Everything Is Content - Adolescence, Severance & Fatphobic Filters

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Congratulations – you've made it through the week. Your gift is a brand new EIC episode!Everyone has (rightly) been floored by Netflix's latest drama tackling misogyny, online bullying and radicalisation. Adolescence has been praised as 'flawless' TV. Is four episodes enough to explore such a rich issue? And are the right characters platformed in this story?Severance stans – you've waited long enough. We finally clocked in for our Severance shift, and dissected the much-loved Apple TV thriller, and its second series. Meanwhile, if things weren't dark enough in pop culture, IRL fatphobic TikTok filters have been gaining in popularity. But how did we get here... again? The blatant cruelty is galling.Thank you so much for listening! Please consider leaving us a review and rating, and following us wherever you're listening <3In partnership with Cue Podcasts. Ruchira has been loving... Lady Gaga's Mayhem and The End of Seriousness Beth has been loving... Tea alarm and Ellie and NatasiaOenone has been loving... Running PointAdolescenceAdolescence review – the closest thing to TV perfection in decadesThe Parental Panic of AdolescenceSeveranceThe ‘Chubby’ and ‘Skinny’ TikTok Filters Prove Fatphobia Is Worse Than EverSociety has never hated fat people as much as we do nowMaintenance Phase Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richira. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content, the podcast for pop culture analysis, celebrity stories and internet drama. From TikToks to sub stacks to literary masterpieces and Oscar-worthy performances, we discuss it all. We're the severed version of you working hard underground to bring out to you the bread of content. This week on the podcast, we're talking about adolescence, severance, and internet fatphobia. Follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. And please don't forget to follow us on your podcast player app, please. Okay, but first things first, what have you both been loving this week so I have been slowly working my way through Lady Gaga's new album Mayhem and it's a win it's it's just fab I love

it I love it so much I love this era for her I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before but I used to be such a mega fan about when I was 15 I don't want to do the maths of how long ago that was let's just say when I was 15 10 years ago and redacted redacted it's so nice to see her come back it's so fun to see her in the discourse again and it's so heartwarming to see the commentary around it about how she is referencing so many of her past eras in this album but also pushing the boat out further and creating this whole new sound it's just it's magical have you listened to it I've only listened to abracadabra and maybe a couple others but it's been on my to-do list because I absolutely love

Lady Gaga too I don't know why I haven't done it yet. What are your standout songs or do I need to listen to it? Is it a top to bottom album that you've got to do in sequence? I don't think you necessarily have to, but I think much like Brat was for me, I think at different points, different songs will be my favourite. At the minute, Abracadabra is my favourite

just because that was my in as well. There's one about like bad girl ripped jeans that I really like because that was all over TikTok. And I went and listened to her song, which is really fun. You should, I think you should listen to that one. Okay. If you just have time for one. I've only got time for one song, I'm so busy.

Disease, Blade of the Grass and Killer. I feel like are really good as well. And I feel like they're competing for like the next batch of my faves. But also another kind of pivot I've also been loving a New Yorker piece called The End of Seriousness. Our unfunny times are rife with laughter that seldom offers relief and it's a piece by Lauren Michelle Jackson. I know I pasted it to you guys but have you seen this at all? I did I've read some of this piece because I also don't have enough time in my life. I did read some of this piece and I found it really completely chimed with me. I do think we're too ironic at the end of seriousness. I think this is a great piece of the 100 words

that I read. Well, you'll be absolutely fascinated with the other words that come to you because it is such a good piece. And it just made me think it really defines the era we're in the last election in the US was defined by just ironic posting throughout you know Luigi Mangione all these kind of disparate events but are linked throughout the fact that they're all political they're all just seen through the prism of jokes memes kind of nihilistic posting and it is such a depressing read but it's also quite an important one because I think it kind of summed everything up perfectly definitely go read it really good piece love that what have you been loving Beth I've got two I've got a show and I've got a thing and again I'll let one of you choose and it's not

a trap I'll let you choose which one you want first. Show or the thing. Well, last time you flipped on me, so I don't want to pick. I won't do it again. But you have to get it in the right order. Show or thing, show or thing. Okay, well, let's do thing first because you wouldn't let us have thing last time. That's the wrong order. Okay, we'll do thing.

We'll do thing first, even though you've answered wrong. Okay, thing is, I hope you've both seen this. It's the tea time alarm. And I know this is old news, old meme news. Oh my God. It's brand new meme news. You're both shaking your heads. Okay. It's a trend on social media where people in the UK are telling Americans about the tea time alarm, e.g. the mass public alarm that sounds at 4pm every day when it's time for tea and like the punishments that we reportedly receive if we do not drink tea at the time of the alarm. And it's so funny watching Americans be like guys you joking like is it real like if I come here like am I going to hear the tea alarm and everyone's being like well I don't know why

you're laughing like this is really serious my grandma actually was arrested in 1979 oh my god she was 20 minutes late to tea time alarm and no one's seen her since it's so funny because people in the UK are like not flinching. They're being like, it's very real. Like they're out in public and then they'll post like as the tea time alarm goes off and they're rushing home. Like Michael Barrymore was posting about it. It's just absolutely chef's curse. So funny. That is so good. It's also just made me realize we need to bring back tea time.

I want to have tea and cake at 4pm, but I'm having dinner at 5. I might have to have my tea time at like 2. Well, the alarm goes off at 4 though, so I don't know how you'd have it at 2. I'm a bit confused. I want to ask our American listeners, have you fallen for this? Please let us know a message because we won't judge you,

but I will laugh very heavily. Also, it's real. Oh yeah, of course it's real. It's real. What's your show? So the show I've got, and I'm quite late to this party as well, it's Ellie and Natasha.

Have we talked about this? The BBC sketch comedy show from 2022 or 2023 I think 22 actually um six episodes of just like absolute pure bliss I've been howling at it all week like have you both seen it yes yes one of the best things I've ever spent time consuming ever so good I'm so annoyed that I didn't watch it till now although actually feels quite special I did read that they were going to do, they was like greenlit for season two in 2023, but now it's like two years later. And I think Natasha Dimitriou was pregnant, working on another show, maybe had a baby. So it could still be coming. I'm hoping it is because I just finished

this and I was like, where's the next one? Like it's so weird. So funny. I think my favorite, I was watching it just this morning and I was watching the one where it's like a couple in bed Natasha Dimitriou and a man they're kind of rolling around in bed like classic Sunday morning light streaming in through the duvet and then they're like should we go for brunch yeah yeah and then he goes to get out of the duvet and he's like crawling and crawling he's like I can't find the end of it and he can't get out and then they end up in like Germany in the duvet and it really it actually made me I had to stop like tears rolling down my face um and it actually reminded me it's

that sort of happened to a friend of mine wait what are you talking about in her duvet it's normal she went to sleep in her duvet as normal she woke up in the morning buttoned inside of it that's real stop it no. No, Beth, no. I promise you, she told me that. There was a TikTok I saw the other day, which is also kind of this, where this guy is showing his girlfriend, I think, or they're on a date.

I don't know that he's got a really good way of making the bed. So he gets inside the duvet cover to try and like put it onto the duvet and turn it inside out. But then he gets stuck in the duvet and then he starts panicking and getting really claustrophobic.

I was literally crying with laughter. She's filming him as well. Cause he's's like I've got the best way to make the bed and then you just hear him be like it's not funny I can't get out and he's just in the duvet it's oh my god chef's kiss duvet humor the new frontier I'm sure you guys know this but Tash Demetria is Jamie Demetria's sister who the guy who wrote Statlet that's my love if you want more Tash Demetria in your life she has been on Adam Buxton like a few times and it is some of the best episodes of that podcast so because she's just one of the funniest her brain is hilarious oh my god my favorite from that show from the skit is the Pomodoro Brothers

do you remember that one it's these like really posho chefs who are absolutely disgusting about food they like sexualize everything so they'll call like a tomato like a slutty red that they're like slapping into shape and it is it it just draws on something that I feel like isn't as extreme as that but you know how people really sexualize food when they're cooking on social media and TikTok and it's just disgusting but yeah so funny. So gross. Had me howling. That was another of my favorites because they put the tomato pomodoro in a sack and then they put suckle from the sack. And I was like, it's just a great bit of like visual.

So it felt like cultural comedy as well, because they're like rich people who can only make literally one dish, tomato or whatever it's called, spaghetti pomodoro. And they just make a whole cookbook about it in which they forget to put the recipe and it was just so flipping funny and only what have you been loving this week so i have watched the entirety of running point on netflix have either of you watched this i've never heard of this oh good okay so it's a new series starring kate hudson who plays this woman called isla gordon and she's the only sister in a family of brothers. And she becomes the president of the LA Waves basketball team, which is like their family basketball team.

And basically has to work really hard to prove herself because she's a woman. And it's kind of like Ted Lasso meets a very lighthearted succession. So it's really easy viewing. It also features one of our problematic faves, Chet Hanks, son of Tom Hanks, who famously is always

doing weird shit yeah he's like a proper character in it also has Brenda Song and Justin Theroux and the cast and it's just a really easy watch I was kind of double screening it a bit I love Kate Hudson it's quite fun it's there's not that much going on but it's a really good one because the other things I've been loving are two shows that we're going to be discussing later on which are much more stressful so if you need something light-hearted would recommend I remember this now this is the one that Mindy Kaling's written slash produced I'm not sure which right yes yes so Brenda Song who is am I right she's married to Macaulay Culkin and I've been seeing them everywhere and I had no idea I was like thrilled to see her but I was like why

is she doing she was going down like the Jennifer Hudson corridor, like clapping, dancing in a pair of gorgeous, enormous flares. I was like, God, what? She must be promoting something. And I had no idea. I was too lazy to Google. So it must be this is the reason

I've been seeing her everywhere. Also side note, am I the only person who watches those videos of celebrities doing the Jennifer Hudson show? They walk down the corridor where everyone's, you know, like really hyping them up and they do that dance. And all I can think about is if I was in that moment, I would probably freeze. Like I don't know what dance I would do. And it really fills me with panic. I can't watch those videos. Oh, Issa Rae's was one of my absolute favourites. I agree though,

I would be really awkward doing it. But when someone's good at it, it's like the sexiest, coolest thing when they just immediately sort of start like bopping and swaying it's not something I'll ever be able to achieve that and a glam bot does fill me with fear glad I'm not alone so I've been so excited to talk about this show and I know so many people who follow us have been the exact same it seems like it's taken over the entirety of pop culture in just one week it's also just shot up to Netflix's number one spot for very good reason. If you haven't already, please go and watch Adolescence right this second, right now. The series throws you into the deep end when 13-year-old Jamie Miller played excellently, excellently by Owen Cooper in his debut TV acting gig after Jamie's arrested for the murder of his

classmate Katie, who was stabbed to death several times. Top Boy's Ashley Walters is one of the DIs assigned to the case and he also has a son at Jamie's school. So Jamie keeps saying that there's been a mistake as police with guns take him from his house, but is that really true? We soon see the many facets to Jamie, including a harrowing scene with a female psychologist, where he transforms from a lovely teen into an aggressive monster, degrading her and feeding off her fear. The four-part Netflix series is directed by Philip Barentini, who also did Boiling Point, an amazing film also starring Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie's dad. Like Boiling Point, Adolescence is filmed

in one shot. The Guardian's given it five stars and it's been called, quote, flawless TV. And I think we've all said this before. I think we can all agree it's a vital look at the rise of incel culture in young men. I know you both have watched it, but let's just start with what did you think? Basically, I was so glad that we are covering this show I started watching it and I think if we weren't covering it I might have flaked out on it within 50 minutes I had this like knot of like anxiety and dread in my stomach which was so uncomfortable and I was like I just I think if it had been my own volition I was like I would have gone back to this in a few months glad I didn't but like just the feeling throughout the show of dread of like apprehension of like grief and terror is so palpable I am I was so impressed and like completely blown away by this show but I watched finished last night and it is sitting

incredibly heavily on me even still I agree I think the thing that blew me away so much was just like the impeccable acting and casting and also the fact that it was like all done in one shot I found that really amplified the level of anxiety you feel because you feel like you're the cameraman that you're following around that you're walking through these halls it also made it feel kind of like a play I just thought it was so beautifully shot. I can see why now everyone is raving about it. I think it's a masterpiece. But that being said, I actually did read a really interesting piece in the New Yorker,

which I wanted to bring to you guys, which is called The Parental Panic of Adolescence by Inku Khanna, where she says, Unfortunately, adolescence's flashy, fragmentary approach undermines its attempts to illuminate. Angie Tate incels and the manosphere get name-checked and the plot could easily, if crudely, be summed up by the ever-viral quote commonly attributed to Margaret Atwood. Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.

Women are afraid that men will kill them. And she goes on to say, I ended up wishing that the show could have given genuine interiority to its young male characters, especially those beyond Jamie. We learn nothing to nothing about what even his closest friends think of the homicide even though one is eventually charged as an accomplice. Its perspective is only ever that of an outsider. Its true sympathy lies less with the victim than with the grown-up bystanders

trying to make sense of it all. This generational divide looms throughout the case. You can practically see the chasm widening. The crime gets solved in the end, but modern boyhood remains a mystery. And after being blown away by the show, I thought that that was quite an interesting take to read. Yeah, that is a really interesting take. I also had a really good conversation with somebody who listened to the podcast who was saying they wish the victim had been more central to the story because we don't know anything about Katie really apart from through the prism of her best friend who is absolutely distraught and has lost a vital support system in Katie being murdered there was a sense of just like loss when it ended on that fourth episode because it felt like I

really desperately wished there was something about the court case and just the unpicking of what exactly has gone on here. But I have to say, I think it's a really good start. I think I can't even name on a hand how many dramas or TV shows have explored this territory. It's really ripe. It's really new. So although I do actually agree with the points raised in that piece, I think this is an impeccable start. And I think that could be the next drama. Why don't we just move on from this point now? show was very much about him and you do see that in these cases especially with the high profile ones the victim does almost get sidelined unless they're one of those quite salacious victims you'll see like the victim unless they can be blamed they often do get sidelined which is the nature of these crimes it's the nature of how even in the show when um her best friend is she she

attacks another boy for his supposed involvement and just being you know horrible force in the school and like people like why did you do that and it's almost like her anger is they're trying to diffuse it whereas the boy that's accused doing this crime has to be handled with like kid gloves has to be sort of like coaxed out like the focus is so much on kind of the boys and like, you know, if you cause all the problems, like I just found that a really interesting and really like it kind of shone that light on, you are just silent as a, as a young woman, as a woman, whether that's the silencing that happens like when you are murdered or brutalized or, you know, when you live,

I found that quite interesting. A lot of people have, a lot of people saying they're quite disappointed by the program because they were expecting like a big twist. They thought it was like kind of more true crime, explosive Harlan Coburn, whereas there's no big twist. He's accused of the crime. He has done the crime. We know this pretty much from the moment he's arrested, like because there is enough evidence and the CCTV evidence, et cetera. It isn't like, it's a prescient look at the manosphere and the radicalization of young boys and modern society like it's not a whodunit mystery and i think when i looked at it as that as the kind of bomb that goes off we never see the inside of a courtroom we see like

domestic life school life and then some of him um in this detention center we don't see the aftermath we don't ever meet her family we only see maybe like one or two photos of her and i think that's if you look at it as though this was the point, when this happens, this is the network of aftermath. This is how deep it goes. This is how terrible it is. I think that is what was most effective to me. It was like a poison that just spread in this community after the fact. Like I said, I was really thinking about her a lot more because she wasn't a character. She had been extinguished. There is a point when DS Frank literally says, when they're at the schools, she's like, what I hate most about these cases is that everyone's

going to be talking about Jamie and everyone's just going to forget about Katie. And it was making me think about recently, Lucy Boynton was on a podcast and she was saying how it's so interesting when crimes are committed against women. It always man does x to women man does something we're always talking about like the male violence on the women they become kind of like infamous for their crime so I guess yeah it is pointed on but it is you're right it's interesting how it is all focused on the actions of the men and like you said Ruchira there is an angle there where then we can pick up and see like, how does this impact the women

and have that as a separate story? Because I did love that there weren't any twists. I love that it was really contained. I think it made it so much more powerful. And I have to say the scenes in the school room, I can't explain to you how uncomfortable and stressed it made me feel because that is what children are like

when things happen, you know, they're all like laughing misbehaving because they probably don't understand like really the gravity of what's going on I thought that that was just such clever writing and I thought it was all so believable at every performance but I don't know if it's too soon to come to this but my favorite episode has to be season three I just saw Erin Doherty as Bryony Ariston was one of the most outstanding things I've ever seen I agree that was by far my favorite episode I think cinematography wise the kind of shooting wise you don't really get as much of the one shot power

whereas like in the school that's when it's flexed the most because you're just constantly roving. That was an amazing part of episode two, but the acting was just absolutely just, it floored me. This kind of dichotomy of the two and the way they are just like power playing constantly. And the fact that Jamie is really kind of wielding control and power in this one room and it just oscillates and flips and just emotion is like moving in all these different places within microseconds of their exchanges it is just absolutely incredible and I think he's going to do amazing things just by virtue of how he's portrayed this character that is so difficult so unwieldy and done it in such a powerful engaging way I just couldn't stop staring at them both and it's amazing it you're right it did feel like a play it was so stripped back

it was just two people acting in like godlike manner it was incredible i thought it was so good so that's the episode three is when it's the clinical psychologist basically interviewing him for the impact report i read that this is the first episode they filmed which is a netflix post this which is remarkable because it's kind of widely considered to be jamie's best performance played by owen cooper i believe and it is outstanding and to think that they filmed that before they filmed the others, like it is, it's a complete masterclass. And it is, yeah, so affecting this like interplay, this like adult woman who is so affected by this child,

who is a child, but he's committed what I think we think of as like an adult crime. And this is a theme throughout the whole thing of being like, this is a child, this is a victim of something, but also the perpetrator of the most awful crime it's like a constant tug of war in my mind and I think in the in the mind of Bryony the psychologist of like squaring the reality that this individual is a little boy at the at the mercy of all kinds of adult forces who has also done this enormous and dreadful thing like I had to watch all four

episodes in one because I think doing otherwise it would have hung over me too much but like I had to pause after that one and just catch my breath I thought it was absolutely remarkable and couldn't believe that was the first one they filmed crazy just also seeing his face almost darken and the exchange starts off with him being so charming you're suckered in you just remember oh he's just this possibly very charming child you can't imagine he's not popular you can't imagine that he's anything other than a lovely boy and he just snaps he snaps about three times in this exchange and he gets to the point of barking in her face where I actually gasped and my stomach dropped. And I felt such fear. I felt absolute panic. And you can see

Erin Doherty mask up, completely stilted, completely shocked, but also cannot give anything away. The whole exchange is over. He's left the room. She breaks down and she starts to have what looks like a panic attack, some kind of of anxiety attack and I felt like I was living it with her it was just absolutely incredible but also just felt like you were in the room with them and I think that was such a powerful element of that scene particularly I think the writing as well in that scene she's so convincing she's so double-layered because we're so able to see like her interiority and then the performance that she's playing as a psychologist and as you said, that division between trying someone for absolutely heinous, really violent crime, whilst also understanding their youth is really, really complicated. And I think

the way that the script worked there in terms of being able to reflect how insidious this language around misogyny is, the way that he kind of, you can see he's almost like kind of attracted to her or he likes her attention, but then he's also in sort of like refusal to answer her questions. I just thought there was a really amazing ability to kind of show that the way that he had been radicalized. And then sometimes his softness, his boyhood comes out, especially when he's speaking to his dad and you can see him as a little boy. And then with her, I mean, his acting is just amazing, but I felt the same when the police officers are initially interviewing him in that first interview.

I was just thinking, God, how hard must that be to have a 13 year old child sat in front of you where you can't treat them like a kid. I would just break in that instance. I would never be able to believe that he'd done it. And I just think there was so many layers to this from the acting to the writing to like, yeah, that stillness and that closeness. There was a Guardian review that was like, on a street level, this is about knife crime. And it was talking about how the percentage of UK teenagers killed with a blade or sharp object has risen by 240%. But they said on a cultural level, it's about cyberbullying, the malign influence of social media and the unfathomable pressures faced by boys in Britain today. Male rage, toxic masculinity, online misogyny. This isn't just all too plausible fiction. It's unavoidable fact.

And that's what kind of freaked me out so much about this is it's, it's, this isn't a work of fiction. This is basically a retelling of a story that we've seen and are going to keep continuing to see. And it's done so deftly that it's just, well, loads of people said this, but it's done so deftly that it's just what loads of people said this but it's flawless tv basically one thing i sat with throughout the whole series is just completely how adults are out of their depth when it comes to extremism misogyny the alt-right red pill and also specifically online communication the fact that that Ashley Walter's character, his son has to tell him about what all these emojis mean and how they're indicators for

communication around the alt-right or kind of negging each other about being incels online. He has no clue. And lots of the police officers have no idea that, you know, they say, oh, I think this is related to that incel ideology. One of them's like, oh yeah, incel, I know that. As if it's like something sat in the back of their mind. It's not at the forefront of something that they're facing every day, which I don't know. All of that stuff is really worrying. And also his parents as well. They're just completely out of their depth. They're drowning in this entire scenario. They don't understand what's happened. They can't see their son for who he has become because no parent wants to see that no parent can see that easily it's so awful to imagine that your child

could do something as horrendous as this and that last episode where they're confronting maybe we could have done more maybe it's okay to know that now. And they just both break down was absolutely heartbreaking. But I also think it's so important to show that. I also think it's really important to show the fact that lots of people don't have a clue about this. Lots of people aren't handling this. We need to do better. We absolutely need to get a hold of this. And I don't think there's any blame in the game in this series I think it is just quite an honest look in the mirror of saying we need to fucking get a grip this is getting out of hand kids are communicating in ways that we have no concept no understanding about and we're catching

up and we're drowning at this point something needs to change urgently across the board it's not a teacher's thing it's not just a parent's thing it's not a police thing it's every single person we all need to know about this we all need to change it something needs to change now so another series that has been critically cleaning up since it first graced our screens is apple tv's severance which has just released its second series and its final episode is airing the same day as this episode is going live. I hadn't actually watched season one until this weekend when I binged both series after caving

and getting an Apple TV free trial because everyone was raving about it. And it has 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.7 out of 10 on IMDb. So Severance for the unininitiated, which includes Ruchira, because I know that Beth, you've watched it. It's a science fiction psychological thriller and it's executive produced and primarily directed by Ben Stiller. And the plot follows Mark Scout, who's played by Adam Scott, who you might remember as Will Ferrell's brother in Stepbrothers, among other roles. He's an employee of the fictional corporation Lumen Industries,

and he agrees to a severance program in which his workplace memories are separated from his primary external memories. So basically, he goes into work and his innie, as it's referred to, which is basically him with his entire memory wiped clean to the point where when a severed worker starts work, they have to be told their own name. They carried out mysterious and important work, which is inputting data that looks completely nonsensical for eight hours a day. And then when you leave work, you're outie, can't remember anything that happened during the workday and has no idea of who your colleagues are or what the role entails. And his colleagues include Britt Lauer, John Turturro, Zach Cherry, Christopher Walken, Tramon Tillman and Patricia Arquette to name a few the performances from everyone are genuinely outstanding I would say so compelling and really rich characters which is quite interesting for characters that don't even know who they are

in a 2022 review for season one the Guardian said it is supposedly the work-life balance made flesh and season two expands on the dystopian uncanny universe even more and the real world is just as discombobulating as the office space in lumen because everything's quite like anachronistic and difficult to place and the show's creator dan erickson said it's not set far into the future but rather in a slightly alternate present and that definitely adds to that uneasy viewing because you constantly feel like you're being wrong-footed it touches on so many themes we've spoken about in the podcast, from tech and surveillance to work-life balance and personal agency in a system designed to

suppress individuality and critical thinking. Beth, you were one of the people that put me on to Severance. So I'd love to hear your review and thoughts on the show and especially what you've made of season two but obviously we will keep it spoiler free yeah so I am one of Severance's number one fans I love this show I loved season one so I watched season one a few months maybe a month after it came out and I was in bed with like the most miserable flu tonsillitis sweating shivering had to go to A&E but when I look back on that week I just have to smile because I remember watching Severance for the first time and being like, yes, I love this show. So loved season one, have probably, because it's such a big gulf between that coming out and getting season

two. I probably watched it three times in that time. I've watched it by myself. I've introduced other people to it. I would watch it again today. So loved season one, really have nothing but praise for it. Season two, also'm loving. Cannot wait for the finale. Season two feels very much like a different beast in terms of pacing, in terms of what we're allowed to see, in terms of what these characters are going through. It feels different in its pacing. A few people have criticized the pacing because it does feel like we are getting full throttle and then it slows down. It feels like we're getting maybe a few bottleneck filler episodes, which I've enjoyed because I think they show a lot of interiority. We're learning a lot more about the characters. One thing that

does make me nervous is they're just setting up mystery after mystery after mystery. And anyone who has watched Lost, you know, sometimes they'll set up mystery after mystery after mystery, and there will not be a payoff. So I'm trying to watch it with a mind to i'm just enjoying the ride but i am not going to expect everything to be resolved because it's an incredible amount of big question marks fan theories are going bonkers if i thought they were bad for white lotus they are so intense for this people are watching and pausing every single episode to be like did you notice the TV show the children were watching? Did you notice the word used here? Did you know that there's goats in it? But then one of the characters says she's got an itchy head. Maybe she had goat horns. I mean, I cannot, if you want to

be part of a subculture that never sleeps, never rests, I have to give you Severance Series 102. So I love it, but I'm nervous. Richera, have we convinced you to watch? I was gonna say the fact that you mentioned that whole subculture that seems just energized fueled by conspiracy theories I'm convinced I've tried watching Severance just once but and this is the point of it and I need to power through the grading of it and also that just like deep melancholy of the first episode really put me off and I'm just super sensitive and I think I probably wasn't in the right place of mind maybe as spring is springing I can just

afford to watch something that's upsetting and dark that That's so interesting. I was quite sucked in straight away, but then I do quite like that dystopian kind of world. So I didn't have any resistance to it. And I was, because I didn't realize you'd watched one episode. I was going to say, you're so lucky because you got to do what I did, unlike Beth, where I watched straight through. It does make it seem season one and two

do then seem very different, but then it was great because I didn't have to stress about running out of episodes what do you think it is about this show that has captured audiences do you think it is because it feels a little bit black mirrory or because it does feel like this could be a potential future dystopia i mean i so i saw someone on twitter x say that severance is this like, it's a critique of capitalism, but it's also a critique of convenience. Taking convenience too far robs you of the most important parts of life. Like that's kind of what it's about. I mean, you can watch it as pure entertainment. You can be like, this is my weird show that I love. Or you can be like, this is a

real critique coming at a point where I think we are all feeling very overworked. We're obviously very underpaid. Life is very hard. It feels very prescient. And I think that has captured public attention at a time where like there is a real rub between work-life balances, between that. I mean, yeah, the screws of capitalism, I do feel like they are really wedged in and people are perhaps more awake to that inequality. And, you know know the divide between rich and poor is growing people are feeling it a lot and so I think this this show sort of slots in perfectly at that um and I saw the the piece in the Jacobin Jacobin don't know how you say that word by Eileen Jones which is called severance is an indictment of workplace hell um and she writes it's a really

interesting piece because she sort of she sort of writes from the perspective of a worker and says there are a lot of people that can't understand this show because they aren't workers. They've always been bosses. They've always been rich. But because most of us are workers, it taps into so much about being a worker. The fact that we all actually do have workplace selves. No, it's not as dramatic as I don't remember anything that happened when I'm at work. But we go there, we switch on, we lose access in a lot of cases to who we are at our freest and most true selves, because we are performing labor. We are, we have to behave in a certain way. There are constraints, you know, that level of like

servitude and shutting down of yourself, even in like a relatively safe, cushy office job is very real. And so I think it's opening up certain conversations about overwork, the balance of work and what these enormous companies, how sinister they are. So I just think it's come at a very perfect time to capture that sentiment that is quite rife. That's really interesting. Do you remember a piece from Amelia Tate two years ago for The Guardian that was called From the Office to Severance, How the Fictional Workplace Went from Bad to Worse. I don't think I do. Tell, tell.

So I really enjoyed that piece because The Office is such an interesting space in pop culture because if you think of things like all the kind of like Wall Street dramas and things like that, they became these like sharky, sharky environments where power plays were happening. And then if you think of literally The Office, UK and US, the sitcom, The Office was this place where you fell in love, your best friends were there, your entire life was formed in these places. They were these soft cushioned environments for the best life experiences to evolve. And then now we have something like Severance, where it's the complete opposite swing in a completely different direction. And I just found that such an interesting theme to explore. And it is,

I think what you said is so fascinating about why right now this speaks to us this idea of the office as this dangerous place where we can't truly be ourselves. On a very sort of like lighthearted note, I saw a really interesting tweet going viral where people are romanticizing the office cubicle which was like the norm prior to these open plan offices where everyone sat next to each other being able to see each other's computers kind of thing and this is a really funny thing where people going god there used to be something about like having your own office desk space that you could kind of decorate have your bits and bobs there and we thought it was being revolutionized by everyone well not everyone but certain offices you know being a desk space that you could kind of decorate have your bits and bobs there and we thought it was being revolutionized by everyone well not everyone but certain offices you know being a bit cool and

upgrade and it's sort of like you have no space and it's kind of the downfall of the way we've modernized the office because like you said there was a time when actually people kind of loved going into the office and it was like a break from home and and now it is a break from home but in a that was going to be one of my questions kind kind of what Beth was saying. It's like the actual like potential kind of oppression of corporate life is much greater perhaps than it used to be when a separation between work and life existed, but in a good way. day to day because you never really can leave the office anyway because you're carrying your phone and you're like you're always contactable so the office isn't only a a physical space that you belong in but it's kind of a part of your brain that you're always connected to I fucking hate open plan offices I think they're so bad I just don't think it's fair that you're surveilled constantly all the time it's so it's so mad that that's just been normalized to me do you know this sort of reminds me like I think I um I have been guilty we talked about this last week's episode the

romanticization of the time before the life before everything does feel very like bad now and I guess a point of of severance and being severed for these employees is well they they are doing mysterious important work but then they never have to go to work. So you would kind of imagine, okay, well, the outies, these, you know, they are free, they are living this unconstrained life. But what we see in the series is their innies, because they're so brand new, because they are kind of untainted by the world up there, they are actually kind of freer and they're so curious and they are so open to like, you know, exploration. The minute they kind of freer and they're so curious and they are so open to like you know exploration the minute they kind of get consciousness of what's going on they explore they want freedom they you know when they stumble upon this book which is like a kind of crappy self-help book from the

outside world they like they marvel at it they think it's so wonderful um and it reminds me of like my favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote which has been going around on social media again where he's talking about like the chore of posting a letter. Like you have to go out, you have to go to the store, you have to buy stamps and a letter, you have to interact with the public. And his wife was like, you can just order the envelopes here.

And he's like, no, but the magic is going out and doing all these things. That is life. If I was to do that, I would miss out on like talking to strangers, witnessing like interesting things, kind of having this exterior world. You know, he says, I can't think of the whole thing, but he says like, I address the envelope. I go to the, I mail it in the mailbox and I go home

and I've had a hell of a good time. We are on earth to fart around and don't let anyone tell you any different. And I think that's what we see in severance. Like the farting around is, is weirdly these like brand new creatures, fresh eyed. They fart around down there. Like these divides of consciousness are the ones that have a hunger for life, hunger to survive. The people up on top have already been like broken and brutalized by the system. And I think that is, I just, I think I love that aspect of the show, that kind of interplay between the outies and the innies like who actually has joy de vive and who has already been completely like severed in a different way i just love this show i could do i could just do a severance podcast with you both i do i love it too and one of my favorite i love

that element but also it's i love the kind of like philosophical ethical question of it where so you have this severed version of yourself that exists and they kind of are made to believe that it's you can ignore it you can forget about it they don't really exist but it still is you it's like you've spliced yourself in half and there's the outies are able to imagine that their innies are just at work and that they don't really have agency that they're not really human that they don't really have a soul or a mind and they're not really sentient and they are and I think with soul or a mind and they're not really sentient. And they are. And I think with like, I know they're not robots because it's literally them, they're just kind of putting a little thing in their brain that makes their memories not work.

But it's such an interesting idea around when we humanize, when we dehumanize, how we think about workers, how we think about certain people in society, upstairs downstairs I really enjoy that conundrum and it the stressful idea of the fact that they do start kind of living their own any lives whilst the outies are also living their own separate lives but it's one person and then it's I just yeah it is amazing which you do really need to watch it there is actually I didn't realize I think with Ben Stiller a severance podcast which I'm now going to listen to that recaps all of the episodes. No, I'm definitely going to go watch it. The only thing I was going to say as well is

I'm obsessed with pop culture's obsession with clones in the past year. I know Severance is older than a year, but just even we've spoken about substance. I went to go see Bong Joon-hoon's new film, Mickey 17, starring Rob Patz over the weekend. And that also is about clones and the dehumanization of basically these bodies, these extras. And just like you said, the choice of who we decide is worthier than others and also our refracted selves and I think pop culture pop culture is trying to tell us something about modern life and something about our identities and the fact that maybe we're getting pushed and

pushed to be all of these separate selves rather than like these whole personas or perhaps we're not being encouraged to be a whole self I don't know I love it though it's so good can I just the one final thing that I thought was so funny about like the severance kind of media push is I don't know if either of you saw on TikTok there was a trend where people pretended to be in a session with Miss Casey so that's the person that was in charge of wellness in series one you'd go there as a treat and it's kind of like in a very relaxing room she would tell you in a soft voice things about your outie that would please you and it was the TikTok trend of people pretending to be in that session and having things revealed to them that actually showed

that outie was like a huge melt and it would be like your outie invests in crypto and thinks Elon Musk is a genius and it's like the person be like what oh my god I'm such a neek I'm such a melt on the outside world it just shows the reach of the show people are so game to like get involved and it made me laugh so much oh my god Richa as well you would like i want this wellness session because all i ever really want and i keep seeing memes about this as well is someone to just tell me who i am that's what you're looking for in relationships like someone just to go i love it you you always laugh when this happens or like i love it when you trip over you know you just want to be you want to be someone to create an image of you in your mind like you're in a rom-com and that's basically what the wellness session is where they go and

speak to this woman but they're such inane details it would be like your outie is really good at making toast your outie often says hi to the postman and they're sitting there the innies because they have no other like external information about themselves or like to build up the sense themselves and they're so funny and then I was like laughing then I was like secretly actually I would love to go to that session and be told about myself it would be a narcissist dream come true so this week there was a new and depressing trend on social media I mean when is there not anyway, this latest trend was a so-called fat filter on TikTok, which has been used quite a few times by thin and straight sized users to, they feed their photos in and then AI shows them what they would look like if they were fat. There is also a separate skinny filter, which seems to be

primarily being used by fat people as kind of weight loss motivation, which has been very sad to see. And and on social media as, you know, harmful. And I think that much is reassuring because people are calling out immediately, but it is really depressing to see it being used as a joke, to see all the ways that we've not learned and seem to be even actively forgetting all of the work, that very hard work that has been done in the area by, you know, fat activists, body positivity activists, feminists, etc. We seem to be becoming crueler and we seem to be finding new ways to be nasty and kind of oppressive towards bigger bodies and people who don't fit into that very narrow standard of beauty. So there was an excellent piece, which we will discuss hopefully by the writer Chloe Laws for

Grazia in a piece about this trend, the skinny filter and the fat filter. But first I wanted to ask, have either of you seen this out in the wild, e.g. outside of pieces about it and think pieces? And if so, how did you see it slash what did you think when you did see it? I haven't. I've said this before. I am willfully, deliberately, happily off TikTok until we talk about things like this, which I love to do. I only read Chloe Law's amazing piece. So the first place I also saw it was on Chloe's story. I am on TikTok newly, but I don't know, my algorithm at the minute is just sort of mukbangs. I'm not getting many of these videos.

But then once I read Chloe Law's piece, I then started seeing more people talking about it on Twitter and on Instagram. And I just, I was really shocked by it in a way that I was like, maybe I'm really naive because maybe I shouldn't be shocked by this. I know that fat phobia has always been pervasive. We've always heralded slimmer bodies as being best, but there was a time maybe four or five years ago where I feel like this would have been stamped out pretty quickly, that people would have been shaming people the minute this filter kind of popped up. People would have been like, you can't do this. What are you saying? It feels like there's a whole new generation and it doesn't even have to be age of generation,

just like a type of internet user that has completely missed the whole conversation around diet culture fat phobia internalized reactions to certain types of bodies and it's proliferating at such a fast rate that these people are just like laughing at this and yeah I don't know it's a very different internet from what I am used to because I always forget that once we've had discourse resolve something it feels like it's tied up in a bow and we're going to move on from that and actually know that it's absolutely not how it happens it's like a certain subset of people have invested with the program on whatever topic it is but there are billions of people out there who are still going to have quite I want to say old-fashioned but

maybe that's not the right word just prejudice ideas around things yeah definitely the biggest evidence is just the swing back to really really tiny bodies fashion week looking slimmer than ever all of the things that we've mentioned in previous episodes about celebrities whittling down I don't want to name any because it's not about individuals it's just about the trend. It feels like it was a house of cards, all of the kind of illusions of progression. It felt like very shaky paper that we've seen just kind of all blow away so quickly, which shows that the foundations were not sturdy at all. Yeah, I think it's definitely twofold. It is, or maybe it's all one mess, which is, yeah, people are

becoming more emboldened in their cruelty online. There are greater rewards for cruelty. The culture feels a lot crueler. And when you look at who is in charge globally, I think that's no wonder. I think that is a big concern. It is, again, that return to thinness, that kind of austerity of bodies of like, don't eat too much restrict yourself kind of don't you know and that is the view of fat people it is it's a moral failing and that is like the core misunderstanding of fat phobia and the cruelty there which it is it's it moralizes bigger bodies it moralizes fatness to a point where you are allowed kind of it's kind of socially acceptable in a way that it is not acceptable to be cruel to

you know other people to be cruel to fat people and to act as though they have sort of sacrificed some of their humanity and that is how it thrives and people on TikTok are kind of trying to defend it and be like well no it is it's a joke I'm you know I just think it would look weird and people going oh my god it's so humbling whatever it is so cruel and it feels quite distinct from there was another AI trend on TikTok where people were using AI to so stupid to expand their bodies and become enormous and then float away which was revealed quite quickly to be fetish content but anyway that was quite bizarre cartoonish horrible but like it wasn't quite this. Whereas this, the filter, it looks quite realistic almost. It looks, you know, they keep the same clothes and features are very recognized by them, but it is a bigger

body. And so for people to be like, oh my God, oh, you know, never, it could never be me. Like it's, it's so cruel. And I think people are aware that it's cruel and are taking the piss when they're going, they're kind of trying to defend it as a little bit of fun because it is not a little bit of fun like it is so inherently nasty and I just I think people see that so I recently listened to an episode of the polyester podcast and it was titled society has never hated fat people as much as we do right now and it's about one of the hosts, Gina's memoir called Greedy Guts. And one of the things she said in that was that at the minute, because of sort of like weight loss jabs and stuff, people are like, oh, it's curable. Being fat is curable. It's something that we've all

decided now is disease and we've got the cure, which means I think that has spurned on this perhaps newish wave of fat phobia where people are like well we can be cruel about it because this is a fixable problem now and she makes a very salient point that it's not fixable there's class and and wealth barrier entries to getting the jabs also fatness is something that someone can be without needing to feel or wanting to fix it because fatness does not have to be a problem there has been so many studies and you know ideas around like what health looks like and health at every size and so it's she was kind of talking about how with this new medicalized view on fatness it's given slimmer people people who

live exist in like socially acceptable sized bodies the belief that they can now kind of criticize because it's like well if you're still fat then that's kind of your fault because we've given you a way out and so that feels really scary because I think we came so far in understanding how much of fatness is like a socio-economic problem it's it's so much to do with like a myriad of massive, usually like public health factors. And also that fatness, as Gina kind of says in the podcast, she's like, it's kind of part of who I am now. I don't want to change that.

I'm not going to change it for society's views. That was a really interesting episode, actually, if you want to go into it deeper. And obviously from the lived experience of someone who exists in a fat body, then I think that is like a good place to go to. I do think that yeah I think I think a Zen pick and all of those jabs probably have some part to play in giving people the gumption to come out and be this cruel so publicly I think you're right also I want to similarly shout out I love I love polyester

podcasts I know we all do but I also also love Maintenance Phase and Aubrey Gordon is an amazing speaker on fat phobia as well. So that's another one to definitely listen to if you haven't already. Somebody at work told me about, I think it's in LA, there was this kind of like viral picture of this restaurant or cafe that's got an ozempic menu, which is basically just smaller portions designed for people on ozempic. And maybe it's gimmicky, maybe it's got an azenpic menu which is basically just smaller portions designed for people on azenpic and I'm maybe it's gimmicky maybe it's novelty but even that kind of memeification of azenpic is just kind of gross I think it is kind of going back to the piece I said about the end of seriousness in the new yorker why if it is a meme why are we memeing azenpic it's fucking weird it's

not it's not a joke it's I don't know the whole thing it's very it's a meme why are we memeing a zempic it's fucking weird it's not it's not a joke it's i don't know the whole thing it's very it's a very serious thing to take a zempic it's not this very light-hearted thing i know we've spoken about how botox has been memefied in pop culture as well it's just it's very strange and i think if you do treat these things with a complete lack of seriousness you open the gateway for people to not take these issues seriously, to poke fun, to memeify, to satirise people and take the piss out of them too. I don't know. The whole thing is very distressing, I imagine, especially for communities affected by it. There is definitely a creep. What we're normalising, what we're making jokes about, what is now a fair game. And there's a Australian writer called

Rebecca slash Beck Shaw. And she, you'll have seen this, she went mega viral a few weeks ago because she wrote a Guardian piece with a headline. I knew one day I'd have to watch powerful men burn the world down. I just didn't expect them to be such losers, which was mummified so funny. Great piece. Anyway, she wrote a new piece this week, which was called The Thin Obsessed World is Growing More Vicious by the Minute, but fat people aren't going anywhere, which is about that willingness to joke about fatness, that willingness to kind of play into this big kind of cultural wide ha-ha moment where, yeah, fatness is the punchline, where we kind of make jokes about the so-called solutions to fatness, ozempic menus, kind of why don't you take ozempic,

kind of just that real, yeah, just kind of, not even just glamorizing it, but like satirizing it and like adding levity to something, which really is like a big private decision. And I just found, I think Beck's piece is excellent. She also talks about how in the recent Vogue magazine spread, which had an accompanying video, which was a Hairspray reenactment,

and it featured Gigi Hadid, Cola Scola, Laverne Cox. magazine spread, which had an accompanying video, which was a Hairspray reenactment. And it featured Gigi Hadid, Cola Scola, Laverne Cox. And Beck is like, I really like the people in it, but this is a fat focused story. And what they've done is remade it with slim people. And it feels like a bad omen. It feels like a bad sign. And I completely agree with her. And she says, it seems like any acknowledgement that fat people exist in the world and that it's okay for us to exist is sliding back to nil. And it does feel, even Chloe's piece, which is so good, it feels like she's just having to repeat things, which I did feel like we had squared away a few years ago. We got to that place and to have great writers and fat women and activists have to explain again,

a decade after these ideas felt like they really came to the fore is really depressing. And Chloe says, which I just think is a great summary of fat phobia. She says, this isn't a question of personal sensitivity. It's about systemic bias. Fat people receive worse medical care, are less likely to be hired and are routinely valued in society. And that is what it comes down to. It's not just enough to say, well, it's body shaming or body shaming is bad. It's quite specifically why fat shaming exists on a separate plane to other kinds of body shaming and how it actually kills people and how it just kind of rots society. And I think both of those pieces, which we'll link link were really bang on the money on this. Thank you so much for listening. Remember as well as these Friday episodes you can also listen to us every single Wednesday. This week's Everything in Conversation was about Mel Robbins' Let Them

Theory. We get right into it with your help. If you want to talk to us about our topics and help us decide what to talk about in about our topics and help us decide what to talk about in our conversation episodes, then don't forget to follow at everything is content pod on Instagram and TikTok. And please, please, please leave us a rating five stars and a review a very nice one, because it helps other people find the podcast and means that we can keep making it which we love see you next week