Mamamia Out Loud: What We Want From The Wives Of Bad Men

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And welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Wednesday,

the 20th of September. I'm Holly Wainwright. I'm Mia Friedman. And I'm Claire Stevens.

And on the show today, do the partners of problematic men owe us anything? The conversation swirling

around Bijou Phillips and Laura Brandt today. Plus, what is an Office 10? Welcome to the

law of attraction we're all familiar with, but now has a name. Plus, can your friendships

survive the ultimate stretch when one of you has a baby and one of you does not? But first,

Claire Stevens. In case you missed it, I have been vindicated. The men really are thinking

about the Roman Empire far too much. So on Monday's show, my recommendation was to go

up to a man in your life and ask him how often he thinks about the Roman Empire. It's a viral

trend on TikTok. And it's thought to reveal something about the mental load that men have

plenty of time to ponder ancient civilizations women perhaps don't. Of course, I pointed out,

I actually think about the Roman Empire a lot. So it is not strictly divided by gender lines.

But the out loud is, they took my advice. I am now the recommendation queen. They took my

advice and the responses are hilarious. Somebody asked, did you ask a man in your

life? In the out loudest Facebook group. In the out loudest Facebook group, the responses are

so good. So some of the responses are, my partner thought I was trying to trick him. My sister's

boyfriend said daily that it's about 20% of his YouTube content and he would even break it into

Roman, Western and Byzantine Empire. And then another said, mine said never and then told me

a fact about the Roman Empire's sewerage system. So not never then. I asked my son a couple of

weeks ago and he said fortnightly. Yesterday he came up to me and started talking about the

Colosseum. Somebody else said, I just asked my husband, he legit came back immediately with,

oh, a couple of times a week. When I lost it laughing, he was like, what? I think about

conquering things, gladiators and shit. I am deceased. I haven't laughed that hard in so long.

I love this one. Mine said he didn't think about it at all, then proceeded to tell me he's read

13 books about it in the last two years, but isn't currently thinking about it.

I love about this one is that, you know, I always like reaching for a topic of small talk and Lord

knows I'm bored of talking about the weather, particularly at the moment because it's hot.

But I really love asking this question. I was, you know, worked in a last night. It was a table

of men and women and the answers were really interesting, like the men did. And then the

next thing I discovered, which is the next question to ask, how often do you think about a zombie

apocalypse and what you would do? And the two men at the table had really quite detailed plans

that clearly thought about it a lot. And it's like, I would get a boat and I would get my

youth and I would pick up my wife's parents and I would go inland and the other was like, no,

I would try to get a boat and I would get my dog and I would go out to sea because the zombies

aren't going to get you at sea. And then other guys like, what about food? And it was just really

interesting. The things that occupy our brain space. So out loud is jump in the Facebook group,

keep letting us know your answers. They are cracking us up. Leave him. Leave him immediately.

That is what we demand of the wives of problematic men. And today it happened.

When Bijou Phillips, who is the wife of convicted rapist actor Danny Masterson,

filed for divorce. We spoke quite a bit about him last week. He's that 70s show guy who has

been sentenced for 30 years in prison for his assault of three women. And until this announcement,

there had been plenty of headlines targeting her for supporting her husband of 12 years

throughout his trial. Yesterday, her statement read, via her attorney, Ms. Phillips has decided

to file for divorce from her husband during this unfortunate time. Her priority remains with her

daughter. This period has been unimaginably hard on the marriage and the family. Mr. Masterson was

always present for Ms. Phillips during her most difficult times of her life. Ms. Phillips acknowledges

that Mr. Masterson is a wonderful father to their daughter. The other woman that everyone's waiting

to call a lawyer is Laura Gallacher. She's the wife of Russell Brand. Actually, I think she's

Laura Brand now. They refer to her as Laura Brand on their joint channels. Laura is pregnant with

their third child and she's been married to him for six years, although they initially dated way

before that, before he kind of became a massive Hollywood celebrity and then grew when she was

only 18. As we're talking today, she has stayed completely silent on the allegations against

her husband that exploded on the weekend and have now seen him cancel his tour, have his revenue cut

off by YouTube and finally become the subject of a police investigation. I want to talk about what

we expect from these women. Remember when Harvey Weinstein's wife, Georgina Chapman, who was a

really fancy fashion designer, who was behind a label called Marquesa that all the celebrities wore

all the time. After the allegations exploded around Weinstein, there was a boycott of that brand,

an enormous amount of pressure on her to speak out and divorce him. She finally did, but not until

2021, which was about four years afterwards because I guess the settlement was being knocked out until

then. That was slightly different because it was well known that Marquesa benefited hugely from

the influence and the bullying of Harvey Weinstein, who as you say, bankrolled it, but also forced and

put a lot of pressure on actresses who started in his movies to wear her outfits on the red carpet.

That literally was a label that was built on his predation and his poor behaviour and criminal

behaviour. But do you remember that Scarlett Johansson wore one as a support for Georgina

and she got slammed for it? That was after he went to jail. Anna Wintour tried to kind of

relaunch it in Vogue and basically said, it's unfair of us to hold Georgina accountable for

Harvey's actions and it started this really interesting conversation. Well, that's what I

want to talk about because I want to know what we want from the women who seem, at least initially,

to be standing by their men. Mia? I remember having this thought and feeling very strongly

about it when the actor Robert Hughes, who was the hey dad actor, was tried and then convicted

of child sexual abuse quite a few years ago. His wife was a famous agent, a woman called

Robin Gardner and she was representing a lot of celebrities at that time and there was a lot

of conversation around how could she be with this man after he was convicted. Now he served

his jail time, he then came out of jail and they're still together. I think she stepped back from her

business or sold it and they're still together and she's continued to stand by him. Similarly,

Ralph Harris's wife, Bill Cosby's wife, there are a lot of men whose wives do stick around

and it's hard not to judge them. I'll be honest, it's hard. There's an Australian academic called

Dr Lauren Roseworn and she coined this term a few years ago, sexually transmitted ethics

and it's the idea that we love to hold women accountable for the behaviour of men and that

it goes both ways. When there's a really charismatic, lovable guy, we extend that

to their female partner and when there's a really problematic guy, we extend those values to their

partner in a way that doesn't go in the reverse because we see men as kind of these self-contained

standalone beings that aren't implicated in other people's behaviour necessarily.

Of course, part of it makes sense because there's the cliche, if you lie down with dogs, you get

fleas and there's also the idea that the people around a predator were complicit.

Well, that they may have known, that they may have benefited from what these people were doing

and often we have this bias where we think surely you would have to know if your husband or partner

was this kind of person, the kind of person who hurts people. Surely if your husband was a rapist,

you would have to know but I think we've learnt time and time again that you don't necessarily

and there are people who discover that their partner had a secret family or a secret gambling

addiction or engaged in criminal behaviour and there's also really fascinating psychology around

seeing what we want to see and ignoring what we don't want to see but something that worries me

a little bit is this idea that women are always subject to manipulation. So, for example, one

of the arguments when it comes to Russell Brand, when it comes to Danny Musson is these people,

the way they get away with what they did for so long is that they are charming and they're

manipulative. So, that must be what they're like in their intimate partner relationships.

But I wonder, especially now, why are we so comfortable to hold men accountable for the behaviour

of their friends and not women accountable for their behaviour of their partners?

Do you mean Ashton Kutcher?

Yes, like Ashton Kutcher.

But the other issue that I think is really worth mentioning is that if this is a pattern of behaviour

which it plainly is for Russell Brand and there was news this week that he's been demonetised from

YouTube, the BBC have taken down his videos, there's police investigations now and then other

women are starting to come forward and going to police. We don't know that his wife was not also

a victim of who knows what kind of behaviour.

This is exactly it. I think we're just massively impatient, particularly in our digital media

era, to jump to what we feel like. So, BG Phillips was not allowed to have a week in between her

husband being convicted and announcing her divorce without that week being just full of

people saying to her, well, clearly this is on you. And it is true that she supported him and

it is true that she wrote him character references. But I think that misunderstands the complexity

of relationships, marriages, entrenched family and entrenched finances, wanting to believe

the best of this person and then finding out that they're not who you thought they were

is devastating for them.

It's true. And in a couple of weeks, I'm interviewing the daughter of Chris and Lynette

Dawson, Chanel Dawson. That's a very famous murder case. Chris Dawson was found guilty of

murdering his wife Lynette that was covered by a podcast called The Teacher's Pet.

Lynette and Chris had two daughters. One of them believes that her father did not kill their mother,

despite the fact that he's been convicted and is now in jail. And the other one,

Chanel, believes that he did. You've also got to put that in there. It's not just about

standing by them. Maybe. And people are innocent until proven guilty, although there's a lot of

stuff about that Russell's behaviour that's on camera may not be criminal, but I would argue

a lot of it kind of is in terms of sexual harassment, grabbing journalists, being revolting

in interviews. She might believe him. Of course. And these are Philips might have believed Danny

Masterson. One of two things is happening inside their country house right now, right?

Russell Brandon and Laura Brand's house. Either she does believe him because she knew who she was

marrying, right? Of course, she knew who she was marrying in terms of Russell Brand's public image

and his openness about having sex addiction, his openness about promiscuity decade, his openness

about all his mental health issues is literally documented in books that he wrote. So it's not

like she didn't know about his past. So she either entirely believes him when he says it was consensual

and that he's a victim of a conspiracy or she's having to contend right now that the man that

she is literally carrying the child in her belly, that the father of that child is not who she thought

he was and that he is the monster that everybody says he is. Now both of those things are mind

boggling. If you've ever been the victim of a narcissistic dude, if you've ever been deceived

by a charming man, you know how complicated that is. Up is down and down is up and you don't know.

And I just don't like the speed at which we like to point and condemn. And it's interesting because

we even notice, you know, in the media, we'll see that people are clicking on the stories about

the women around these men because we're very interested. And it's interesting. That's why

we're talking about it. Yeah, because women say what would they do in the same situation.

But it's almost impossible to know. You know, it's almost impossible to know. And then you add in the

complexities that are in a lot of women's real lives, celebrities, not millionaires,

money and dependence and kids and entangled families, like just leave him is just kind

of almost ridiculously simplistic advice. And I get that. But I do really worry about a world

where we see women only as victims. I don't see her as a victim. That's not what I'm saying for a

minute. I'm not suggesting that she's a victim. I'm just saying what she would be going through

in this moment is really complicated. So I don't mean necessarily poor her. She's just a victim

of this narcissist. But what I mean is it's just so much more layered than it is to just be like,

clearly, if she does not divorce him, preferably by this time next week, she condones all those

allegations. She doesn't care about the women that he's hurt. She doesn't care about rape victims.

She is not accountable for his actions. I do not. No, I agree. This idea that women are accountable

for the actions of their co-workers or their partners, that's just not fair.

There has been a huge movement. We talked about it on Monday about looking at men and looking at

the people that they're friends with and wondering whether just being friends with them is an active

complicity. And we look at Hollywood and we look at the men that have been protected,

the men that have protected other men. And I guess my question is if we're willing to afford

that grace to women, that women have been manipulated by a narcissist and a sociopath,

then can't the men around them as well? We can extend that grace to men. What we were discussing

on Monday about that Scottish comedian, Danny Sloss, who's pushing men to call out men's problematic

behaviour, he's asking men to step in and stop. It's a different thing. That's a different issue.

He's not necessarily saying, if you're friends with someone who turns out to be a rapist,

that's your fault. He's not saying that. He's just saying men need to call each other out. And

we've discussed it before. It's actually the only thing that works. That level of peer pressure

from man to man in a toxic masculinity situation is the only thing that will work. I think it's a

different situation. What do you think is the biggest stretch point in a friendship?

On no filter this week, I interviewed two Australia's most well-known and successful

journalist, Lee Sayles and Lisa Miller. Lee, of course, you know who she is. Lisa Miller,

you would also recognise her face. She is a co-host on ABC News Breakfast at the moment.

They also happen to be best friends, which is something that not everybody knows. In our

conversation, we talked about the stretch point in friendships. The stretch point means

those times in a friendship where things become a little bit strained and a little bit stretched.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, it will stretch and it will break. Other times, it will bounce back

over time and sometimes it just the stretching leaves it just a bit loose and slack and not as

close or tight as it once was. I specifically asked them about the biggest stretch point

in their friendship because at one point in their lives, Lisa was a foreign correspondent

reporting on these absolutely tragic traumatic world events every single day. And Lee was at

a very different stage of her life. She was at home raising two young children. Here's a little

bit of what they said about that time. You know, I haven't really done a great deal of disaster,

you know, reporting like Lisa's done. And then obviously Lisa hasn't raised two kids. And so

I guess the challenge comes from you're trying to understand and support the other person,

but you can't really understand what it's like when you've worked 21 hours in a row in a

earthquake zone for eight days straight or whatever. So I guess that's where the challenge

is there that you're trying your best to be a supportive friend. Within the rounds of, oh,

I just missed that window to call her because now it's 1 a.m. Well, so there was a piece by

the cut this week that explored how friendships survive so much. But there's one thing that

appears to be the biggest stretch point of all. And that is more than marriage, more than a new job,

the piece says, more than moving across the country. I think there is nothing that represents

more of a challenge or a threat to adult friendships than parenthood. It is the only

thing that is permanent and time bound. It has fundamentally shifted my relationships.

It was written by a journalist called Alison P. Davis who hasn't got children and she talks about

a lot of her friendships that didn't survive when her friends became mothers.

Well, you've been on all the sides of this because you had children later than a lot of your friends

and you've also got a lot of friends who don't have children at all. How have you navigated that

and have you found it a great divide in your friendships? I think if you want your friendships

to survive these kind of stretches, you've got to take a long view. You've got to wait it out.

The reason why this is a massive issue for Alison P. Davis and women who are in the absolute eye of

this storm is because when you're in it in those first few years that your friends become parents

and you don't, for them, parenthood is all consuming. But that is a season. That is a very,

very intense season when that baby is entirely dependent on your friend, needs the attention

all the time. If they don't have family support around or a bottomless budget, sometimes the

baby's got to come. Sometimes the toddler's got to come. If you want to see your friends,

you've got to put up with that. That's life. If you want your friendships to survive this,

you have to wait it out. As you said, I didn't have my first child till I was 38.

Most of my immediate friends did have kids. Then on the other side of it, a lot of my

good old friends don't have kids of my good mates who I came up with at college and stuff in England.

We're exactly 50-50. There's a group of six of us and we're three of us do and three of us don't.

Even here with my Byron Bay ride or die crew, one of the three of us doesn't have kids. I'm

really familiar with how you make it work. One of the things you have to do is you have to make an

effort. It's just a really basic thing that obviously I was one of those people who didn't

have kids and was always around babies. I was a bit like, oh, bloody babies. Sometimes I would be,

oh, do they have to come? That could be a bit tricky, but if my friend had to bring them-

Did you say that or did you just think it?

I would sometimes say, maybe we should reschedule for another time or try and make arrangements

around it. I also recognized that I had to sacrifice the fact that if I wanted to stay friends with

my friends and they couldn't leave their baby behind for whatever reason, then, okay, there's

going to be a baby at brunch and that might be a bit annoying, but that's life. But then also,

it's about your expectations. If you're the person with children, what do you expect from

your friends who don't have them? Because I've got kids now, obviously have had for a long time. My

friends who don't have kids, I kind of expect them to have a passing interest. Some of them do,

some of them don't, but I'm not offended if they don't want to sit and talk about my children.

And they expect from me that I'm not going to blanket them with parent talk and I'm not going

to judge them like so many people in their world do all the time that their lives are somehow

less than because they don't have kids. So you've both got to give and take if you want the friendship

to last. That's my view on it.

You're on the cusp of this, Claire.

Yes. I had so many feelings reading this article. I flip flopped because on the one hand,

totally get it. Like sometimes you look at your friend's kid and you're like,

I am trying to feel something and I don't feel anything towards this trial.

I think that's about the expectation you don't have to.

Exactly. The more of my friends have kids, the more honest people are being about like,

I don't give a shit if people are interested in my kid. That's completely fine.

But I did want to challenge the idea that is all through this article that women with kids are

sort of some homogenous group where all of them just want to talk about their kids. That's not

true. The women that were being described in this article, I don't know them. The idea that every

time you meet up with a friend who's just had a baby or they want to talk about his baby poo,

I don't agree. I don't think that that's the case. And I thought it was kind of a bit unfairly

stigmatizing of women who have had kids.

Well, but that was the author's experience. Like it's not stigmatizing. It's just what's happened

to her. I think it's probably she's kind of, you know, taking a few examples and extrapolating

them to apply to all women with kids.

Yeah. And also, as I say, there is a time when you first have a baby when it is all consuming.

So maybe you go to one lunch when that person has just had like

A poo explosion at home.

The worst world and just needs to talk about it. And then you're like,

Oh, mate, I'm out. If this is what every lunch is going to be like.

And if you back away at that point, you'll never know whether every lunch is going to be that.

Yes. And reading this, I thought there are lots of, you know, stretch moments in friendships. And

there are also lots of things you talk about with friends that you may or may not relate to.

When somebody gets a job that I don't understand, I endeavour to understand what that job is and

what they actually do with their finance job. Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I listen to someone talk about a TV show they're

watching that I don't give a shit about. And you just do because friendship is about trying to

understand each other. And I do get that the big challenge is that when a child comes around,

there is so much that cannot be communicated because you are biologically programmed to

be obsessed with that baby. And your friend is not. And I get that there's a lot that can't

be communicated. However, what do you mean can't be communicated like how much you freaking love

your baby. And you're not going to sit there for 40 minutes being like, she's so cute. I just want

to kiss her on the mouth. Like, do you know what? If my friend had fell in love and wanted to come

and talk all about that, I'd also be bored. Exactly. It's like when a friend has a new

boyfriend and they're talking about all their fun in jokes and how often they're having sex.

And you're like, I don't personally care about that. But as a friend, I'm going to talk about

that with you because that's what friendship is about. Also twice. And then you're going to call

a moratorium. I think the difference between the examples of other stages of life and TV shows and

jobs is the problem with this stretch is there's almost a moral judgment embedded in the elastic,

right? Which is having babies is really important and profound. And it's what we're all put here to

do. And like, it's a love you'll never experience blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whereas TV shows

are not that. And so the person who doesn't have the baby yet can feel sometimes, I think this was

really brilliantly explored in Dolly Alderton's novel Ghost, right? The person who doesn't have

the baby is often made to feel rightly or wrongly, like suddenly all their concerns and their issues

and their things are trivial and unimportant. And that's where the tension comes in, which is

different from TV shows, jobs, relationships. It's almost been taboo until now, perhaps,

to be like, you know what, I don't want to talk about babies and your baby and my life isn't

meaningless because I don't have a baby. And I think that's why it's a particularly difficult

stretch. But how much is this idea of my life isn't meaningless because I have don't have a baby?

How much of that is projected onto the person who does? And how much of that is really felt by the

new mother? And I think it's not just new mothers. I think that what's also different between the

TV show and this is that it's your time, it's your identity. And the reason that I really struggle

is that I find it very challenging to see my friends when they also have to parent for the same

reason that I don't visit my friends at work, because I need and want their attention and

their focus. And when they are constantly, oh, hang on a second, what darling, what I can't

deal with that? That's why communication in friendships is so important because I think

you'll be surprised. I had a friend who had a three month old and Jess and I were going to

dinner and we were tossing up, do we invite her? Is it rude to invite her? Is it actually offensive

to even ask? After she was like, hell yeah, got a babysitter, turned up, had several drinks and

she was like, thank you for freaking inviting me. So I think the idea that all mothers are like that,

that they want their children to be there and they're going to be distracted is not true.

Always about wanting them. Like, if you have a three year old who is needy and you can't leave

them and you want to see your friend, sometimes you have to sit through some of those. Like,

you know, we talk often about how we're all programmed not to sit in discomfort anymore.

If you want your friendship to survive, you're going to have to go like if when I had my kids

and I was, and they were little and we didn't have parents around, there were some people in

my life I wouldn't have seen if they'd have said, I don't want to see you if the kids coming. Like,

so I think if that's all the time and it's systemic and they are literally saying to you,

I'm now two people, not just one. But the whole point of friendship is it's a bit of give and

take, right? Like every relationship. So sometimes you've just got to sit there and put up with that

annoying thing because it won't be forever. And it also changes. Like my friend, Amelia,

who lives in America, she came out to Australia, I can't remember, probably last Christmas,

I'd met one of her children when he was a baby, but the other one I hadn't met.

And so I think you can't have a really close friendship if you've never seen

your friend do a thing that's so much part of their identity. And if you've never seen them

in that role and you've never met their children, I just think it's really challenging. But

back to the stretching thing and when it springs back, as your children get older,

that divide closes. Like if you can get past that early stage, it's completely relevant

redundant to me whether my friends have kids or not. And I've got both because it's not what

our friendship is based on. We never talk about it.

It's a long game. As I say, it's a long game. So when you're in the middle of it,

it feels like forever, but it's a season, it's a moment and you do have to wait out some of

those pooey nappy conversations. But the parents have to be considerate. Like the parents have to

be. Okay. Well, on that point, the sense that I was left with when I finished this article was,

what do we expect women to do? Because one, it's frickin' women. It's always the mothers.

Like there's a little bit of a mention of fathers, but it's women. Women are now annoying if you

have kids. And I feel like this is just another load for women to carry. Like do I have to?

What's the load?

The fact that it's annoying if you have kids.

No, it's not annoying if you have kids. What she's saying is, it's annoying if we can no

longer do the things that made our friendship what it is. It's annoying if you only talk about your

kids. It's annoying if you only do things with kids involved. So I love that bit where she wrote

about how she'd flown from Los Angeles to visit her old friends in New York and she spent the

whole time at playgrounds. Now, I lived through that phase where I spent 50 to 60% of my waking

hours in a playground because when your kids are little, that's what you do. And often you'll say,

come with me, we'll get a coffee because it's the only time you've got to do it.

I would argue that in the article she said, next time I go, I'm going to plan things and invite

them. So I kind of think that's on her. If she was asking the people with kids to plan the activity,

it was going to be going to the park. But the thing that annoys me is the idea that

there's an example in the story where one of her friends says, I'm having a baby and it almost

sounds like she wants her friend to say, I'm so sorry about what that means for our friendship.

Yeah, because it's bullshit.

No, she didn't. I'm going to defend this story and this, first of all, this is her experience.

And she said this was like my last friend who hadn't had a baby and it's like they all had.

And it does change things. And you do have less in common for a time. And I think that

all she's asking for is not for the person with a child to feel bad, but just to be self-aware.

And just to not assume that your baby is interesting to me or fun for me to hang out with.

Just assume that. I think that's basic self-awareness.

I think the self-awareness and the grace is on both sides.

On Monday night, after I listened to Out Loud and you told us how all men are obsessed with

the Roman Empire, I decided to test the theory. I went into the kitchen and asked my husband

when he last thought about the Roman Empire. He took out his ear buds and said,

are you kidding? He was actually listening to a podcast called This History of Rome

at that very moment. Thanks. Bye.

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.

We need to talk about the Office 10. In a viral article in the cut by Danielle Cohen,

Cohen refers to the 391 phenomenon. The idea that a person who is normally a three becomes a nine

in a closed circuit environment, like a weekend group trip or a university class.

But then once you're out of that environment and go into the real world,

they plummet to all one. She says that in adulthood, no environment has as great a

distorting effect as the workplace. She defines an Office 10 as a person who falls somewhere

between average to mildly good looking in the world at large, but skyrockets to wildly attractive

within the confines of an open concept desk plan.

Office 10s rarely manage you or report to you because the closeness would disrupt it. More

often than not, they're at kind of the same rung, maybe one or two higher. They don't work closely

with you and no one necessarily is full blown crushing on the Office 10.

It's just that they're here to add a little bit of spice. That's kind of what they're about.

Importantly, the Office 10 is born from a combination of scarcity and proximity.

An ordinary person becomes extraordinary and they are desires we fabricate to make our work

lives more interesting. It's quite depressing, but this made me think, maybe this is why so many

people meet their partners at work. Yes, because you're a little bit like, oh, you're really sexy

and then you leave and you're like, yeah. The thing is, is that if it's going to translate into

a relationship, then the 10 has to hold. Yeah, it has to be. I disagree, because I think that I'm

sure that there are going to be out louders that are thinking, why are we judging people?

Why are we giving people numbers that are so reductive? Let's be honest. You don't get to

know someone's personality unless you are visually impaired, but the first experience of

someone you have is a visual experience. For whatever reason, we find some people attractive

and some people less attractive. We're drawn sexually to some people and not others. We then

get to know their personalities. The reason why when people were working from home and pandemics

was so bad for a certain type of man, it is exactly this. A lot of people linked it to the

rise of the incels, because the mid-man or the one in the open market, like on Tinder in the bar,

in a closed environment, he's very good looking. There's more likely that the woman will give him

the opportunity to get to know her. We're being reductive by saying women and men, but the person

will get to know him. That's when you fall in love. I would say that the holding for a lot of

people is about the person, because you can't stay with someone just because you think they're

handsome or hot, but you have to actually like them as a person. What the office does is give

people the chance that might not otherwise get the chance in the open market. It's true,

because they've got high status within that closed environment. You'll make a bit of an effort to get

to know them. Jesse says this all the time. She wouldn't have dated someone who was seven years

younger than her. No, the boxes were not ticked. You wouldn't have swiped in that situation. I

love this idea and I think there are other environments, because I was thinking back to

when I was single and I was really wanting to meet somebody. Romantic comedies for my generation

ruined us forever, because people are always bumping into each other under umbrellas and busy

city streets and being like, oh, you dropped something and then like, oh, look at you. You're

beautiful. And then they go home and have sex. Then they go home and have sex and then they get

married. Airports, planes. I used to, when I was single, and it's not necessarily that I was

desperate to meet someone and have a relationship, but it was like, there's a sense of constant

potential when you're in that single phase that anything could happen today. I could bump into

someone today who is going to change my life in some way. It doesn't happen so much with you.

People will bump into people or change your life. Otherwise, I'd get on a plane and I'd sit there,

watch all the people come in and you'd look at them. I'm heterosexual. I said, look at all the men

and I'd be like, I hope he's sitting next to me. Oh, maybe we'll want to share a packet of nuts.

What I would consider as my kind of deal breakers in that situation were different than they would

have been in a bar. The standards were up and down. And then if a really good looking guy did

sit next to you, you'd actually be terrified because you'd think, well, I'm going to fall asleep

and I'm going to drool on you and that will be that. But it's so funny that sense of constant

potential. And when you work in lots of female environments, as we have done,

I have done most of my career and so have you, Mia. Men are in such scarcity that their status

is immediately raised. The other environment, I think you find the equivalent of an Office 10

is on Kentucky or Top 10 or any kind of travel group. Because when you first get there, you look

around and you go, I feel weird. I don't know these people. Within two days, you're like,

oh, yeah, that guy's so hot. And that girl's freaking beautiful. She's a supermodel. Like

everything's warped because it is closed circuit. Also wedding.

Because I went straight from an all girls high school, which I don't think there's

more of an example of an Office 10 than an all girls high school. Oh, yeah. Same. It would be

like we always joke that the school would only employ maintenance guys who were like over 60.

Because like a thirsty group of hundreds of horny girls,

we would just terrorize anyone who was kind of under the age of 40. I look back on the teacher

we all thought was hot and I'm like, oh, come on now. Come on. But went straight from all girls

high school, then sitting in a uni tutorial when there was men. I was like, oh my God, that guy

doesn't look like he's had a shower in a couple of weeks, but he is sexy. And then the other one

is mixed netball because there's so few men. And I think they're so doing it's scarcity,

it's proximity. And it's also like you're doing something that's not threatening to me.

And so I like that. I like that very much. The other place where you find an Office 10

I find is at a doctor's office or a hospital. So I remember going to like a GP in America

when I was traveling and I was like, I have like UTI or something. And this is very stressful

because I'm in Texas and went and saw a doctor and I was like, hottest man I've ever seen.

Looks like Zac Efron. Really? But I think it's because I was in a position of need.

All right. And you've got the ability to give me antibiotics. I love you. For my stinging vagina.

I've got a recommendation before we go that is a very specific episode of a podcast. So

very, very famous podcast, This American Life. I haven't actually been listening to This American

Life much lately. It was such a massive part of the big podcast resurgence wave wasn't it?

It was pretty much one of the earliest podcasts. It's iconic, but I agree with you. I'm a sporadic

listener. Yes. Because it's documentary style and it's brilliant. No question. But I listened to

an episode last week called The Call, which is one of those things you consume that then you

cannot stop thinking about. And it made me look at something in a different way. So this episode

is about a woman called Jesse, or it starts being about a woman called Jesse, who works for

a hotline in America called Never Use Alone. Now, I'm sure lots of out louders know America and not

only America, but particularly America is and has been for a decade or so now in the grip of a really

horrific opioid epidemic. And Never Use Alone is a hotline, a non-judgmental hotline that has

been set up to try and save lives of addicts who might be using by themselves. And they can call

a number. And in this case, this woman called Jesse would talk to them about how to minimize

the chance of overdose. And she says things like... You got the door unlocked? Yeah, it's unlocked now.

Okay. So make sure I'm on speakerphone. Yep. You're by yourself in your home, in your apartment.

Yeah. Okay. Oh, that's so amazing. And in the opening of this first episode,

she's talking to a young woman called Kimber and you hear the call, you hear Kimber preparing to

inject her drugs. Very confronting. It is. It's very confronting. Because you keep waiting

for Jesse to say, are you sure, like to discourage her from that? But that's not the

point of this hotline. Hotline. And then what you hear in those opening moments is you hear the

young woman who's called Kimber talking to Jesse about what she's about to do, what she's about

to inject, how it's going to go. And then Kimber goes silent and Jesse is just calling her name.

Kimber. Kimber, I'm going to call your name about one more time and I'm calling it an

ambulance. Kimber. And that is the beginning of an extraordinary piece of reporting that then

interviews all the people who go on to be involved in this story. The reason it's such a great episode

is, you know, the opioid epidemic is like thrown around all the time. And I'm actually reading

a novel that's kind of adjacent to it at the moment. So it's front of mind for me. But it's

such a human story that takes it from a different perspective entirely about the people it's affecting

and Jesse and the people who work on that line who are like, we just want to keep people alive.

And it's such a profound statement and it's such a profound thing to do, but it's very confronting.

Anyway, I loved it. I love a piece of content that makes you look at things in a different way.

You can find it wherever you find podcasts. It's an episode of This American Life called The Call.

Most extraordinary thing I've listened to in such a long time. I can't stop thinking about it.

If you're looking for something else to listen to that's in-house, that's got more of our voices

in it, check out the subscriber episode from earlier this week where we did more questions

from the post questionnaire. And one of them was on what occasion do you lie? That was very

interesting. And now I cannot trust these bitches. Some of the other questions we answered were the

quality that we like most in men and the quality that we like most in women. And for some of us,

it was the same. For some of us, it was different. So we'll put a link in the show notes. It's very

pervy. I learned a lot about you two. 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. 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.