can't take holidays and I've taken holidays this year

and I'm going to be taking more time off.

But fundamentally, the pressures of running a business

that lead to you feeling burnt out are not alleviated ever.

As long as you own that business.

So it's not even that you can look forward and go, oh, you know what?

I need to make a life change.

I'm going to change my job or, you know, choose a different life,

particularly when you've got, you know, we've got a company

and hundreds of people work here.

And so there's no answer to it.

It's not a crisis.

It's just a feeling, feeling burnt out.

Do you find that when you're burnt out, so you can't stop in the way

that some people do, like stop and reset, you're not a big holiday person?

No, I've been getting better.

You've been getting better.

You have got better at holidays.

But for a lot of your career, you weren't a holiday person.

Do you just work through burnout and then what happens?

You have to. And that's why it gets worse.

And it's not just me.

It's like, you know, you might have a chronically ill child.

You might. There's lots of reasons why people are burnt out.

And I acknowledge my privilege in the way I'm burnt out, you know what I mean?

But one of the things that causes me to feel burnt out is repetition.

Doing the same thing over and over and over.

It's a specific type of creative burnout.

Other people get it too.

But and for me, there's so much repetition involved in running a business

because there's always new people joining.

You're always having to go over the same things.

That's one of the things that just exhausts me the most.

And there's no other option.

What's fixed it in the past?

I mean, not fixed.

It's the wrong word. But like, you know, you've been here before.

You've been running this business for a really long time.

What helps?

Having ADHD helps because I bounce back quickly.

But each time I'm just getting sort of more tired.

What helps is throwing myself into something new creatively.

The things we announced at UpFront were launches of some new

content initiatives and new podcasts and various things.

So what I like to try and do when I'm feeling like this is take a break

for some of the things that I've been doing for a really long time

and challenge myself and do some new creative things.

So that's my plan for the next year.

I think you're on the brink of something new.

Like you're very good with your with your instincts.

Even like, I remember that Lady Startup

when you sort of had instincts about that and then you threw yourself into that.

I feel like you're on the brink.

We should all just be waiting for the next me a freedom here to emerge from the chrysalis.

My best was also UpFront.

It was travelling with you guys.

It was great.

One of my favourite things is travelling with you.

And I've not travelled with you before really Claire much.

Holly, Jesse and I, of course, travel quite a lot for out loud.

And we've travelled before for UpFront.

But it was just really fun.

And we also had Lee Campbell and Elfie Scott and Harry Jack, who's our head of creative.

And it was just funny.

I mean, I do a particular thing when we're travelling

because I just like to talk a lot and shop a lot, except when I don't.

And then I just put on my headphones and I don't want to speak to anybody.

But what I really enjoy like out loud is if you like the show,

I know a lot of people sort of talk about the banter and the chemistry that we have, right?

And you would think that on a daily podcast that we've hosted,

Holly and I have hosted this together for so many years,

you would think we would run out of things to talk about.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

I get so excited by all of these pockets of time at airports, in lounges, in Ubers,

green rooms.

She always wants rehearsals just before we go out on stage.

She wants us to fight about something always.

I know I'm doing my predictable thing of being like Pollyanna cheerleader.

But the thing that was great about up front, though, it is exhausting and it is a lot of work.

But far out, I feel so proud doing those things.

And you should feel so proud, Mia Friedman, to stand in those rooms

with all those people who've come to hear what you and your people are saying

about Australian women, all the things we're making.

It's such an amazing thing, like it really is.

Once do I feel proud. It's so weird. Oh, my God.

I had another friend ask me about this.

He's like, do you ever sit back and just go, well, and I'm like, not for one second in one day.

If I could go in your head and tinker around, I'd give you a bit of that.

I wish you would. Because I do do that.

Like, I mean, I know it's different.

It's not my business, but like I am so proud of what we do every day.

Like, I'm so proud.

There you go. That's nice.

That was a good therapy session.

Thanks for being with us out loud.

Good. I have a recommendation before we go.

And it's actually a circular recommendation, which is always the best kind on out loud.

So I've been traveling a lot, been away a lot.

But Brent and I had a weekend together last week and he's been away too.

So we've been like ships in the night.

Our main bonding activity, like many tired couples, I know, is watching something together.

And you know how you often have, you'll have a show you're watching

and they've got a show they're watching and then you have a show you watch together.

We've come to the end of the show we were watching and I needed another one.

So I went in the out louders and I said, give me some good shows to watch together.

And the out louders delivered and they gave me such a long list

and the one I'm recommending because that Saturday night we sat down to watch it

and we ended up sitting up way too late watching about five was Mr. In Between.

Tell us a little bit about why you're here.

My name is Ray, I'm 40, I've got a kid.

Do you think that you've got an anger problem?

No.

There's people in this world who will take and take to us, nothing like you.

Man, why don't you watch where you're going, eh?

What was that?

You've got to fight back, you know.

Always better to give them a save.

Is it?

It's an Australian show that is quite old now.

It started in 2018.

I think there are three seasons and it is about a suburban hitman,

which is also a trope that is, you know, a little bit done.

But it's so good.

The hitman's called Ray Shoesmith and he's played by the co-creator of this,

who's a guy called Scott Ryan.

And he's like juggling his career in dodgy organised crime

with being a boyfriend, a dad to his daughter, a brother, all the things.

Is it funny?

It's funny, it's dry, it's insightful.

It is violent, like you would hate it, Mia, it has violence in it.

But it's really interesting.

So, for example, he's in this anger management group.

He got sentenced to by the court and he's a hitman who murders people, right?

But he's in there and he's disgusted that all the guys he's in there

with are domestic violence perpetrators, most of them.

And he's coming to terms with that.

But then I'm towards the end of the first season.

He's like his own misogyny is kind of being pointed out to him by the facilitator

because he kind of thinks, well, I'm not that guy.

It's really interesting.

It works on lots of levels.

It's anyway, I'm loving it.

The out louders were right, it's on binge.

There are three seasons, Mr. Inbetween, so good.

If you're looking for something else to listen to on yesterday's subscriber episode,

we had a very interesting conversation and learnt about an unexpected ADHD

symptom that Mia experiences.

Mia gets quite candid and shares how entering a shopping centre

is a very different experience for her and people with ADHD.

It's true. It's about the connection.

This is based on a big New York Times story that came out this week

based on the connection between ADHD and shopping addiction.

I sat in that conversation and thought hard, can't relate.

And that's why I find it so fascinating.

So we have a big conversation about that kind of impulse control

and how it can reveal itself.

And how some of us don't have it. Yes.

But we've got lots of clothes.

There's a link to that episode in the show notes.

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

show. This episode was produced by Amalene Gazillas.

The assistant producer is Tali Blackman.

And we've had audio production by Leah Porges.

We'll see you on Monday. Bye.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mum Mia subscribers listening.

If you love the show and want to support us, subscribing to Mum Mia

is the best way to do so.

There's a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.