Mamamia Out Loud: The End Of The Breakfast TV Couple

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are talking about on Monday, the 22nd of May.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Freedman.

And I'm Jessie Stevens.

She's back.

She's back.

I'm back.

I am well.

It is a good day.

I've missed you guys.

Jessie wrote about the experience of being 33 weeks pregnant, having COVID and flu on

top of each other on Mamma Mia.

It doesn't sound like a good time.

It's statistically rare.

And I think that the message is, and this is, Mia's always big on this.

You've got to sniff all your stay home.

You're known for your red carding of people.

I've always been a power through and I am unlearning some of my behaviors.

We're trying to teach you about germs.

And also everyone asked me, are you vaccinated?

Your COVID vacs are up to date.

You've got the flu vacs.

It's the best you can do to protect yourself, but it's not perfect.

Yes, exactly.

Well, anyway, we're very happy that you're back, Jessie Stevens.

And talking with us today about the following things.

Why Stan Grant can no longer do one of the most high profile jobs in Australian media.

Plus, a public morning TV breakup and what we want from our platonic media couples.

And why you should be working on pumping up your ego.

But first, Mia, in case you missed it.

In case you missed it, there's breaking toilet paper news.

The expert verdict is in about the right way to hang your toilet paper.

Which way do you hang yours?

Do you position the loo roll with the paper coming over the top

and hanging down the front like a civilized person?

Or are you a monster and you prefer the paper to unfurl from behind the roll against the wall?

Monster.

Weirdo.

I've never, ever thought about it.

My thing is to even put a roll of toilet paper on the thing is a big step.

To me, sometimes I just stack it above.

Yeah.

Well, I can't even deal with either of you.

ABC Every Day has conducted an important investigation

and they have found that there is in fact officially a right and wrong way to do it.

And there's a specific reason for this and it's to do with hygiene.

Dr. Christian Morrow, an associate professor of health sciences and medicine at Bond University,

who clearly went to university so that he could answer toilet paper questions.

He said,

One key to maintaining a hygienic washroom is minimizing contact between people and surfaces.

Positioning the roll over the top means the paper hangs away from the roll.

That means there's less chance that the user will touch the wall behind when they're fishing for paper.

Because if you do that, you'll leave germs behind on that surface,

which can be spread to the next user.

You're already going to touch the thing to flush.

You're going to touch the thing to get in and out of the door.

What difference does it make?

Yes.

The message is, Holly, stop being disgusting.

But also it's just harder to get to when it's back that way.

But it looks nicer.

It looks nicer to be hanging from the back, don't you think?

No.

Look, hanging from the front is like, I don't like it.

It's messy.

But you've always got to like scrounge around and touch the wall.

Well, I'd never considered the touching the wall thing,

which means I don't think I am going around touching the wall.

But now that I know this, clearly every time I'm on the toilet,

it's all I'm going to be thinking about.

The ABC broadcast of Stan Grant has announced he's walking away

as host of Q&A after suffering a spate of racist abuse.

Stan Grant is someone who has my respect and I wish him well.

We can have respect for different views without engaging in

vilification, and that's important.

On Friday, Stan Grant, the host of Q&A, made an announcement.

He wrote an essay for the ABC titled,

For years, I've been a media target for racism and paid a heavy price.

For now, I want no part of it.

I'm stepping away.

And Grant made it clear that today, which is Monday, the 22nd of May,

would be his last night hosting the ABC program.

He wrote, I want no part of it.

I want to find a place of grace far from the stench of the media.

I want to go where I am not reminded of the social media sewer.

And Grant has made headlines over recent months following his coverage.

First of the Queen's death, where he wrote what I thought was a

really powerful piece about how Indigenous Australians can't be

expected to shut up.

He said at the time that he watched his colleagues wearing black

and reporting on this historic event and participating in this sort

of ritual of mourning.

And he said, I see this knowing I cannot.

They come to this with no conflict, I cannot.

The real controversy came from the coronation.

Stan Grant was invited onto a panel by the ABC,

which was actually a panel that took place prior to the coronation.

It was sort of part of the coverage, but it was prior to.

It was like the pregame.

Yeah.

And they decided to do a program called The Coronation,

a discussion about the monarchy in 2023,

with a focus on the relevance of a monarch to Australia.

And they had a bunch of panellists.

I think there were about nine of them.

And his name began trending on Twitter with unrelenting criticism

about his opinion.

And the ABC received over 1,000 viewer complaints regarding their

handling of the event.

And Grant's position was clear, and he's written about it extensively,

which is that as an Indigenous man,

seeing the handover of the monarchy is particularly confronting

because they represent genocide, the massacring of his people.

Craig Foster was another person who was on that panel,

and he's the head of the Republican movement.

Some of the criticism was that only a quarter of the people on that panel

were monarchists, so they didn't think it was balanced.

Either way, not really Stan Grant's fault,

because he was just invited to give his opinion.

This is a little bit of what Grant had to say on the night.

It holds weight for First Nations people,

because that crown put a weight on us.

And we are still dealing with that.

And if we are going to live in the Australia that we can live in,

the Australia that all of us can sit around this table

and share in with our differences, our backgrounds,

we must come to terms with these truths,

and we must build a power sharing arrangement

that recognises the depths of contact in this country

and the heritage of this country that belongs to all,

that we hold in safekeeping for all,

that we fought to preserve while others had sought to erase it.

Do you know what I learned from the piece that he wrote

and when he was talking about some of the things he spoke about on that night?

Do you know Australia is the only Commonwealth country

that doesn't have a treaty with its indigenous people?

I found that shocking.

And relevant. I think that's relevant.

Highly relevant.

When you're talking about the monarchy.

Even though someone like Craig Foster received criticism,

everyone on TV receives criticism,

the type of criticism that was directed at Grant

was different.

He received an enormous amount of racial abuse,

particularly on Twitter,

so much so that the ABC has since lodged an official complaint

with the social media platform.

And it's interesting to note that Grant himself isn't on Twitter.

He's doing everything you'd advise a public figure to do.

But as he put in his column,

I don't even read it, yet I can't escape it.

People stop me in the street to tell me how vile it is.

They tell me how sorry they are.

Although I try to shield myself from it,

and I thought this was just the most incredible line in the essay.

The fact it is out there poisons the air I breathe.

What I think is difficult about an essay like Grant's

is that for those of us who live in certain corners of the internet,

we read it and we're like,

what are you talking about in terms of the specificity of the racism?

Right?

If you are not someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter,

you read certain outlets,

you can sort of go what's he responding to?

Because it wasn't just Twitter.

It was also mainstream media coverage.

Sky News, The Australian.

And as a white woman, I've got no sense of the scale or the intensity.

But when it is being directed at you,

and it's being peddled by real mainstream news outlets, as it was...

We should say that they weren't necessarily specifically peddling racist hate,

but they were covering the outrage around it.

And amplifying it clearly because it was invigorating

and energizing their viewers and their readers.

And it was working for them.

So they turned something that was...

He was a panelist on a show.

Some people liked it.

Some people didn't.

They went on it for days and days and days

calling on the ABC to apologize,

really inflaming the situation.

And they used his image and his name in every story

about the coronation coverage that was negative.

If you weren't watching that,

and I happened to be having dinner that night with Julia Badd,

who was the host.

If you didn't know and you hadn't seen it,

you would think that Stan Grant had been the host.

You would have thought that the ABC had made a decision

to cover the coronation by having Stan Grant, maybe, and Julia Badd

commentating the coronation.

That is not what happened.

I did watch the ABC that night.

As soon as the action started in the UK,

it was full wall-to-wall coverage, the entire thing,

and then it went to BBC commentators.

It wasn't a politicized night.

Julia, just for reference, it was hosted by Jeremy Fernandez,

who is a journalist at the ABC,

and Julia Badd, who is a journalist,

host of the drum, and has also written a biography

of Queen Victoria.

So it's not like they just threw some randoms up on the screen

to talk shit about the coronation.

That's not what happened.

Some say that Grant really mismooded

with his coronation coverage

and that he didn't have his finger on the pulse.

And you know what?

In defense of the Australian and Sky News,

1,000 complaints by viewers is pretty unprecedented by the ABC.

Maybe that is a news story.

I think it is.

And it's interesting because I don't in any way

want to compare my experience as a white woman to Stan Grant.

But we talked on this show on the Monday after the coronation

how we were surprised.

Shocked.

Like we were surprised at the level of,

because I wrote a Republican opinion that night, too.

And I just put up a picture of Diana Teetal.

I posted about Stan Grant on Friday

and several people DM'd me to say he mismooded.

He didn't read the room.

That's fair enough, right?

That some of us didn't read the room.

But does that mean that the only coverage welcome on that night

could only be glowing enthusiasm for the monarchy?

Because there was a lot of that around.

If the ABC are going to host a panel about the monarchy in 2023

and not have a prominent Indigenous voice

who has literally written a book about this very issue on the panel,

it would be a glaring omission.

So it's less about reading the room

and more about introducing different points of view.

However, so he has, as a result of this, quit his job at the ABC.

And he's said that they did not support him,

which is also a big thing to do, right?

Exactly.

I have so many questions about this.

I mean, the first is, is there an argument

that on the national broadcaster,

we do have a state stance on the monarchy?

We did vote if we wanted a republic or we didn't.

And as it stands, Charles is now the head of state.

Was that not an appropriate move for the national broadcaster?

Is that something that should have taken place on a commercial network?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

My other question is about the ABC and what they could have done,

because the criticism has then said his employer hasn't protected him.

He has said that.

He has said that he felt hung out to dry

and he received all this racist abuse

and the ABC sort of goes, we don't know what to do.

It's interesting because it's worth noting

that it was the ABC who were the platform that he published his essay on, right?

So this is like you having a major issue with your employer

and your employer allowing you to air that, right?

And some people have said,

oh, this shows that the wrong people are running the ABC.

You know, you shouldn't let your journalists sledge you publicly.

And also the criticism is that the ABC is supposed to have a very strong line

about its journalists offering opinion, right?

So Stan Grant occupies some interesting territory here

because he's such a kind of statesman.

You know, he's been a Middle East correspondent

and a China correspondent and a US correspondent

and he has presented all kinds of shows

and he's obviously written extensively about Indigenous Australia

and that's very much where his voice seems to be at the moment.

But he is an exceptionally experienced well-credential journalist, right?

And he's the host of Q&A.

But traditionally, we're not supposed to know what ABC reporters think about things.

When Lee Sales was the host of 730,

you're not supposed to know whether she votes liberal or labor or whatever.

You're not supposed to know whether Michael Rowland is a monarchist or not, right?

That's the line.

So some of the criticism that comes at Stan

is these days in the social media age,

they're blurring the lines of journalism and opinion

and that Stan Grant was blurring the lines of journalism and opinion.

But again, he was invited on a panel to represent that voice

and that point of view.

He was not objectively reporting on the coronation.

Those are different jobs.

Mayo, what do you think?

Because if you have an opinion and Stan Grant has said this,

I am not immune from criticism.

You get to say, Stan Grant, I think you're an idiot, absolutely.

From what I understand, there was nothing that Stan Grant said

that was factually incorrect.

So it wasn't just, I think blah, blah, blah.

That was not what he was doing.

But I remember when I heard that he was going to be on the panel,

even before that night, the people who were watching the coronation

are going to be royalists, right?

So in terms of how people feel in general,

I mean, I was one of the people who watched it and thought, this is crazy.

How can this guy be the head of Australia?

This is not something that I'm really into.

And I copped it for my Diana Tea Towel.

But the ABC had an obligation to provide a balanced view

in commentary about what the monarchy means in 2023, right?

My feeling for Indigenous people who come on and talk about these things

in the same way that they are asked to talk about January 26th

and Indigenous death in custody, it costs them a huge amount.

Like they're not just talking about an opinion, right?

Like about climate change or about immigration.

This is their lives.

This is their culture.

This is their people.

This is them.

And so we invite them to share.

We want their perspective.

But then the toll that that takes personally.

So I felt very worried without wanting to sound patronising.

I felt very worried for Stan Grant having to go and speak that night.

This is before we even knew about all the racism.

And the other thing that we've learned, I think, from this is that

when you are a white, straight guy who does a thing that people don't like,

they don't really have a specific weapon to beat you with.

They can say you're a dickhead, whatever.

But when you are a woman or someone from a minority group

or a marginalised group, a person of colour or a gay person, for example,

the pushback you get is so personal, specific, often violent

and incredibly threatening and distressing on a personal level

in a way that it's not when Mark Latham's awful and someone calls him a dickhead

or you don't like something that Anthony Albanese said

and someone says, mate, you're an idiot.

So then what do we get left with?

We get left with a democracy where all the same people are speaking.

And I think we're seeing that because I think that Stan Grant's spoken out about it.

There are other people at the ABC that I know of who have had shocking threats

and people who are off the ABC, but people who are in the public eye

who have had shocking threats, violent threats, threats to their family

and things have to be done behind the scenes to protect them.

This is a terrible situation.

It is. At the end of the day, it silences people.

Who's going to be left?

Like, Stan Grant is a voice that Australia needs.

It's really upsetting, particularly in the year of the voice referendum,

that we're hounding really important voices off the stage.

Really important voices.

We're literally hounding them off because we don't want to hear it.

It makes us uncomfortable and guilty and we don't like it.

And so we'll just abuse, abuse, abuse.

We often talk and we've talked about it on the show,

but we talk about it behind the scenes all the time.

How much credence do you give to the abuse, right?

How much do you talk about it?

Are we amplifying it if we talk about it?

But the other week, I was scrolling Instagram and underneath the post by Brooke Boney,

who is Channel 9 presenter, Indigenous woman,

was some of the most horrific, racist, misogynistic, violent comments

under a completely ad-9 post about, like, what she was wearing that day or whatever.

And it's just there.

And she's seeing it all the time and what we're asking of people

is put up with it, toughen up, ride through it.

Everybody gets it.

It's like, not everybody gets it.

Not everybody gets it.

At that level, they don't.

And then we're hounding these voices away.

Australia is worse for it.

That's what makes me really sad about this.

You might think that King Charles is the best thing since sliced bread.

And I actually think it's really interesting that the Royals have become this lightning rod.

I know it's the news cycle.

I know it's what we're talking about.

But I can't help but feel it's more of a symbol of the way things were

and a push for change.

And the push for change is making a lot of people very uncomfortable in a lot of ways.

We don't understand the world anymore.

Everybody wants to change everything.

You can't say anything anymore.

You can't just enjoy some jewels in a crown.

Well, you can.

You don't have to tune into the panel about the state of the monarchy in 2023.

And you can disagree with everything Stan Grant says.

But we are literally hounding people off air.

And I think it's really, really sad.

Don't stop until it's over and we get our way.

We're relentless.

I've said on the show before that I love a pea sandwich.

We've seen it on plenty of occasions that someone who's got talent and he has,

he will be able to find another role.

For Holly, the future is golden.

Give peas a chance.

Think Mel and Koshy at the height of their popularity.

Think Lisa and Carl for all those years of early starts.

Think Amanda and Jonesy, even Kyle and Jackie O.

We're talking about those platonic brekkie couples that we are deeply invested in, right?

Over in England, one of the most famous TV couples to ever exist

is going through a very messy and public breakup.

And they're not really a couple, but they're a TV couple.

Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby have been hosting a morning show

called This Morning Together for, I think he's been hosting it for 21 years

and they've been hosting it together for 15.

So a very long time, right?

For context, Philip Schofield is or certainly was a squeaky clean TV host.

I was watching him when I was a kid growing up in England.

He used to do like the Saturday morning shows

and he used to do all the linking on the kids programming after school

like he was that guy.

And then has he aged, he moved into daytime telly

and his audience aged with him and moved with him, right?

Think of like a Carl Stephanovic.

So he'll host a TV awards special

and he might do a special report on something

and he'll turn up at all the awards shows.

And he's 61.

And he's been hosting with Holly who's 42 for 15 years.

He came out as gay in 2020.

That was a big TV moment after he'd been married for 27 years,

had a couple of daughters.

This morning is kind of like Think Studio 10-ish.

What we used to call a magazine show.

You produced one of these.

I like it.

It's sort of a mix chart.

The morning show.

Yeah, like the morning show.

They have guests.

The guests will go on sometimes like celebrities will go on

and then they'll do stunts and cooking

and you know, it's that kind of show.

And if it's sounding sort of familiar,

you've seen them on TikTok.

Yes.

They are viral on TikTok with really funny little snippets

that have incredible chemistry,

great banter with their guests.

They often crack themselves up like it genuinely looks

like a very good show.

Apparently they used to be, well, best friends

or at least were very good at faking it

and were always lauded to having this amazing chemistry

that we say until the last few months.

A very quick list of things that have happened.

He and Holly used to be represented by the same agent.

There's an agency here in Australia

that basically reps all the daytime TV people.

There's the same in England.

Big agency has all the big names.

Holly recently left, started her own.

Pushed for pay parity.

Got it.

Her and Phil get paid the same amount.

Rumored to be around £730,000 a year.

It used to be and even now it's not.

There was also a bit of a reputation denting moment

in the Queen's death.

See, we're back to the Royal Lightning Rod.

Remember that massive queue that snaked all the way around?

Journalists and TV crews were allowed to jump the queue

to go and do some coverage and they did that

and the people did not like it.

Because even David Beckham lined up.

Yep, it was called Qgate.

And so Philip and Holly did not come off well in Qgate.

Oh, so they jumped the queue

and that wasn't a spat between the two of them.

No, that was a united hate.

It was a dent to the shiny, you know,

they're our favourite couple ever.

And then recently, Philip's brother was accused

and convicted of serious child sex abuse charges

and he took some time off screen to be out of the public eye

while that case was going on.

Because as you can imagine, like the glare

because he was Philip's girlfriend's brother was massive

and allegedly he did not talk to Holly about that privately.

And the rumors have been building and building

that they can no longer stand each other

even when guests come on, they've been complaining about it

and the notion that their best friendship is fake

is such a big thing that it's referenced in Parliament now.

Like it's referenced in Parliament that, say,

the leader of the opposition and his number two, who's a deputy,

at question time, one of the other politicians said,

oh, they're the fill and holly of British politics.

It's all for show.

They actually hate each other.

So they've become that.

On Friday, after this has been building and building and building,

he was fired.

He didn't really even pretend he wasn't fired.

Reportedly, there was an ultimatum from Holly

that it was him or her and they chose her.

And the world is obsessed.

Mia, why are we so invested in the relationships

of our daytime TV people?

And why do they have to fake this kind of, like,

almost marriage in a way that, like,

news presenters at nighttime don't have to do?

Because when you're a news presenter at nighttime,

you're literally reading an order queue.

Not to say you don't, there's not skill involved in that,

but there's none of you.

It's not you.

It's just you're reading what's been written for you.

Those morning shows and the later in the day,

the more chat there is and the less news there is,

it's back to this parasocial relationship.

It's chatty.

It's about the chemistry, the interaction between the two of them.

And it's something that is really hard to manufacture.

We saw that when they replaced Mel Doyle with Samantha Armitage,

her and Koshy just never quite hit in that same way.

And I think we're looking at now a generation

of morning breakfast hosts on TV that just,

like, Koshy and Nat, they're great,

but we're not that invested in them.

And Carl and Sarah, not that invested at all.

It's very intimate who you're watching in the morning

and who you're watching in the day.

What I'm fascinated by is what could have gone wrong.

Like, I now need to know this desperately,

because it's like us.

We've been hosting this show together for seven years.

If two of us just suddenly started hating each other

or Andy and Hamish broke up, like, why?

So people are so invested in relationships, right?

Because people ask me all the time if we get along.

All the time.

And that's the thing is that it's this fun exercise

in, am I seeing what I think I see?

Because you know, if you have colleagues,

that some days you're shitty with them.

And some days you're grumpy and you're fighting about things.

And so you see this chemistry on air

and you go, surely that can't be real

and you want to know what's going on behind the scenes.

And I found the discussion.

There was a great article, I think it was in The Guardian,

about the paradigm of the married couple.

And it put it so clearly,

because I didn't realize how ever present this was.

But like, even Kyle and Jackie Oh,

there is this slight undertone of sexual chemistry.

It is not that I genuinely think they've ever slept together,

but there's this heteronormative thing

of like man and woman, bicker, have chemistry,

but there's stability.

It's like a sexless marriage.

It's a sexless marriage.

And it's sort of what we all wish our relationships were like

in terms of you have someone to chat to, you laugh,

you give each other shit.

Some days you're a bit tense, whatever it is.

It's kind of like flirty banter.

Yes.

And because they're in your house,

there's something quite domestic about it.

And again, this is a bit of a problem,

because there are a lot of people who aren't in male-female relationships,

but television and radio still so relies on that dynamic.

It's mum and dad.

Yes.

And so with this, it does feel like a divorce from the outside,

because you're like what could have happened.

And so the theories are, Holly is pissed off

that she didn't know about Phil's brother being caught.

In a way, her reputation is intrinsically tied to his, right?

So this is the problem with the breakfast duo,

which it played out with Lisa and Carl, right?

When his marriage fell apart,

and suddenly he went from being golden boy

to being a little bit more like, oh, we're not sure about him.

I think that that's a tricky relationship.

So even though Phil's brother's court case has nothing to do with Holly,

anything that tarnishes Phil's reputation tarnishes hers, right?

And I think that sunrise navigated that surprisingly well,

because the commentary when Mel Doyle left sunrise

was that she was pushed off the show because she was too mumsy

and they wanted a younger, fresher vibe.

That didn't somehow stick to Koshi.

That was very much not seen as something that Koshi was pushing for.

It didn't stick to him in a negative way,

because a lot of women were really pissed off about that.

So it was the court case.

There's speculation about what's been going on behind the scenes

and if he's sort of dating,

and if that's made things more complicated for her.

There's rumors about someone who had to leave really quickly.

There's undercurrents.

Very often there's in these situations that a lot's going to come out.

Exactly.

And that there have been some pointed remarks in the tabloids

which are saying, the tabloids know an awful lot about what Holly's thinking.

So there's sort of a theory that has there been leaking from her side

about some of the things going on and she's going,

our brands are inextricably linked and I don't want to be touched by this.

But it's a big call to stand there and go, it's me or him,

which seems to be exactly what's happened.

And by the statements that were released,

you know, he's left and not even mentioned Holly.

And she did a, I'm really sad to see him go,

oh no, she didn't say I'm sad to see him go.

It's been amazing working with him and I wish him well

and I'll see you all on the couch on Monday.

Should we be celebrating that it seems to be a very rare moment

where the woman says it's me or him and she gets chosen nearly always?

Oh no.

Oh well, off you go.

And the theory is that she's got a longer career ahead of her.

She's the better bet.

I've said on the show before that I love

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and a big thank you to all our current subscribers.

This week on Mother Mia,

writer Chiquita Searle wrote about ego

having a healthy one is something that more women should do.

She wrote,

Humble is a word that's never been used to describe me.

In fact, I remember distinctly my paternal grandmother telling me once

that I could benefit from a little more humility.

I humbly declined.

Therefore, it may surprise no one that the word humble doesn't feature

in my vocabulary and I will also go so far as to say

that I don't believe in being humble at all.

In my humble opinion,

being modestly demurring doesn't serve anyone, particularly women.

Chiquita went on in her piece to make the point

that women are culturally conditioned to make ourselves smaller

and how being up yourself is a slur that's only ever used against women.

Never men, which is true.

Used to be something that was said a lot at school, but never to boys.

She also said that being humble negatively affects women

because it stops us from doing things like putting our hands up for promotions

or applying for jobs or taking healthy risks

or advocating for ourselves in all kinds of situations.

And then she set up the idea that the opposite of being humble is having a big ego

and she lists her top tips for cultivating your ego.

Are you ready?

First of all, how do you feel about not being humble?

It's so fun.

I think humility is such an important value.

Well, you're from Manchester, so of course you do.

Of course I do.

But it's interesting because we discuss this all the time

that it's true that women are really bad at asking for what they deserve

in all kinds of situations, not just a work situation,

but a relationship situation or a friendship situation

or boundaries, as we discussed many times.

And that's all true.

And I very much struggle with that too.

But the idea that ego is good is so opposite to my value system

that has clearly been beaten into me from a young age

that I find it really hard to make that switch.

But I'm going to argue against myself now

and in favour of what Chiquita's saying,

what it's meant is that women aren't allowed to be proud of things.

We have to couch our ego in terms of all our pride.

And ego is such a negative word.

So I just want to talk about it as confidence

because I think that's a little bit more of what she's talking about.

We have to couch it in terms of hashtag gratitude or hashtag lucky.

I'm so lucky.

I want to bring back the gratitude and the lucky.

And I reckon we've gone too far the other way.

I don't think ego is the word she means.

Other things that could be interchangeable are confidence.

Self-confidence.

But my ego is something that gives me far more unpleasant feelings

than pleasant feelings.

But is that because of your conditioning?

Because that's what I was thinking.

I was thinking we all have ego, right?

I definitely have ego.

And there's no question that I do.

But I feel very guilty about my ego.

Shame. I feel shame.

But the more you put...

Is that my conditioning?

Or is that because in and of itself it's a bad thing?

Ego is something that is like an illness of the modern age, I think.

Like, ego is something that the better you are at putting it to the side

and acknowledging when it pops up and says things to you,

putting it to the side and ignoring it,

I think is when we're more enlightened.

The idea that we are part of something greater,

I think ego puts us in a position of superiority or inferiority to others,

which is never healthy.

So one of the things in the article she says is the compliments journal.

Okay, so yes, I'll get back to her tips, right?

She's got tips for cultivating your ego.

And the first one, which we can't really get past is start a compliments journal.

She says, every time someone compliments you, make sure you record it.

The physical act of writing it down will stop yourself deprecating deflection.

See, apparently this is a real thing.

Like, it's very much encouraged for young women in the workplace too

to remind themselves that they're good and they're worthy and they should be there.

This is like a participation award that you're giving yourself.

Yes.

And the problem with that is that if you're going to take stock and put value

into every compliment that people give you, are you going to do the same with the reverse?

Yes, I get that.

But if we think that women often suffer more from insecurity and imposter syndrome,

for example, this actually happened to me.

Whenever I'm writing, very often when I'm writing,

I get gripped by imposter syndrome and insecurity and I struggle.

And a friend of mine said to me, go and read all the good things someone has said about your book.

Go and read them and remind yourself that you're good and you can write and you can do it.

And of course I didn't because in order to go there, I would also have to read the bad ones.

That's Jesse's face is like.

But it's not terrible advice because when you're gripped with insecurity,

can't even do this.

I'm a terrible person, whatever it is.

Then reminding yourself that you've done it before and that people thought you were good at it is not a bad thing to do.

But why does it feel like really up yourself?

But then because you're also taking so much value from what others think,

which I know when you're performing or when you're putting anything out there,

that can feel like a good thing.

But this is my worry that what we're doing in the workplace is adopting the behaviors

and some of the things that men do because men do them and they seem to get ahead

without interrogating whether they're actually good for us or not.

I don't know if workplaces need more ego.

This isn't specifically at work.

This is just in life.

So there's another list that you can make Jesse is a list of what you're good at.

She says make a list and add to it regularly.

She also says champion yourself if you're good at something wholeheartedly own it.

Tell people be your own biggest advocate.

This one I think is quite interesting catch and reframe.

She says if something doesn't go your way, don't allow yourself to spiral.

Catch the story early before it takes hold like as a narrative and reframe it.

So there's a learning, a positive or a key takeaway that is of use to you.

And they're both ego, right?

Like the spiraling going I am a piece of shit is also your ego.

So that's what I mean is that I don't know if engaging with it is even the right way

to sort of approach it.

She says in this article that ego is a resilience muscle.

The bigger it is, the more rejection we can withstand.

Completely disagree.

People with massive egos do not deal with failure well.

They're fragile.

They're very fragile.

They can't handle the rejection because they don't learn anything from it

because they think they're amazing.

Because they're going, what's wrong with the world?

I have all my compliments.

I'm actually great.

I'm not going to take anything from this.

Yeah, that's true.

And we all have been in the presence.

And I don't mean we're generalizing in gender, but like of men with massive egos

who just don't take like criticism or negative feedback over anything

is just water off a duck's back constantly.

But again, is this a correction?

Because I was thinking about this this morning on my way in,

I was reading a bit trees for Martin Amis,

who's a very, very, very famous British writer who's just died.

And every single one of these obits said he had extraordinary confidence.

He was a brilliant writer from a young man.

That's because he was a very posh white man who was a brilliant writer

but also had a dad who was a writer who was at all the tables,

was at all the important places.

So he was born with that level of ego and entitlement and confidence.

And he did write some amazing things, good on your Martin, et cetera.

But that's very different for a woman or someone from a different socio-economic background

or someone of color or all those different things

where you are never going to sit at that table with the big wigs,

whatever context that's in, whether that's work or private life or anything,

and feel confident you have to actually work at it.

And that's what she's talking about.

She's talking about trying to build the cliche of

go in with the confidence of a mediocre white man.

She's got to build it, whereas the Martin Amis is at the world, they already have it.

Yes, but where does a sense and an understanding of privilege sit alongside ego?

So if I'm a white woman who's sitting on this podcast, I can go two ways.

I can go, I work hard, I like sitting here, it's fun, I'll do my best, whatever.

The ego would tell me that I'm better than a lot of people

and I earned my way here and I did that because I'm amazing

and because I have some natural ability.

I don't think that second way is a healthy way to view our lives

and that's where a little bit of luck comes in.

Humility and bless.

Luck and privilege and all those things.

But you also do work extraordinarily hard and you also are good at it.

So like how do you turn the dial just enough but not too much?

Yeah, I think you put ego to the side and you look at determination

and hard work and self-confidence, but I think if you put too much stock

into the greatness of yourself being responsible for anything,

there's going to be a state fall.

Jesse, you and I watched the same thing on the weekend, recommend it.

We did and we have a joint recommendation.

Mayor, you gotta watch it.

You need to watch air.

1984 has been a tough year.

Our sales are down, our growth is down.

Sonny, I brought you in here to grow the basketball business.

People don't know what the hell a Nike is.

What's a converse?

NBA All-Star shoe.

There's nothing cool about Nike.

What's the plan?

We build a shoe line around just him.

I need the greatest basketball shoe that's ever been made.

Who's the player?

Michael Jordan.

Oh, everyone in my house except me.

Watch this on the weekend.

Did your son.

I reckon your son would have loved it.

All I can think about is it about my MacBook Air.

No.

That's what I was thinking.

Oh, it's so huge.

That's trainers.

You like trainers.

You love a shoe.

I do.

So it is about Air Jordan's, like the shoe that was pioneered

sort of by Michael Jordan.

Why is it so good?

So good.

And we did for transparency.

I think there's been a sponsorship with Prime Video, right?

So I remember reading about this a few weeks ago and going,

really want to watch that, watched it.

It is Matt Damon and Ben Affleck back together,

like production company.

Ben Affleck directed it.

He directed it.

He's in it.

Matt Damon's in it.

Jason Bateman, Viola Davis.

I love Jason Bateman so much.

He's so good.

And the whole thing is about...

Oh, so it's not a documentary.

No, no.

It's a movie.

It's a movie.

It's a movie.

And you know what?

It's a movie that's short.

Which is always my favourite kind of movie.

So it's set in the 80s and it's like top dogs were added ass.

Second were Converse and third were Nike.

And they were like, what do we do?

We've got a partner with someone really big.

And Matt Damon plays this character who kind of is almost like a scout

and looks at Michael Jordan and is like,

this is really the greatest athlete of all time.

We need to get him.

But everybody else wants Michael Jordan too.

But everyone else wants Michael Jordan.

Ben Affleck is the head of Nike.

And it is just the best story about Viola Davis plays Michael Jordan's mother

and holds all the cards.

She's so powerful and so smart.

And what they did with that shoe is incredible because I won't spoil it.

Don't spoil it.

Except it's a shoe.

It's a bit of an allegory.

What can you spoil about a shoe?

That's amazing.

Sorry.

Go on.

I was just going to say it's a bit of an allegory for Matt Damon,

Ben Affleck have this thing called artist equity.

Yeah.

Their business.

Their business.

Their new production house, which is all about creatives getting a steak

and money in these things that are created,

which is actually what the movie is about.

Michael Jordan and how much he got.

Because he made it.

Yeah.

His mom, if you believe the movie, broke it as a deal that is like,

no, it's never happened before that the person who puts their name on the shoe.

Is that true?

Yeah.

You can get a percentage of every shoe.

Right?

Okay.

Don't tell me anymore.

I'm going to watch it.

It's so good.

The thing that's hilarious about it, at the end, you're there like cheering for

these multinational corporations.

Go Nike, go.

And then I'm turning to Ben.

I'm like, what the fuck is going on with me?

I love a movie where Nike is the underdog.

The capital is like cheering for capitalism all the way.

Yeah.

And then at the end, it tells you about all the money that was made.

It's not exactly a spoiler because we all know how successful those shoes were.

And you're like, yeah.

And then you're like, what?

What am I cheering about?

That's funny.

Like falling asleep last night, Luke and I, and I just hear him go, he makes more than

a million dollars a day in residuals.

In residuals.

From those shoes.

Oh, wow.

He was doing the maths of it.

Like, it's great.

That's a couple I'm invested in.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

Yeah.

And they look old, which is great because they are old like the rest of us.

Air on Prime Video.

Thank you for listening to Mamma Mia Out Loud today.

Welcome back, Jesse Stevens.

We're so happy you're back with us.

This episode was produced by Emma Gillespie with assistant production from Susanna Makin

and audio production by Leah Porges.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Shout out to any Mamma Mia subscribers listening.

If you love the show and want to support us as well, subscribing to Mamma Mia is the

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