Mamamia Out Loud: One Of Us Missed The Marriage Window

Hi Mamma Mia listeners, Beck Melrose here, dropping into your feed to talk about our

new Mamma Mia podcast, Things You Didn't Learn in School.

Things You Didn't Learn in School is the show that helps you realise that we weirdly

all graduate without the basic life skills we actually need.

Should I buy or rent?

How does voting work?

Should I be investing my money?

How do I even talk to my mechanic?

And most importantly, where the hell do I park my car?

I'm Ann Burnham and I'll be the first to admit we obviously still have some things

to learn.

But that is where our show comes in.

And we know what you're thinking, Beck and Ann, why are you even making a podcast when

we can just Google all of this?

Because you haven't Googled it, have you?

No.

So we rounded up experts on everything from finance to fallopian tubes in a cute little

curriculum just for you.

Things You Didn't Learn in School is a new podcast by Mamma Mia.

Listen now wherever you get your podcast.

You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded

on.

Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud, what women are actually talking about on Friday,

the 20th of October.

I'm Holly Weymright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Claire Stevens.

And before we start today's show, if we're doing our jobs well, most days it should

feel like we walk into the studio here at Mamma Mia Out Loud, sit down and start gas

bagging without a moment's thought.

But as I'm sure you're all aware, that's not actually how the show works.

An enormous amount of thought and discussion goes into what we talk about on the show and

how we talk about it and when we talk about it.

We consider a lot of things.

A balance of light and serious is among them.

We know that some of our listeners want information, some want distraction, some love politics,

some love celebrity, some love a juicy personal story.

And often all those listeners are the same person.

Another thing that we consider though when we're planning your show is this.

What are we adding?

What can we bring to this conversation?

What's helpful?

What we absolutely don't want is to add to the endless echo chambers of noise, vitriol,

division for the sake of just hearing ourselves talk.

We want to model respectful disagreement and to be completely honest, that's never felt

harder than it feels right now.

There are some topics.

The voice referendum is one, the war in the Middle East is another, and we are not conflating

or comparing those two issues.

They are just both very much what women are talking about right now, that overwhelmingly

do not spark respectful discussion.

They are just too important, too distressing, too febrile.

Some out louders have reached out to us this week and asked us why we haven't been talking

about what is happening in Gaza.

In the scenes, believe us, we've been discussing it endlessly.

Every statement and post and comment on this story, and we know because last week we acknowledged

we did discuss the terrorist attack in Israel, sparks an enormous response and a sizable

backlash.

This story is so fast moving and it is so horrific.

It deserves thoughtful, well-informed coverage.

And to be entirely honest, my mere out loud is not the right place to be getting your

information about the Middle East conflict.

Over on Mum and Mia's news podcast, the quickie Claire Murphy and her team are reporting on

this story, but this is one of those instances when we will humbly say, go to credible news

sources with deep expertise and reporters on the ground.

It's too important to get wrong.

All that said, what we may not have made clear enough this week, and what Holly, Claire and

I and everyone who works on Mum and Mia out loud want to state right now, is that just

like you, we are absolutely horrified and devastated at the scale of the suffering and loss in

both Israel and Gaza.

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth.

Two million people live in the tiny area, and about half of those people are under 18.

The conditions there are unimaginable.

The killing of civilians, Palestinian or Israeli is never justified.

Terrorism is never justified.

The death and suffering, the hostage taking of women, children and the elderly is never

justified.

The empty arms of a parent are never justified.

No one on Mum and Mia out loud or anywhere else at Mum and Mia thinks otherwise.

Please know that.

We're all hoping that the humanitarian aid gets to the civilians that are trapped in

Gaza as soon as possible, and that the Israeli hostages are brought home.

And we know that it is a really difficult time for many in the out loud community and

the wider community.

Many of you have family and loved ones in Israel and in Gaza, and our hearts absolutely

go out to you and to everybody.

We hope that peace will come soon.

On the show today, Madonna is playing her greatest hits for the first time ever.

And at 65, is she a radical icon of aging?

Or an embarrassment?

Discuss.

Also, is your relationship a start-up or a merger?

And we wrap up our best and worst of the week, which includes an argument over step count,

some surprising advice on a big deal purchase and a fringe.

There's a 65-year-old woman simulating masturbation in a stadium in front of 20,000 people.

And I am so here for it.

Madonna has started her big deal tour.

She has never played her greatest hits live before, and now it's on.

The Celebration show opened in London this week.

It's more than two hours long.

It involves an army of dancers, nine costume changes, five of Madonna's six children,

and every iconic song from vogue to erotic to like a virgin, to hung up, ray of light.

It's just banger, banger, banger.

Madonna is 65.

And what is abundantly clear from the videos of these shows, which have pulled in massive

crowds, is that she is not backing down on any of her signature attitude.

Sex is all over this show.

Dancers do indeed put their hands all over her body.

Do you like me singing with you?

Is that embarrassing enough for everybody?

So good.

A version of lingerie and representations of masturbation and oral sex are kind of everywhere.

And to be honest, it's shocking to look at, not in the same way that it was shocking back

in 1992 when she released her sex book or back in 1984 when she recorded like a virgin

and everyone was so scandalized.

But it's shocking because Madonna, even with all of the interventions that she has clearly

had and with her super fit physique, and I want everyone to remember that Madonna was

all like macrobiotic and sinewy arms and everything back when Guiney was in her school

blazer.

Madonna is still, with all that, an older woman and she looks like an older woman.

It is impossible to escape aging, of course.

And there is something shocking about a woman who's clearly in her 60s being overtly sexual.

And I personally love it because that's always been who Madonna is.

Why should she be any different now?

Why should she pull out the knitting at this point?

And she is my new ages and warrior hero, but I'm throwing down to you two because I have

a suspicion you don't feel the same way.

Claire Stevens.

I have gone really deep and the reviews are really good, which surprised me because I've

seen clips.

I have seen the masturbation one that you were referring to, Holly.

I've seen a lot of the absurd dancing very, very over the top and I went, OK, I'm not

there, so I need to actually read reviews of what it's like in the stadium.

And overwhelmingly, they're incredibly positive.

There's a Daily Mail headline that says, it's a fitting celebration, but oh, Maj, isn't

it time you grew up?

And in it, the person writes she still fancies herself edgy, still yearns to be one of the

cool kids when in fact she's a grown woman, a global icon who really has nothing to prove

to anyone anymore.

And that patronising tone, it's interesting to me that it is coming from media.

It's not coming from fans.

If you go deep on what people who are there are saying, the fans love it.

Why is that surprising in any way?

Of course the fans love it.

That's why they're there.

Like that's not a impartial audience.

That is a self-selected audience of people who are going to love her whatever she does.

What I mean is I don't know what the problem is.

If the people going to see her are loving it, it's more the people on the sidelines

and people in media, I think, trying to stir some stuff up and being like, let's throw

some ages and see if we can get a fight in the comments.

But you know what?

I do love it, but it is shocking.

As I said in my intro, there is no question that it is shocking because we're not used

to it.

I don't think it's shocking.

Even if you love it, it's still a little bit shocking.

I'm going to use a different word and I wish that I didn't have to use it.

My word is sad.

Oh, Mia.

It's a bit sad.

It's a bit sad.

Why is it sad?

That's your internalised ageism talking.

I recognise that it is a complex experience to see people who are iconic when they were

younger get older and not be the same.

Not just how they look, but just, you know, she does quite a lot of sitting down in this

show.

She's got her knee brace.

She's got her knee brace.

I'm imagining the choreographer who is like, okay, now we've got to do all these songs,

but we need to build.

Literally, this is what it would have been.

We need to build in some sitting down time, like there's a part where she's lying on

the floor and someone just sort of drags her along the floor.

The clips I saw as well, which are people from the audience uploading them on their

phones to YouTube, it's very arty, like it's pretentious.

It looked a little bit like a third year uni creative expression modern dance project.

To me, that felt not shocking, but old school and so did the backup dancers who were touching

her body.

To me, that felt not transgressive, but regressive.

On the one hand, I think there's something misogynistic about the commentary around Madonna

and her age and people thinking that it's inappropriate because there are men, male

performers of the exact same age that we do not look at in the same way.

We look at them and go, all power to them, they'll feel a stadium of people.

The nostalgia of it is enough.

However, the one thing I do feel uncomfortable about, and me, I hate to say that that's what

you say that I agree with, what it is, is I feel like I'm looking at someone who has

not evolved with age, do you know what I mean?

The best artists and the best performers evolve with their life stage and evolve with the

world and I look at her and think she is stuck in a moment and she can't get out of it.

This is a greatest hits tour.

Madonna has been trying to evolve for many years, but what her fans want who are paying

the money is to hear her do all the hits.

I agree with that.

This show is meant to be like a journey through her career.

Now, a couple of years ago, just before COVID or maybe during COVID, I went to see you too,

very similar vintage, right?

Do their greatest hits.

They employed amazing video backdrops and all that stuff because, yeah, they're not

young blokes running around the stage anymore.

They're not shocking and transgressive in there like anger and vigor anymore.

What's she supposed to do?

What I love about this is that you don't have to like Madonna's aesthetic and maybe you've

never liked it and maybe you've always thought she's tacky and too sexy, but she is Madonna.

She's still true to who she is and I respect that.

I think sometimes when we say, but she hasn't evolved, like we all do different things as

we age.

There are some things that I definitely did in my 20s that I do not do anymore and do

not celebrate anymore.

But Madonna clearly feels like she wants to stand by the iconic.

She was sex positive before that term was invented.

Yeah.

She was celebrating queer sex.

She was celebrating all not just like sort of porny, male, gazey sex that as you would

call it, Mia, but like all kinds of strange and I don't mean that it is strange, but to

the eyes of the vanilla top of the pops watching public, it was strange when Madonna released

the sex book made justify my love, celebrated queer culture and all those things and she's

still doing it.

And I think why should she have to calm down?

Yeah.

I agree with all of that.

And I was remembering because, you know, she's got the backup dancers who then take their

tops off and I did remember that.

I remembered being a young woman and a teenager and there were no other role models for queer

sexuality.

Someone that I could think of that was a woman was Katie Lang.

That was a very different kind of a country singer vibe, but you're absolutely right.

You know, she was groundbreaking.

I guess you can't always keep breaking ground.

I know I've heard some people say the most transgressive thing that she could do, the

most shocking thing she could do is grow older.

And of course, oh, God, if she comes to Australia, I'll be buying tickets.

Don't you worry about that?

Me too.

But I was working out, why do I not feel warmly towards Madonna?

Like why don't I?

Because she was iconic to me.

I loved her music and I think it's because she's very humorous and the tour felt very

humorous.

There was no real wink and a nod or self-awareness because I've seen Kylie, I've seen many, many

Kylie concerts.

A few years ago, I went to see Kylie and I suppose my one complaint is that she didn't

do more of her greatest hits.

She was doing recent things, but Kylie knows she's Kylie, you know?

And she plays with that and she enjoys that in a way that it just works.

She plays with the iconography of being Kylie Minogue, whereas Madonna is just so self-serious.

And again, maybe this is internalized sexism that, oh, how dare a woman think she's all

that?

Like why isn't she more self-deprecating?

You're using the likability stick to be true.

Yeah, I am.

But Madonna has never been that.

It's true.

Madonna was self-serious when she was young.

Madonna has never played the likability game.

She's always been like, I'm a legend.

Now you can either like that or not like that.

In everyday humans, people I want to surround myself with, I don't like that.

But I do have to check myself of why I require that of famous females.

Why do I require when I want to like look at their amazing work that I think, oh, she's

a nice person.

I'd like to have a drink with her.

Like, doesn't matter.

I do think our relationship with fame and with famous people has changed because I didn't

grow up with Madonna.

Like I think like Hung Up was a song when I was growing up.

Apart from that, the big Madonna being an icon, I wasn't there for.

To me, Madonna just doesn't even seem like this sounds so horrible and not the exact

right words.

But it doesn't seem like a real person.

She seems like a caricature.

To me, that's not what fame is anymore.

Like you look at somebody like Taylor Swift and they feel multi-dimensional and real and

like they've evolved.

When you know more about their lives, their lives seem real.

Whereas Madonna, I'm such a prude, but her being on stage and talking about blowjobs

and being overly sexual when her children are there, why do I feel weird about that?

Why do I feel weird about that?

I don't know.

But it's because there's something about her that feels like impenetrable.

Like she is a character, but we've never seen behind the mask.

And it's interesting because now also she looks like she's wearing a mask.

She's very, the way she presents herself, she's not an accessible star.

Now, she's not the first one to be that Beyonce is not either, but I feel uncomfortable when

I'm watching Madonna on social media for quite a lot of years now.

I felt like that a little bit on the stage and I know now I'm like, well, if you know,

go do your thing Madonna, it's not, I'm not judging, but I'm just saying I have a discomfort

about it that I can't articulate.

I think that you're 100% right that she's an icon of fame of another era.

Like her peers are like Prince Michael Jackson, right?

Those people, by the way, are both dead of drug abuse.

This is a different level of fame from a different era.

And my question is, if you still want to be around and people are still willing to go

and pay and listen to you, because my God, I was reminded watching those videos of how

many amazing songs Madonna has, right?

And the soundtrack to my life that was.

If I want to go and see her, why am I demanding that she has to still be Madonna and she still

has to be able to dance and she still has to be able to do all those things.

But she should also now somehow fit this new model of fame we have, where I also think

that I should be able to sit down and have a cup of tea with her.

Yeah.

Like, no, she's an icon of a different time.

Let her be Madonna.

Let Madonna be Madonna.

An article in The Atlantic this week by Arthur C. Brooks put forward a theory and explained

to those of us who were wondering why the most successful marriages are startups, not

mergers.

The article begins by talking about the Golden Bachelor, which is currently airing in the

US.

The show features retired restauranteur Gere, who is currently in the U.S.

The show features retired restauranteur Gere.

You know how Americans don't say Gere?

They're like, Gere.

Oh, Gere?

Did they call him Gere or Gere?

He's 72 and he is our Golden Bachelor.

I have enjoyed every minute with you.

Will you accept this rose?

Yes, I will.

Every minute with Ellen today was a gift.

There's just something about her personality that pulls me in.

She could be the one that I spend the rest of my life with.

He is considering marriage to one of 22 aspiring women who are age 60 or over.

Obviously, while trends show that people are getting married later in life, Gere's pursuit

of marriage in his 70s is older than what is typical.

It led Brooks to look into the ideal age for marriage, or if we want to reframe it, romantic

commitment, and research shows the optimal age is 28 to 32 for both partners.

I love research that affirms my life decisions.

Exactly.

I was like, and you are right on track.

Yes.

This is the sweet spot where divorce within the first five years of marriage is the lowest.

The odds of divorce increase by 5% per year when you're outside of that sweet spot.

Oh, killing me.

But Brooks wanted to look at why.

And to do so, he looked at a parallel area, business formation.

With startups, for example, one factor predictive of success is the level of experience or the

maturity of the founders.

You don't want to be too green where you're overly enthusiastic but make errors others

would tend to avoid.

So that's about getting married too young.

Yes.

Don't get married too young because you don't know what you're doing, you haven't had enough

life experience.

You're going to be an idiot.

Then on the other side, there's having too much experience and being entrenched in a

way of life which makes establishing a shared life difficult.

He says the risk here is quite similar to the problems seen with a different kind of

corporate arrangement, mergers.

I don't really understand a merger in any business, I understand it broadly.

And usually they seem logical but are rarely successful.

So an example of a merger would be if mum and me are out loud and say, hey, Mish and

Andy, decided to merge.

And so what we would say is that, okay, we've got lots in common, but we also have some

things that are distinctive about us, but there could be a lot of savings and economies

of scale because we could share producers and we could share recording facilities and

we could share social media creators.

And so then everyone then comes together and has half of this new bigger entity.

And apparently 70 to 90% of mergers and acquisitions fail to live up to financial expectations.

This is because long-standing cultures are hard to integrate and I think it would be hard

if we were like, hey, Mish and Andy, we want to talk about Madonna and they would say,

we want to talk about that less.

Arthur Brooks says that this could be analogous to two independent 30-somethings with established

habits, tastes, beliefs and careers trying to become a single unit.

So the sweet spot according to him for a durable romantic partnership is a new venture between

two mature co-founders who are not so set in their ways that they act like entrenched

corporations.

I think this is so interesting.

Mia, what business model does your relationship follow?

Funnily enough, because we do actually work together.

Look, we got married a little bit before that sweet spot, then split up a year later and

then get back together in the sweet spot.

Yes.

Okay.

So I think that's when it was what it was meant to be.

Established startup.

A mature startup.

Yeah.

I think Holly's trying not to vomit because she seems to have tried not to vomit.

I would like to put this in the category of unhelpful research that should get in the

bin because this kind of bullshit suggests that all of these things are a matter of choice

and design and control.

And like how dare you, let's say 36 year old single woman.

Well, look, you are clearly never going to find anybody because now you are too successful

in your own right and you have established a positive culture for your life.

You will not be able to bend it to some man or woman who has also established their own

life.

So really, you just need to wait around like an unformed thing until somebody chooses you

to merge.

Disagree because what he says is it doesn't have to have anything to do with age and he

suggests three practices.

Except for that whole sweet spot business between 28 and 32, which has quite a lot to

do with age.

Well, he's like, you know what, the age people are getting married is increasing.

These trends change, blah, blah, blah.

But he suggests three practices that fit this mature startup model.

And I think some of them are controversial.

One, combining finances.

He says you've got to combine finances, which is an argument that we've had because that

means you have to work as a team.

You're not kind of keeping these separate entities.

His second thing is don't go into it thinking it's going to be 50-50.

You have to be generous.

It has to be 100-100.

I thought that was interesting.

And then take a risk.

So he says he's not into a prenup because it builds economic inequality into the partnership.

She's all such terrible advice for women.

I do think it's a little pretty bad advice.

This is all terrible advice for women because, look, personally, I do think it's smart to

merge finances if you are in a secure family unit because you should be working toward,

you know, it's the betterment of the family, not one person versus another.

However, that is so dependent on so many things.

One of which like, who's got more?

Can you trust that?

Is it going to affect the power imbalance?

There are a million things to what he says in there.

He says you should want to take care of the other person.

100% generosity is key.

Again, that is good advice.

But how does that actually play out, particularly in a heterosexual relationship?

It actually plays out that one person is giving 100%.

One person's giving 200% and one person's not doing shit anyway.

Is this gum?

I know.

I know.

Yeah.

And they take a risk and don't have a prenup.

Terrible advice for women again.

Is it?

I don't know.

Yes.

What's the prenup?

I don't understand.

I don't understand prenups.

This is all very sensible in lots of ways.

But the thing about relationships is they're not very sensible and you can't control the

ideal time that you meet somebody and you can't control whether or not somebody is ready

to start up and merge with you at the exact same time.

You just can't.

So, my question is, why is this useful?

I think it's useful because, I mean, I know you're very defensive because you were quite

elderly when you got together with your partner and it was...

And you're living in sin.

And I had a lot of life experience, thank you very much.

Yeah.

You did.

But I don't think this is like, well, give up if you're outside that window or you're

doomed to failure.

I liked it more just as a way to think about a partnership.

I mean, we know that second marriages have a high chance of failure because we're not

just talking about first marriages, we're talking about second marriages.

Now, second marriages, which are becoming more and more common or second sort of big

partnerships are always mergers and often they're very complex mergers because people

come with ex-partners and they come with children and they come with property or debt or there's

all sorts of things that make it more complicated as a merger and mergers are much more complicated

than startups because in startups, you're pulling in a single direction and there might

be external factors, but internally you're sealed off, you know, and the startup is its

own entity.

Whereas mergers are porous and second partnerships are more porous than first ones in that there's

a lot of external factors on both sides usually that can't be controlled necessarily.

It's not a blueprint for don't do this or do do this.

I'm always interested in different ways of thinking about partnerships and relationships.

As a bit of a metaphor for how relationships work, I like the distinction between it being

a startup and a merger because it's like you're working on a single product, which is kind

of like your life together, I don't know, but some of this advice, I do find helpful

because I've had an argument with you guys about combining finances because even though

I've been with my partner for 15 years, we have never combined finances solely an admin

thing really that I'm like, how does one-

To me, that's shocking because not whether you combine finances or not, just because

you're such a lazy girl.

So my biggest reason for combining finances, don't do this at home and don't do it for

this reason, out loudest, was laziness.

Yeah.

Well, my thing is like I've got my account and I don't know how to create another one

to put his money in it.

And also I want to be able to buy something weird like my donuts or my weird juices and

not have him judge me.

And we've had this conversation off air where I've been trying to lecture Claire about this.

Not that I think you should merge your finances necessarily, but you're about to enter a phase

in your life and you don't quite know how it's going to go, where your earning potential

is going to drop for a little while.

Now, maybe only for a few months, maybe for longer, that could depend very much on how

everything plays out over the next year or two.

I worry about this entirely 50-50 culture that you've always had when suddenly, well,

who pays the rent when one of you isn't earning money?

You know what I mean?

That's why I think merging is good anyway.

But back to this thing, the other reason why I think we should take it with a pinch of

salt is it is a very, very blunt metric for success, which is that you do not get divorced.

Because we all know, well, I know, and I'm sure you all do, people who are married who

should not be married anymore.

Being married in and of itself is not a success.

It's your success, right?

There are couples, I am in one, a family who are not married and have been together many,

many years.

And it's like, so I think we have to remember that families look all kinds of different

ways and this is very blunt.

But the main reason I have an issue with it is the notion of a startup suggests two blank

pieces of paper.

And I think that once you're past a certain age, there is no way your piece of paper can

be blank.

It is always going to have a whole lot of figures on that spreadsheet that maybe don't

all balance and don't all add up and aren't all neat and tidy, but it's who you are.

It's the life you've made and I don't think you should feel bad that you're going to bring

some of that to your relationship.

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 it's time to reflect on the week that was with our best and worst

moments of the week.

But before we get into it, it goes without saying what our real worst of the week has

been for all of us, the devastation in the news cycle, the fallout from last weekend.

So today, we've deliberately made our worsts actively trivial because this is a night judgment

zone.

We invite you to share your best and worst of the week in the Out Loudest Facebook group

as well and on Instagram.

There's no judgment as you're about to see because we're going to set the tone by surfacing

our very trivial best and worst.

We're going to go with Holly first because she's had a really interesting week and has

done a lot more than Claire and I.

I walked 50 kilometers in the wilderness in Tasmania over this past week and holy moly,

that is my best by about a million miles.

And I want to tell you a little bit about why it's not entirely trivial, actually.

Regular Out Loudest will know that my partner Brent is a bushwalker.

He's actually the editor of a bushwalking magazine.

The man only wears walking shoes and zip off trousers.

This is Brent's entire life.

And I am always, oh, I like nature and stuff, but I don't want to do that walking business.

It's hard.

It's a slog.

He's always like, come on a walking holiday.

Let's have a walking holiday.

And I'm like, I don't think so.

Anyway, I went on a walking holiday with my mate Penny in Tasmania and we walked four

days on the three capes track in Tasmania and holy moly is Brent right.

It was the most incredible holiday I have had in years.

And I was walking with a 10 kilo backpack on my back for days and days.

I felt happier and I came back feeling happier than I have in such a long time.

And it's because being outdoors and doing things that push you is good for you.

It just is.

And interestingly, in the town where we live, there's this festival once a year where everybody

and anyone can get up and do a five minute talk about something.

And Brent did it last night.

And he got up and he did this talk about why being out in nature is good for you.

And he told this beautiful story about how when he was 28, he lost his best friend to

cancer and he was lost and grieving and in a very dark place.

And then he went on this big walking trek in Nepal and how much it helped heal him in

all these different ways.

It was a beautiful speech.

What I discovered when I was in Tassie and all the women I met, many of whom are out

louders along the way on that track, is it's true.

Not only is it challenging and beautiful being out there, we were walking across these sea

cliffs and on these beaches and we were in these rainforests.

We got rained on.

We got nearly blown off cliffs.

We got hail.

Like it was very confronting, but by the end of it, it's like something cracked open

in me.

Like it was really amazing.

I know it sounds so woo-woo, but like it was so fantastic.

I have a question.

When you were like walking, could you listen to podcasts?

You could, but I didn't.

What did you do?

It would have been weird.

It would have been really strange to actually have had this experience and had something

very alien to that experience in your ears.

So I was walking in a group.

I went with the walking company called Tasmanian Walking Company.

So we stayed in these nice lodges and things, but lots of the people I met and I did meet

lots of out loud as it was very funny being recognized when you're like, at the end of

this cape.

And I was like, absolutely drenched in sweat.

I've got the worst clothes on.

I can barely walk because I'm a bit of an old Madonna, knee-bracy lady.

And they're like, holly!

And I was like, ah!

But it was great because they all had the same look on their faces.

Just these like...

Wow.

Wow.

So you could have listened to music and when you walk in a group, sometimes you walk with

the group and you talk and you share some stories.

Sometimes you walk on your own.

Sometimes I walked with Penny.

Sometimes she didn't want to talk to anyone.

I was so surprised on the way home, I just cried my eyes out.

It was just a very emotionally grounding experience.

I've had a similar holiday and I actually afterwards looked at why it's so cleansing

in that emotional sense.

And apparently it's because even things like getting rained on, the wind, the chaos of

weather when you're outside for that long, it reminds you of the lack of control that

you have.

But in a really healthy way, that it's like, actually you are small, it's like awe-inspiring

and humbling.

It also makes you sit in discomfort.

We talk about that all the time, how we've all designed our lives now to not sit in

discomfort.

When you're climbing a hill and it's raining and there is no other way for you to get to

where you're going, you have to sit in that discomfort.

It's really amazing.

I saw this research about how it can also help fix a tension, which is what I was hoping.

It can help actually rewire your tension.

Anyway, it was amazing.

So I'm doing my best first because I'm tagging on my worst, which is ridiculous.

So I was walking with my mate Penny.

I've never laughed so much.

When we were stuck in this hailstorm, I actually weaved my pants a bit.

I've never laughed so much.

Anyway, apart from the weave, every day we'd get back to the lodge and we would compare

our smartwatches and every day she'd done more steps than me.

This is my worst.

Every day she would say, oh, I walked further than you.

How is that possible?

We started at the same time.

We finished at the same time.

We covered the same ground.

And she's just like, well, I did.

It's here. It's a fact.

So I went further than you today.

Every time.

So my worst is the ridiculousness of smartwatches.

So unfair.

Claire, what was your worst?

How trivial can it be?

It's pretty bloody trivial.

I don't know if anyone can beat this.

I have a sty and it hurts and I'm so over it.

Whenever I get a sty, I'm so fascinated by it because I'm like, it's like a pimple

on your waterline.

I want to squeeze it and I'm playing with it and it can't be squeezed.

You've got a lot of eyeliner on it.

And that's the thing because then I'm like, well, I have to cover it because it's red

and inflamed and awful.

So then I'm like, I've got to wear makeup over it, but it does not feel right putting

eyeliner over a sty.

It feels like the sty is eating the bacteria and it's like, and it's just getting bigger

and bigger.

So my sty is very irritating.

It is rubbing against my eye.

It's fair.

It's really, really annoying.

So that is my worst.

My best is that I, for the first time in my life, a 32 year old woman, I own a car.

We need a car that we can put like a car seat in.

And so I bought a car secondhand from my dad, great guy, and the independence of having

a car, your own vehicle.

I can't believe it.

I'm like, I could go anywhere.

But what have you been driving until now?

So Rory has a car that is literally falling apart, that he has had since he was like 18.

And we both share it.

And the logistics of that are a bloody nightmare.

But that car is, it's a little bit funny how disgusting it is.

It's got a hole in it.

So every time it rains, it gets wet and we're like, we shouldn't subject a child to that.

We share a car with Jesse for a while.

Well, she had a car and I borrowed it a lot.

But the thing about this car is that it's got this great feature where if I'm holding

the key and I walk up to it, I don't have to click anything.

It just unlocks because it detects that the key is nearby.

That's fancy.

So I have been really excited by this feature, but I'm also an idiot who's never paying attention.

And all I know about my car is that it's white.

And so when I go to Jesse and Lucas, which is most days, twice now, I have walked out

not being concentrating, being like, you know, on my phone or whatever.

And got into a vehicle, sat down and gone, this is not my car.

This is not my car.

And the car that it is is Lucas car.

So I have sat in a vehicle and gone, something feels strange in that this is not my car.

And there are things in here that don't belong to me.

And it takes me a minute and I go, yes.

And then I've sent him a photo being like, I'm inside your car again.

So it's funny you say that because a few years ago, I was a brand ambassador very briefly

for a car brand, and they would give me like different models of cars.

So they kept changing.

And I'm the same as you.

I'm like very vague cars are not my thing.

Hence why I'm no longer a brand ambassador for a car.

But I would do that a lot.

I can't even remember what color the car was.

But I just kept getting into other people's cars, but like on multiple occasions.

And it's such a funny thing because you get in, you sit down and there's just

something that doesn't feel right and it takes you a minute to work it out.

My worst of the week is something that will come as a shock to nobody,

which is that it's a lot of work to have a fringe.

And therefore I have reluctantly and yet decisively concluded that I am not meant for fringes.

What has it been three weeks?

I don't know.

A hundred years.

It's been a hundred years.

You know, I actually can tell you exactly what it was.

The day that Jesse went into labor.

Oh, no, it's been months.

With Luna, I got a fringe because I didn't know what else to do.

That's right.

I was at the hairdresser.

I nearly said I was at the doctor.

No, she was at the doctor.

I was at the hairdresser and I was just like, I didn't know what to do.

So I said, cut a fringe because I was excited.

I'll impress the baby.

Yeah, that's right.

Then I kept it for a little bit, trimmed it a few times myself.

And then as summer is approaching, not into it, growing my fringe out.

It's not easy.

Very stressful.

But I will persevere.

My best is women.

Like I did lots of things with women in their fifties this week as a woman in her fifties.

I spent a lot of time with friends, some new friends, some old friends.

I had dinner with my beloved whole and our friends, Kate Debrito and Jackie

Lunn, who both used to work at Mamma Mia.

The four of us had dinner.

We have dinner every so often.

I had dinner with Trini.

We did the podcast she's in town at the moment.

Then I just wanted to see a one on one.

So we had dinner and then I also did a panel for South by Southwest, which is

a big sort of tech conference about menopause.

I don't know what menopause has to do with tech.

But I was asked to sort of moderate this conversation with Naomi Watts

and Dr. Ginni Mansberg and Alison Bray.

And I just have spent the week with amazing women in their fifties.

So, you know, anyone who's feeling a bit nervous about getting older,

and they're all just so funny and like real.

And there's not a lot of angst.

There's a lot of less fucks given, and it was just delightful.

I've got a recommendation before we go on keeping in the theme of distraction.

Now that we've all watched the Beckham Docko and after the World Cup,

where the Matildas were amazing, now everybody understands football, right?

Now everybody understands soccer.

So I recommended, I think, last year, Welcome to Wrexham,

which is a documentary that's on Disney Plus that follows the story

of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhaney.

So two Hollywood stars he's like on a big TV show.

Don't think we need to tell anyone who Ryan Reynolds is who bought this

failing football club in Wales, probably mostly to make the documentary.

Let's face it.

But then, you know, it sort of took on a life of its own.

Anyway, season two is back.

Rob and I came together to purchase a football club.

Everything is going exact in the way we want it to go.

And then we lost in the semifinal.

This was not in the Hollywood screens.

But now millions of people are following you, watching what you didn't have before.

A lot of a lot of expectation, dear God.

There is one particular episode that brought me so much joy in this difficult

week, which is called Sean's Holiday.

And it perfectly explains why having your boss, when you're a football club,

be these two Hollywood stars who basically are used to being able to do

whatever they want, whenever they want, is not ideal.

So the chairman of the football club wants to go away for a week with his family.

He hasn't been on holiday for years because trying to manage a football club

that is owned by these people, they're trying to bring it back from the dead

and win promotion and all this stuff is a lot of work.

He wants to go to Lanzarote with his wife for a week.

That's all. Sit by a pool and everyone's like, what could possibly go wrong?

And then on the day that he leaves, Rob Backelhoney decides he wants to fly

into Wales and film a prank, happy birthday message for Ryan Reynolds

that involves putting a blimp in the air and all the poor people who work at

Rexham are like, but that breaks about 15 aviation regulations.

And Rob Backelhoney's like, we can make it work.

We can do anything.

And then Rob Backelhoney's like, let's show the game live in the pub.

And everyone's like, you can't do that.

It breaks all these rules.

And this poor man is just trying to have a holiday and his wife is on it.

And she's just like, the phone won't stop ringing.

So funny. I love it.

If you haven't watched any of Welcome to Rexham, I would recommend going back

to season one. It's really good.

But if you are wondering whether season two is so funny, I'm going to do that.

Tell me, is it like the Kardashians where it's all sort of fake or like the office

or is it kind of real?

It's a very well made high end doco.

The first season is more about Ryan and Rob.

But what happens is you meet all the people who live in this town and work

at this club and then they become kind of part of your family.

And then season two is interesting because the fame of season one has affected it.

You know, so now people, these tourists go to that place

and that the old man with the dog in the pub is now a celebrity.

And he's like, hey, like it's just.

Oh, I love to go. It's very interesting, but it's very well made.

That's good. All right.

I'm going to watch that this weekend because Beckham's become my comfort watch.

You know how I've been watching Bullo Deck.

I've, of course, watched Beckham the first time, but I fast forwarded through

all the football parts and then I went back last weekend and started watching

it again for comfort and got really into the football part.

So I think I'm ready for welcome to rexham.

I think you are season one.

It's primed us for caring about football, as the British people call it.

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

Mia, let Alfie and I go through her makeup bag.

And she shared her favourite affordable makeup products that she uses all the time.

And they were the things that you can buy at your local chemist.

And I found it so helpful because when I'm at the chemist, I look around.

I'm overwhelmed by choice. Yes.

And I need to feel the things.

I need to look at the things.

And we were able to do that and get Mia's honest opinions on what you should actually buy.

Lots of saviour options, good cost of living things, because, you know,

some of us have a lot of prescriptions to fill and a lot of time to heal at the chemist.

So I've become quite the expert.

A link to that episode will be in the show notes.

We are out.

But first, there is something we have to say.

Our beloved Eliza Ratliff, who is boss lady of podcasts at Mamma Mia

and we've all worked with her for years and years, had her baby girl this week.

Oh, it's only baby girls at Mamma Mia.

I know. I think these will pick that up by now.

Only baby girls.

Eliza and Tim's little baby girl, Phoebe, was born this week.

And oh, the pictures.

She's so cute.

Out loud as we know.

Sometimes when we do live shows, people get excited to see producer lives

because she's quite iconic and famous.

Yeah, we know that you'll be sending all your love to her as we do.

Welcome, little baby Phoebe.

Newest, out louder.

I know. Newest, out louder.

There's something in the water.

We only do girls.

Massive congratulations.

We love you so much.

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

This episode was produced by Emily and Gazillas,

the assistant producer is Tali Blackman with audio production by Leah Porges.

Bye. Bye.

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If you love the show and want to support us as well,

subscribing to Mamma Mia is the very best way to do so.

There is a link in the episode description.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.