Everything Is Content - Resolutions, The Agony of Texting Men & Lively vs. Baldoni

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Happy new year and welcome back to Everything is Content! We hope you’ve missed this as much as we have (e.g. extremely, enormously and a lot).In our first episode of 2025 we’re setting our intentions for the year to come- one of us wants to go up a big hill, one of us wants to get bendy and one of us wants a full rebrand. We also discuss our relationships to reinvention and ask: is it toxic to say no to rotting in bed? Next up: the agony of texting men. Is text-debt a real thing or are we over-reliant on texting as a replacement for in-person friendship and connection? Aaaaand finally we’re looking at the latest legal drama in Hollywood as the Lively vs. Baldoni vs. NYTimes cases pick up momentum. Why are we so quick to criticise famous women and can these witch hunts and PR smear campaigns finally end with us? As ever thank you for listening! Could you help us start 2025 off right by sharing us on your socials or in your most distinguished group chat? And if you’re feeling fancy, how about a 5 star review would? Remember to follow us on Instagram and TikTok @everythingiscontentpod- that’s where the discourse afterparty happens. Beth, Ruchira and Oenone xROTTEN TOMATOES - Nosferatu THE GUARDIAN - CarolTHE GUARDIAN - All Fours PARAMOUNT+ - Geordie ShoreWATERSTONES - So Thrilled For You SUBSTACK - Josh GondelmanTHE ATLANTIC - The Agony of Texting With Men NYTIMES - Inside a Hollywood Smear MachineTHE GUARDIAN - Why did so many people criticise Blake Lively? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content, your one-stop shop for topical pop culture analysis in this saturated digital world. Happy New Year. We have missed you and we are so glad to be back for another year of the good, the great and the downright trashy of TV films, books, celebrity gossip and more. We're the jam-packed schedule in your content calendar. This week on the podcast, we're talking New Year's resolutions, the agony of texting with men and circling back, if we may, to It Ends With Us. Follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod

and make sure you hit follow on your podcast player so you never miss an episode. Happy New Year, girly-wh whirlies what have you been loving since we last spoke so i've stockpiled so much content but i won't i won't go into all of it but i think the two that i really want to talk about are nosferatu the new film with lily rose depp is it hold on let me find out the director is it Richard Edgers Eggers Eggie Eggington it's something eggy okay Robert Eggers the new film by him who also did The Lighthouse and did The Witch with Anya Taylor-Joy have you guys heard of this I've heard of it and I'm desperate to see it so I'm excited to hear your report I've heard like little else the timeline has been saturated obviously it's like curated for me and every time something comes up talking about I think sexy vampires I'm like click click click save save

save so yeah it's definitely a different vibe to Twilight you know because obviously they're two very comparable films but it was so good and Lily-Rose Depp is actually amazing I don't know why I thought this but I had the feeling that she was a really shit actor and I think I must have seen her in something which I honestly couldn't name to you right now and she was like fine she was in the idol which I didn't watch it but she it was really panned and I think she got caught in the crossfire of that maybe unfairly yeah but she was actually I think the idol was terrible I think we did briefly discuss at the time but she was great in that I think but I think she definitely got tarnished with the brush of that show yeah I wish I could remember what it was I saw because it wasn't the idol but I literally can't name it

but anyway so Nosferatu is really good it's really fucking scary there was a guy next to me in the cinema he was like six foot something and was like jumping out of his seat in his skin during every moment it was so funny and like made it comedic for me but it was absolutely terrifying do you know I wonder if you don't this is not on topic but I wonder if you don't like her because she you saw her snogging your beloved Timothee Chalamet on that yacht and you have just gone don't like her was actually she's excellent you know what I want to think I'm better than being that girl but I might actually be that girl I can't think of anything else she's been in apart from the idol and Timmy's mouth she's very young relatively I think yeah she played like I think she played like a nun or something she played like an old-timey

person which she did really well because she doesn't quite have the Instagram face of her peers so she actually was believable that but I can again I can't name it maybe this is like career making people were saying this because some people were saying that she had like iPhone face you know the phenomenon where people are like you definitely been born in a certain millennial century but loads of people were saying that actually she's giving a bit of Keira Knightley like the perfect period drama actor I think so definitely it's weird because I also see both sides, like you said. To me, she looks so modern. She has that edgy, Instagram gorgeous, jaw would cut you in half face. But watching it, I don't know, there wasn't a moment where I thought

she looked out of place at all. Whereas I watched a film a week ago called Suspiria which is a Luca Guadagnino film and that's based in like I think the 1950s and Dakota Johnson was in it and also Mia Goth and the whole time I was just like you you girls Instagram girls you don't fit in this period can I ask about Nosferatu because I didn't watch the original Nosferatu give us a little bit of a flavor because I don't actually know what it's about is it not is it not sexy it is really sexy yes it's weird because I think there's like quite a lot of chatter online about how a lot of us would let the vampire have his way with us and I think that that probably was what most people were left with so essentially Lily Rose Depp is a woman who during her childhood starts a mental, I guess, relationship with Nosferatu. And the rest of the film is those two orbiting each other and him coming back to claim her and what that looks like

when nobody believes that she's feeling cursed and she's having all of these really horrific nightmares about him. And she's really worried for everyone in her life. It's a classic hashtag believe women but people don't in a horror film very good film one of the things I did see was lots of people saying like the casting was amazing the acting was amazing the setting was amazing but that they thought that the color grading which is like everyone's favorite thing to talk about with modern films was off was that something you noticed I completely disagreed it was one of those films where if you watch it at home you will have to blast the brightness up on your laptop screen. But I think it's a horror film.

Like if there's any time for it to be a dark fucking film, it's a horror film, right? Yeah, that makes sense. So that was my first recommendation. My second one was Carol by Todd Haynes, which I watched over Christmas as part of my alternative Christmas film, random decision to start watching these weird films it's so good I actually started sobbing at the end of this film have you both seen it I love Carol it's it's so beautiful it literally made me want to fall in love with one or both of them it's just a gorgeous lesbian Christmas film that isn't quite a Christmas film but is like I could watch it now but I wish I'd watched it two weeks ago. So this is Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara falling in love in,

I'm going to go for it and say 1960s. I could be completely wrong, but it's definitely mid-century because all the furniture is gorgeous. It is just the most breathtaking film ever. Please watch it Anoni because I spoke to a friend about this after and she said that it just didn't affect her in the same way. But I was like shaking, crying at the end. I felt I felt like you know like a fizzy bottle of like pepsi that had been like shaken up throughout the entire film and it just like over poured at the end when you

said lesbian and then you said Christmas I thought oh the Kristen Stewart film which I also haven't seen but it's not that is it anything to do with Christmas it is it is set around Christmas yes they fall in love at department store and there's's Christmas stuff around. Yep. Oh my god. Well, I guess I'll watch it next year. I mean, at the end of the year. No, watch it now. You can watch it now. It's not illegal. No, I can't watch Christmas scenes. It is illegal to me. I got really I'm now it's Christmas is dead to me. Oh, okay. Well, what have you been loving then? Well, I've been loving something which I don't know if you guys have seen but um it was on I was in Scotland with some friends for New Year's Eve and we only had terrestrial tv and we watched

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang what that is such a throwback was unbelievable it's like three hours long it's so good it's so beautiful I don't know if they'd done something like remastered it because it was such high quality it was such a good film and I was like first of all I don't know why I haven't watched for so long but that I absolutely adored and I really recommend a revisit and I think what I liked about movies when we were younger is I don't think we called the musicals just by nature lots of the films we watched when we were younger had songs in them but it was just sort of like part of the film it wasn't like a big deal so I love Chitty Chitty Bang Bang another thing which I've been loving and I've been banging on about on Instagram is All Fours by Miranda July I kind of started it at

the end of 2024 and I finished it today and it is one of the most beautiful books have we spoken about this on here before not at all so it's basically about this woman who she's like in her mid-40s and she's been married for a while she's got one kid and her husband starts having a conversation at a party with this woman about how there's two types of people there's drivers and there's parkers and it's this like philosophical idea that some people just go through life and enjoy every moment other people are constantly waiting for like the next thing the next thing and she kind of takes this as a bit of a challenge and so literally decides that she's going to drive to New York which is like a really long drive from where she lives but instead of driving to New York she stops in a town

like two towns over and just stays in a hotel for two weeks and then ends up having this like affair. And it's so good. Nothing happens that much. You're kind of just like in her mind constantly. And it's so interesting. So I was talking about on Instagram today and people either love it or loathe it. And one of my best friends rung me earlier for an hour to tell me how much she hated it. No. Wow. I'm really interested for you guys to read it to see your reaction because the DMs I was getting, some people were like, the whole time I was reading, I thought I loved it. And then I finished and I was like, I absolutely hated that book. Oh my God, how divisive. That's crazy. Yeah, very interesting. I've seen so much hype around this book. So I've definitely heard of it and I know nothing about it. So I'd be so interested to read it soon and do a comparison, maybe even a book club. Yes, I listened to it on audiobook and I didn't realise till I finished it

that it was the author reading it because I wanted to look up who was narrating it because the narration was so good and it was her. So I thought that was quite cool as well. I'm sure I've got other recommendations, but they're probably really basic. Like I watch Squid Games and I obviously watched the Gavin and Stacey special.

Yes, what have you been loving there? My first one first one which we are I'm not going to get into because we're talking about it I think next week is the traitors watching the current series and also because my mum has never seen it I went back and I watched series two it was so magical to watch because I'd seen it before I've been obsessed with it I am obsessed with it my mum hadn't got a clue and to watch her like experience but Ross's and the whole ending and the whole treachery and traitorousness of it all that was amazing so I've been enjoying that and now we're watching season one it's just perfect tv that's number one number two is and this is a severe throwback it's Geordie Shore and I want to explain myself before I because what on earth am I doing there's like amazing new brand new tv and I want to explain myself before I because what on earth am I doing there's like amazing

new brand new tv and I'm watching Geordie Shore but when we got sent those episodes of the road trip before you guys interviewed Emma Appleton I got absolutely hooked on it but we didn't get all of them so I subscribed to Paramount Plus so I could watch the end of it loved it blitzed through it and then I had like a month left on this Paramount Plus subscription and the first thing that they're advertising because i think there's a new series out was geordie shaw so i was like i'll watch two episodes i watched maybe like a season and a half and i am absolutely hooked i don't think i've realized how shocking it was the first time around like they just do not make reality tv like this anymore oh i was

utterly obsessed with it like back in the heyday when all the classics were on, like Charlotte, Sophie, Gaz, all of them. Yes, yeah, the OGs. Yeah, I was a religious watcher. But is the new series or the originals? Because by the time that I dropped off, they'd replaced 75% of the cast. Yeah, it's like sugar babes. But now in this brand new series,

I think they've brought some of them back because they're going on James's stag do. I've not watched any of the new series, but I've seen promotions. And I think one of them is getting married. So they've all met in Thailand, somewhere similar. And they are much, I mean, they're in their 30s now. They started as teenagers.

This is maybe like, I think it was 13, 12, 13 years ago. And now they're all in their 30s, kind of married with children, engaged. And their faces are very, very altered, I would say. like they might as well have got a new cast Ruchira because the faces are not the same I love that it is the old car because there's so many of those shows that I wish that same as you Ruchira I watched them religiously and then I dropped off like Made in Chelsea like Towie and I kind of wish that I'd never stopped because I would love to be that invested in a universe like even the Real Housewives series, I've kind of dropped off.

So maybe, no, I don't have time to watch Jolly Shore actually. I promise you you don't. I don't. You do not. I haven't. We started watching Traitors in Scotland and then no one was really concentrating. So I'm actually going to have to watch,

like I think I'll binge them on the weekend. So I'm up to date because I love the Traitors. You'll have what like six episodes to watch that is doable that is half a day. Yeah that's a Saturday afternoon. Okay I need to have one slightly higher brow one I do have a book actually which I got sent before Christmas and then just got around to reading which is So Thrilled For You by Holly Bourne which I believe is out next week and I've read a couple of Holly Bourne's books big fan really readable really good I don't know if you two have seen I books big fan really readable really good I don't

know if you two have seen I did post about it today yeah yesterday I hope you watch all my stories um it's about four long-term friends who are in their 30s I think they met university have drifted in different directions and they meet again at one of their baby showers um and the book opens with a fire I think the whole baby shower goes up in flames and it opens with this image that's really funny of i think it's like a paper mache vulva or like a piñata going up in flames so that sets the tone like it is kind of very real on female friend dynamics but it's also very funny and i think it's a kind of whodunit so i have been reading it i'm about half an inch through so again can't tell you too much but it feels like a good

one to open the year with because it's like different POVs some of it's told through text conversations and flashbacks and news articles and interviews and stuff like that so it's not just big block text so I will keep you updated but I'm really enjoying it I actually quite struggle when the format in a book is like that. If it's like emails or texts. I think we spoke about this before with Sally Rooney. Did you say you quite liked that? I can't remember, but I do. I don't mind it.

I do quite like the break when it's letters or emails, something like that. Something in my brain goes, you don't need to read that. You're a purist, yes. I literally will be like, oh, I guess if the font changes, I genuinely like don't read it properly it's really bad but it's because I think it disrupts the flow but I do like Holly Bourne I can't remember is it pretending one of her I remember reading that a few years ago I can't remember the names but it's often about yeah it's kind of women friendships growing up

didn't want to sound like that you went all deep what was that yeah I think she was suppressing a burp I am drinking something fizzy but it was like it was going in anyway what are you drinking that's fizzy it's well it's just sparkling water I thought it was like a fizzy lemon drink but it's like it's fizzy lemon water so it's like it's like a lemon burped into this drink it's so faint I'm not a fan actually I'm afraid you're always drinking some sort of new salsa I love a fancy it just otherwise I would just have a glass of wine I'd be like I'm just chatting with guys have a glass of wine I cannot do that every single week so I'm having a little non-alc I just assumed you were drinking every time we're on the call because I would see some kind of liquid in a glass and assume it was

wine or I would always tell you if I was oh my god you just think I've been pissed the last year and a half I'm having a wine just so everyone knows we're gonna be doing baby girl next week so go out to the cinema watch the film come back I'm absolutely gagging to talk about it because I watched it a few weeks ago so please please please join us next week for that oh my god I'm so excited first up we are going to talk new year's resis and I've been really really excited to talk about this because I've just spent the last week and a half making mine up think about what I want to do see eat uh drink consume enjoy this. And I think New Year's resolutions are something, it's quite juicy, isn't it, to hear what other people want to do with their time. So I love hearing about them. I love talking about them. We all interpret them differently. We approach

them with different ideas and often come up with quite different ideas of what makes a good year and a good resolution. And I would bet very good money on the fact that each one of us here and everyone listening has at one point or another made resolutions in January with the idea that they would solve everything and we will have failed at them, we would have kept them. Maybe they changed everything, maybe they didn't. First of all, before I ask you what you want to do with this year, I want to ask what your sort of relationship is with New Year year new me culture January resolutions how do you feel there was a time when a few years ago I completely sort of turned my back on it because I was coming out of having quite a bad relationship with food and

exercise and to me any sort of like I'm going to change my life it was just it was quite triggering so I was like I'm not doing new year new me same. It's good enough. This year I am all in. I think I'm going to be burnt out by tomorrow. I have gone so hard into fully reinventing, rebranding, reshaping my whole life. Like I have been, my to-do lists have been ticked. I've been getting up 6am. I've been exercising. Genuinely, I'm going to pass out. So it's fluctuated. I always do like a fresh start, but I really did try to re-narrativize that to be like, you can do this whenever. It doesn't have to be a new year. You know, you can reinvent yourself on a random Tuesday. Fuck the rules. But now I'm like, no, let's do this. I'm fully in. I'm invested. I'm back to toxic. New year, new me.

That doesn't sound toxic. That sounds like positive self-help, but maybe I'm invested I'm back to toxic new enemy that doesn't sound toxic that sounds like positive self-help but maybe I'm toxic too I'm like pedal to the metal like wait is that is that the right phrase pedal to the pedal to the metal but I think I've heard it in so many American accents I was like pedal to the metal pedal to the metal I love meddling and I love peddling exactly that's exactly what I'm here for what's that mean I'm delirious let's not ask questions so I'm peddling and I love peddling. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm here for. What does that mean? I'm delirious. Let's not ask questions. So I'm peddling to the meddling and I'm just so invested this January. I feel like new year, new me.

I am so excited to tick some boxes, like you were saying. I feel really good and really motivated. I don't think I've ever had a bad relationship with New Year's resolutions. I think I've always just loved that feeling of like, start, start back to school, fresh notebooks. I just, I love a transformation. I love, I love that. Is that toxic? No. There's, it's still going around. There was a time when I think everyone was kind of like, you don't have to reinvent yourself. But you know, there was the self-care. It's like, just let yourself sleep. I'm on the side of self-care. It's like actually self-care is not letting yourself rot in bed you know as you can go too far the other way and I think we all

did that we were like no just don't worry just don't do anything just lie there and feel sorry for yourself it's good for you and now I'm like I totally agree you are allowed to rest you should rest but when the resting is done you need to get up and you need to push yourself gently but push yourself to do something that will then improve your life make you happier doesn't have to be get in the gym your fat slag but it has to be like hey maybe I want to go for a walk every day and that's not toxic what's your relationship to me as a new year's resolutions path similar I think to both of you somewhere in the middle have had awful time with it it would beuary 1st and i would be like you're a piece of shit we need to change that it was always born of this just self-hatred i was you know 21 years old and i just thought i need to become quote-unquote good 10 years have passed now i like

myself it's a lot more of like let's see what this year can be and everything changed for me when i realized news resolutions don't have to be a list of what's wrong with you they can be like experiential ones. This year I want to try, one of my first best ones was try an oyster. This was years ago. I'd never had an oyster. And then it became an adventure because then I'd go, I really want to have an oyster this year.

I'm going to make it happen. Took myself to Margate or Winchelsea or somewhere and had, it was a whole thing. It was really exciting. Got me out of my comfort zone. I wrote a big list of little adventures and then I took myself on them so I think it was just realizing the form didn't have to be the same I was allowed to just interpret it as I wanted that's such a good point do you know I had such an interesting conversation because I literally it was like a flip switch when it

became 2025 because I really look at my life in years which is maybe a bad thing I'll be like 2024 overall was like a net negative for my mental health and I was talking to another friend they're like oh I don't look at life like that and I'm like really 2022 banger 2024 yeah like I do I really do and I didn't realize that people didn't do that it was an amazing transformation that morning when I woke up and I was like okay we're going again now and it's not that bad yeah it was I had such a bad association with 2024 that like the minute it wasn't it anymore I was like oh I'm not depressed anymore and everything's fine it was a flop I think it was a flop until the very end because a bit of it was a flop whereas it probably is more helpful and healthy to separate out into like okay these are

the the things I got and I gained and I learned and overall it was a bit of a mix but in my head I'm just like yeah throw it out lots of people I think had quite weird years when I was looking on the gram can I ask then what if you want to share have you got on your to-do lists reinvention list resolution list for big 2025 yes I actually brought mine because it's on a paper copy she brought her in. I did and it's got highlighters all over it. I'm gonna do yoga weekly three to four times a week and I just started. I started doing yoga by Adrienne, just the YouTube tutorials at home in my bedroom on the floor and I'm obsessed with it. It's so nice and so easy. It doesn't stress you out having to book a class to pay the

money to do all of that stuff. I don't know why I was putting it off for so long I'm I'm not going to do it every day I'm just going to do it when and if I can that's one of mine yoga with Adrian is such like a moment in time I so remember because I think she's really addictive people start doing that and then they're like yoga with Adrian it's quite a cult I'm part of the cult guys she was a big 2020 hit wasn't she she? She was a big... Yes. And I avoided exercise for most of the first COVID lockdown. I only got into it in the winter of it because I was so depressed. So I missed all that and everyone was like,

I'm doing my J-Wix. And I felt like I'd missed the boat, but actually I could just also start it now. Oh yeah, I didn't do any of that. I think I did yoga once with my ex and did a video post on Instagram and then I didn't exercise again until we were a bit more free. I drank. i was a drinker in that so i think i was doing that for

the first one i was drinking at the beginning i was doing zoom quizzes and just drinking a lot of wine and making so much pasta mine are more like vibes it's sort of like one of my biggest things is to get my confidence back i realized i lost my confidence a lot last year for like various reasons. But the ways I'm going to do that is just doing all the nice good things that are good for your brain and your body because that helps you feel more confident, I think. Valid.

What is your next tangible one, Ruchira? Oh, this is a boring one, but I've set myself May to learn to drive because I've just been putting it off. I need to do that. Maybe I should add that to mine. Oh, it's so shit. Like I've been putting it off. I need to do that. Maybe I should add that to mine. Oh, it's so shit. Like I've been putting it off for so long

and I think I've ambiently read, learned, understood that if you give yourself deadlines, you're more likely to do something. So I've given myself May, but I haven't booked driving lessons yet. It's manifesting in a way. It's intention setting. That's the one.

Although I have to book the lesson though. I can't just like manifest it. Just think about's the one although I have to book the lesson though I can't just like manifest just think about what comes after the learning how to drive think about yourself driving down the coast wind blowing your hair think about going to big tesco think about all the things you can do and then I think you will find that you've put the lesson before you know it I always think beyond the resolution because otherwise I'm like what the fuck is the point of this this is just hard like getting healthier or saving money you're like what's the point but then you think you've got to have the point this is something that's

happened to me I don't know if it's turning 30 or just like age but I finally started thinking about like not the consequence of my actions but sort of like actually the value of like doing something now for the future because when I was younger if like for instance when I smoked and people were like that's really bad for you I'd be like okay and now I'm actually like actually exercising like not only am I enjoying it for these reasons but when I'm older maybe my bones will be healthy like I'm I've really started to consider my own mortality and like the fact that if you do something now that's good for the future that's good even without like the instant gratification and that's quite a new thing for me I have that too I really have

that and it's specifically about health it's not about anything else it's a little bit about money but it's mostly health where I think I'm kind of doing yoga because it feels good in the moment but I also acknowledge that like it's going to make me mentally good and just also like I guess I don't know like physically good for the future which is an important thing totally we did have a message from someone because I did ask for everyone's at home to send in whatever they wanted to do. And someone did say their resolution was to take care of my future old lady body. And she shouts out Jamila Jamil for the phrasing, which I quite like. So it's just taking care of my future old lady body. I love that old crone. I've got one resolution, which is go on like a long solo walk not like

to the retail park I want to go on like a multi-day coastal walk somewhere in the UK and I don't know I don't know any of the specifics but I know that that's what I want to do so I might have to record the podcast like up a mountain or something I would love that another thing so again sorry on New Year's we were in the Scottish Highlands and we were all talking about how funny it is because you know when you're younger and your parents are like, let's go on a walk. And you're like, but why? And then you're a teenager and you're going to walk at the ends in a pub. And we were just going on walks and just stopping and just looking at the mountains.

All of us took 80,000 pictures of like the mountains, the sky. And we were like, it really is so funny. Age just comes at you in such a specific and really cliched way where suddenly you're like, wow, nature. It's so mature, isn't it? The sky, sunrise. And we were all're like wow nature it's so much so mature isn't the sky sunrise and we were all doing it and it's so funny and I felt the same I was like I must spend more time in the UK countryside there are so many places to see and I was like god I'm it just it just is the passage of time it's happened hasn't it my old lady brain is here my body is fast approaching what is another one of yours, Anoni?

One of mine is I want to write another book, which I'm working on. So I've given myself until March to do that, which is completely unrealistic. But I was like, I turned 31 in March. I'm living in Cheltenham. Listeners may know I've posted this on my Instagram, but I've moved.

I've made the big move from London. And what I tried to reframe that, which I'm actually really excited now is it means I can kind of be a recluse. That's kind of part of my resolutions to really make the most of this time. Cause I don't know how long I'll be here. Maybe I'll move back to London at some point, but I'm saving money. I'm reevaluating my life. I'm single. So I'm not drinking. I'm not dating and I'm just going to try and work. And so I was like, I'm re-evaluating my life. I'm single. So I'm not drinking, I'm not dating, and I'm just going to try and work. And so I was like, I can write a whole book in three months. I won't, but. You could absolutely write a whole book in three months. I wouldn't advise it, but I'm kind of excited to see what happens.

I mean, I have kind of started it, but that is one of mine. That's really exciting. Beth, did you say that you only had that one or do you have a few as well? That's my main one. I would like to resist the law of ai for yet another year i would i'd like to just not touch it and not i see people are outsourcing their just like basic thought to it and i think it's just a really slippery slope i saw on someone's instagram do more pastimes that don't involve being relentlessly advertised to and the only one i could think of was I guess walking is one of them I guess um reading so I want to find some more things that don't involve inadvertent or plain advertising because I think it is poisoning my heart and mind that AI one the amount of

conversations I've had with everyone of every generation over the last like couple of weeks just during this like holiday period every single person being like chat GPT is just amazing I put in blah blah blah i needed to write a text to my friends i put it in i need to and i'm sitting there really trying not to cause an argument by voicing my views which is a i think it's like atrophying our brains because you're not thinking and i know it's annoying and it's slow and it means you have to spend more time and we don't have much time but people were talking about it like someone's dad was saying oh it's amazing so i got it to summarize this thing it was actually quite lovely in a way but then yeah I feel very conflicted but

the speed with which it's taking over and how quickly everyone is adapting to it and becoming it becoming such like a native part of how we operate I'm getting quite scared of that yeah resist resist resist um so we've got a few that we'll read out before I read out just a couple from listeners I read on my friend Josh Goldman's sub stack something that was a really nice idea I think about New Year's resolutions because he was asking people to write in theirs and then he was giving them a pep talk and one person wrote in and they said I need to spend this year trying to create a life in which it is possible for me to thrive and it was just reading that was like lightning it was like I don't need to write a list of ways to improve I don't need to do this instead of trying to be perfect perfect perfect I need to do like what a good gardener does and just look at

the soil look at the environment and then make that good and then see what happens when I actually think about what I need and then create around that and I thought maybe that's where I start this year instead of a laundry list of big red crosses so that's my corny little moment no I love that beautiful should we read out just a couple from the listeners yeah yeah so someone said to make new friends in my local area and someone else said get my motorcycle license I support the first one the second one please be safe I love the one about no screen time one hour after waking up and after 8pm because that just reminded me that was one of mine.

Why don't you get an old school clock alarm that you have to batter to wake up? Yes. One that I liked was prioritize health and happiness and travel as much as possible, which I think rings true to a lot of what we said and also somebody said be nosier which I'm super intrigued by is that gossiping is that getting in people's business I want to know more reading people's text messages I think going in their houses I reckon it's eavesdropping but also maybe being nosier about life you know sticking your nose into to the juices of humanity. I think we just end it there. I think that's perfect. Okay, podcast done. So there was a piece in The Atlantic this week by Matthew Schnipper called The Agony of Texting with Men. Matthew starts the piece off with an anecdote where he says he has a really good

in-person dynamic with one of his friend's boyfriends, Joe. They see each other every few months and they always have a really good rapport. They bond over music. And so Matthew decides to consolidate the friendship by swapping numbers and sending Joe a text. He thinks this will be the opening to a really lovely friendship. Maybe they'll meet up solo. solo it'll be great but Joe just blanks his text. In the piece Matthew asked Joe months later why he never got back to him and the answer is really underwhelming which I was shocked by. Joe just says that he felt the pressure to reply with this funny retort and because of that he just never got back. He shares another example of when he did this unintentionally and he doesn't feel great about it. He says, responding to messages becomes this looming thing that I have to do. It turns

into a source of anxiety, honestly, that I'll always be like, I'm in text debt. So these friendships untended don't blossom because Joe, like many men, is bad at texting, Matthew says. In the piece, Matthew talks to several men and communication experts who say that there definitely is a gendered element to why men struggle to communicate and this has been made worse over text. In one instance a man shares how upset he was that the whatsapp group he's part of with a load of guys didn't even acknowledge that his parents had died. I think it's a really interesting perspective and I don't know if I've got much to add to the gendered element but I really really would recommend that people read this. And also,

I really want to get into the wider elements of what texting and our reliance on texting for friendships kind of says about where we are in modern day. Matthew writes, technology and modern life have made the problem worse. The ease of texting gives the false sense that friends are always available to talk and that you can just take one more day, one more day to craft a response, just one more day to make plans, but always can easily translate into never. In making life frictionless, we have also made it more siloed. We possess the ability to instantly reach anyone we've ever met from anywhere in the world and yet none of the courage or skills to do it I was wondering do you girls relate to that text debt feeling that Jo mentioned because I know I definitely do I really do relate to this I read it and it struck a nerve even though it is about men

and the gendered elements and like lack of male communities I was like this is about me I made it about me and I realized like I'm guilty to an extent of not always matching people's, that's the difficult part, matching people's frequency of messaging and style of messaging. And I always try and, you know, I struggle to find a balance with voice notes, for example. If I get a voice note when I'm watching, you know, something or I'm listening to something and I'm like, I feel scrambled and I never want to talk to them again. It's a really strange, I think it's a modern anxiety and not texting people back promptly or properly and feeling like I'm getting texting quote unquote wrong is one of my biggest modern anxieties. I found the gendered element of the

piece really interesting. There was a bit in the piece where he says that texting can disadvantage men because they typically socialise in a side-by-side manner, playing or watching sports, for instance, whereas women by contrast tend to socialize via conversation, which texting closely mimics, which made sense to me, but I am an awful texter. So I think it definitely probably is more swayed towards genders, but it's one of my worst things. I'm awful at replying to people. And in this day and age, that's kind of seen as an excuse, like I'm really bad on my phone, but I genuinely am because I'm living like below my sister's house at the minute I'm with my sister all the time she is amazing she voice notes her friends all the time and it actually makes me feel

really guilty because she's so efficient if someone messages her she replies straight away whereas I'm the same as you Beth voice notes especially because I need to be able to read it because I forget I almost need like notes for the voice note so I thought the gendered aspects were super interesting but I just I actually just wish that we didn't I'm so much better face to face basically I completely agree with you I have been really rubbish with texting back and it feels like tasks and I think last year one thing I noticed about myself which also feeds into the new year's res piece that we did is just that like I can be so avoidant with things I deem tasks and I think I just need to reframe texting as not a task

because it's not it's this amazing way that I can keep in touch with people and this year I've been trying to as soon as I get a text just reply straight away and not just like put it off because I think once I put it off that's when we get into tricky territory of it can be a day two day four to five business working days and then I might just never get back so I said earlier that my friend rung me to talk about Miranda July in that book but having an hour-long conversation was amazing I really enjoy talking on the phone and when I was reading this piece I was thinking about how when we first got phones and first started texting I really enjoyed it but I think the problem is so much of our world is on

our phones now like a lot of my work is on my phone I mostly work on my phone so texting being on that as well it's a different thing from when our phones were literally just a means of communicating and then I think I really enjoyed it I was really good at texting then it's definitely that has definitely changed in the last I was about to say five years but it's probably 10 years like I've slowly but surely started to actually really resent it as a form of communication I think that's right because I remember when I first got a phone everything that was exciting in my life aka talking to boys talking to girls social dynamics everything only came from having a phone whereas now I think it is part of getting older as well the fact that we've had them for ages like you say Anoni everything exciting is off my phone now so

you know we're actively trying to spend less time on it I know that that was one of your resolutions and one of the listeners it is hard because the feeling of texting being associated to a phone and just this idea of oh I don't want to have more time on this thing is so real. I do think as women, and I know each of us, we do have strong communities elsewhere. We have the friendships, we have these groups, we do make that effort. And I don't think that's anything that I'm too worried about. Obviously, moving away from London, the anxiety is there, but you compensate in other ways ways and I think it does make sense to think of this in a gendered way when if you've got a community elsewhere if you know that your friends can ring you and you'll answer and there

is a level of caretaking caregiving that's happening all the time I think you can relax in beating yourself up about not being great at texting back because all I say to my friends is you're not I'm not very good at this but then I just show up in other ways I do make the effort to remember birthdays to send cards to you know pick up the phone schedule voice calls and stuff and if that's happening I think you can ease off on giving yourself grief texting is hard because we are so burdened our phones become this kind of like quite prickly space and a great term for actually i think that does apply and when i was sort of going through the whole adhd autism diagnosis someone mentioned the term pathological demand avoidance and i was like what is this and it is basically an inbuilt a lot of

us have it like a real desire a real aversion that is like so deep to doing things that we deem as expectations burdens and my phone is absolutely one of those. When I understood that, I was just like, okay, how do I work around this rather than like, how do I browbeat myself into just being better at it? You can be slightly better, e.g. give yourself half a day, but no longer to reply to your messages, built in 15 minutes at the beginning and end or middle of your day to catch up with the correspondences. But sometimes things slip through the cracks. My close friends know that. they'll either follow up again or they'll just ring me on the phone little things like that just feel a huge relief but I do wonder and worry with men if they don't

have that you know knowing that they'll have a catch-up with the girls knowing that they'll be meeting for drinks and that they will talk about the really important things there a lack of texting it's like how isolated can a person be I just feel like it must be really lonely because when do they talk there's such a good bit in the piece actually that related to that which was as girls become women those who enter into heterosexual relationships often end up doing the heavy lifting of maintaining the couple's social ties our culture has built a world where women do a lot of that invisible social labor and relationships I also think we do that in our romantic relations but also like you said with friendships like we know we show so much care and love. We're so intimate with our friends in a way that men are often like barred from that say we don't text them. It's okay. Cause there's

all of these, this like history of very intimate relationships. And then it says in society at large, men are kind of just let off the hook. So they don't learn the skills. So they don't have that kind of like baseline level of understanding that, know you love each other maybe the way they check in is through texting and another bit in the piece that was really that stood out to me and I found really quite sad was ways research has consistently found that young boys profess great need and love for their friends until they get to adolescence when societal pressure compels many of them to renounce their close friendships so that's so sad to think that little boys and you see it with children like they'll say I love you whereas like my female friends with the level of intimacy that we have and this is studied and spoken about at length

all the time is just stark compared to I don't know if you've ever had a boyfriend or a male friend like hang out with a group of their guy friends for hours and they come back and you'll ask them questions about their lives and they're like oh I don't know we didn't talk about that like they won't know that someone's had a big breakup or that someone's mum's ill it's like I do find that I understand how the texting is an extension but I think that the digital aspect of this probably impacts everyone so I thought it was interesting but also it's just a symptom I guess of this larger problem with the way that men interact with each other yeah I think it is a really good point that just because we all have the same availability to degree, if we have a phone, of being able to

communicate doesn't mean that pre-existing problems, you know, gendered problems, societal issues and cliches haven't been passed down onto technology. I think that was a really interesting element to it. And it's something that I haven't really considered before but seems really obvious when somebody points it out one thing I also wanted to ask you both about was I've seen a bit of discourse pushing back on it now and for a while just all of this kind of therapy speak about you know cancelling plans and not replying if you don't have the bandwidth and the space to take it on and I think it's a really good point that you made, Beth, about it is a different case for people with ADHD and taking on the chore of texting potentially. But I do wonder about the fact that we therapize everything to give ourselves so much grace, perhaps too much grace all the time. And I think that's a different thing.

I totally agree with that. It's like, what's a burden versus what is a kind of privilege to do? What's the space between them of going, this is difficult for me. Something's difficult for you. You can actually find a way around it. The point of why texting is so great is because it is a way that we can connect immediately with the people that we love. And when that is difficult, you go, okay, but I still need to connect with people I love. I still, it still has value to do that. And so I'm going to find a way to do that, to say, this is actually emotional labor. I'm not going to do it. If you boil down everything into emotional labor and say, I, as an independent agent, have to do that. You don't have to do anything. The point is, it is a privilege to do it. It's a gift. It's the point. I think it's the reason why we're here on

earth, frankly, is to connect and talk and muddle around with each other. It's autonomy. It's freedom. But what are you really going to use your freedom to like find excuses to not be with people to talk to people to show the people you love that you love them you can do it in any number of ways but you do have to do it I think also ridding yourself of things which are a bit tricky and a bit difficult closes you off to so many things like you we've all had that feeling where say it's an event you don't know many people but there's like one person who's a new friend who's invited you I don't know feeling that sicky feeling of going and just cancelling versus showing up that person remembering that you showed up and then

like building the foundations of a potentially amazing friendship things like that those like really difficult things which lead to amazing outcomes but are hard in the moment I feel like there has definitely been a trend of just if it feels difficult you don't have to do it I think definitely for myself I've noticed that I got swayed into that quite a bit and I don't like that about myself and I definitely want to make sure that I don't get swept up into it I was about to say the exact same thing it was something I really started to think about towards the end of last year and it's exactly what I was saying about the the thing about the self-care being either you know it's like let yourself stay in bed or actually like get your ass up and get out and I was talking about it with one of my good friends and we're both single and she was saying how it really upsets her when

someone counts on her because if she's made a plan with them on a Sunday and she doesn't have a boyfriend where lots of other people do she's like that can literally ruin my whole weekend I've scheduled plans and we were just talking about how actually because of phones and because of technology you have this false economy or this false belief that you're still in contact with everyone all the time which gives me this false sense of security that I can just not go to things and I've been really thinking this lately that I have to see my friend because I think that is a tendency that men have always fallen into which this piece kind of dips into where when they're not in situations where they're put into scenarios

with their male friends whether it's sports whatever whatever men tend to when they get families stop hanging out with their friends because they have this inbuilt community and they forget to kind of hang out and then they get to their later lives and they're like oh I'm really lonely I think women were much better at keeping communities but I think because of phones because we're able to feel like we're there we we don't do it and it's something that I was really starting to do and I am doing the same thing as you return really challenging myself to make sure I'm out with my friends and so last thing I'm going to say on this was in the most recent episode of Miss Me with or one of the recent episodes of Miss Me with Lily Allen and Makita Oliver Lily was saying how she's so pleased when

her daughters want to have friends around that she like actively encourages it and she genuinely thinks it's more important than homework for them to socialize and she's saying it's so funny because when we were younger and this is certainly true of my mom your mom would be like well you're not having friends around that's like ridiculous and you'd be constantly being told off for like asking her to sleepovers and hanging out with your friends lily said she's so relieved when her girls want to have friends around that she will honestly be like absolutely just bring everyone as many people as you can because we're genuinely losing the art of socializing it is eerie i read a piece of the atlantic by ellenushing, and it was called Americans Need to Party More. And it basically argues that in this internet

adult age, where we are very online, we're very lonely, everything is a bit doom and gloom. We do need to go out and we need to intentionally have fun. And I think that speaks to, we also need to just do it with our friends. We need to be in person with them as often as possible, as much as sort of health and distance, whatever allows. Texting is great, but it should be a vehicle to meeting up, making plans, being together. And when people don't have either, I think it's very worrying. And something that is in the piece is where he talks about how a lot of what we do on our phones equals empty calories of communication. So it's like liking things, favoriting things, following people. That actually doesn't add up to a feeling of connection, but because it's

happening on our phones, which is also where our group texts are, we sort of equate the two. And we shouldn't, we should think, look, I'm on my phone instead of this hour on Instagram doing fuck all farting about while I'm watching the TV, double screening it. Maybe I should instead just be doing a bit more outreach catching up the messages we can spend less time on our phones but when we're on our phones maybe we can be more mindful I mean I'm aware I'm kind of using the therapy speak now but I think that is a much smarter use of your free time than the brain rot the scrolling the zoning out that a lot of us do do so in mid-august last year we discussed the drama surrounding the adaptation of colleen hoover's international bestseller it ends with us as blake lively faced enormous backlash and like had huge

pylons for seemingly prioritizing her hair care line over speaking about the film's serious themes and by contrast her co-star and the director about the film's serious themes and by contrast her co-star and the director of the film Justin Baldoni was really praised for championing the hard-hitting aspects of the project especially in interviews and there's quite a healthy dose of schadenfreude with people seemingly delighting in Blake's downfall and others proudly kind of announcing themselves as team Justin and in our previous episode we actually called it Blake Lively's villain edit not realizing just how much of this whole thing had allegedly been orchestrated to be just that. Almost six months on, on the 22nd of December 2024, the New York Times published an

explosive piece titled, We Can Bury Anyone Inside a Hollywood Smear Campaign. And that initial quote was taken from a message written to Baldoni by his crisis management expert, Melissa Nathan, who also worked with Johnny Depp during his trial against Amber Heard. In the piece, they wrote, during shooting, Blake Lively had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual or other inappropriate comments to her. The men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the Me too era expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them according to a legal complaint that she filed and it was then after this that baldoni instructed nathan to start this alleged smear campaign

which was undeniably successful i did an episode of let's talk about on blake lively and it was astounding how many people felt sort of like a visceral hatred towards her in the aftermath of extensive negative coverage. I kind of even found myself starting to dislike her. Baldoni has since challenged Blake's allegations and made claims of his own in a lawsuit that he filed against the New York Times for 250 million, as well as planning on filing a countersuit against Lively. And in a piece of The Guardian titled, did so many people jump to criticize blake lively the answer isn't complicated sarah minerva said of blake lively's cancellation her crimes included giving dismissive interviews being badly dressed too chipper too rude and most of all annoying and

minerva's went on to say in the words of baldoni's own crisis management representative it's actually sad because it just shows you have so many people who want to hate on women and then manavis then comments that it's part of a growing trend in the past decade where lip service is paid to the nebulous idea of feminism but its principles aren't adopted obscuring despite the popular slogan what a feminist actually looks like in spite of this high cultural salience of supposedly feminist politics a modern iteration of an old age standard persists that a man could do almost anything but as long as a woman has done an inch of wrong she will be the one that people eagerly gleefully want to watch burn so i wanted to ask you both first of all what did you make of the new york times expose because i know we were all in that

group chat when it landed when When I saw it for the first time I gasped. I can't believe how quickly they pulled this together. I mean I remember during our last chat I just felt like there was some kind of orchestration or there was I felt like there was something going on and I compared it to the Amber Heard situation. Just felt like finally we had a name for something that felt so visceral at the time it felt like this massive gust of wind was like dragging us all in a direction aka to you know hate on Blake Lively it felt like things were happening but it felt so hard to understand what exactly could be behind it all and what would the purpose of it be so yeah I think I

don't know incredible piece I read it and I felt a bit embarrassed, not because I was on board of the hate train, but because everything that was happening, it felt very, it's like when you see how the magic trick is done, you go, of course, that's so obvious. I felt so embarrassed that it hadn't been more obvious, that it hadn't been completely clear to me.

Of course, like slaps forehead, of course that was what was going on. Of course, it's not a coincidence that he is taking this completely different route with all the pr to the film he's really pushing himself as this advocate it's kind of beggar's belief that i that didn't send the same alarm bells ringing even six months like you say after all the drama when we covered this it feels like now this is the beginning of the the real meat of it the face of this thing has already changed so many times the shape of it feels monstrous it feels really ugly but potentially or has the potential at least to be a kind of watershed moment I don't know but it does feel

seismic what what is your kind of position well that was one of my next questions I agree with you because and in the piece and in some of the other news around it people were saying there was this slightly organic which happens with women when they're kind of in the limelight at that present moment as Blake Lively was there was already this kind of organic seedling of people disliking her anyway I had that feminist belief of like believe like why am I hating a woman and we've spoken about half a hate respect so I was like resistant to it but somewhere inside me I was starting to dislike her and I was going through my whatsapp messages I had so many messages from friends being like oh my god she's awful have you seen this I was sending people that interview but I think the bit that's so sickening to me is the fact that I think makes it so much more

malevolent is the fact that Justin Baldoni was so brazenly speaking about domestic violence and sexual assault and also that there are literal text messages that you can read and you just think the confidence of a man to be doing one thing and saying one thing and thinking they won't get caught and if you haven't read all of the allegations they are all on online and they are extensive I also just think like kind of are you is he stupid like he's going up against one of the most rich and famous couples in Hollywood. He's obviously a rich man himself, but it does make you fearful of like what younger actresses deal with at the hands of these men. Because Blake Lively is like

a grown woman married to one of the most powerful rich men in Hollywood. And he thought he could kind of smear her. I don't know. It's just left a really bad taste in my mouth, I think. Yeah. Even the fact that you said that people replied back to your podcast episode on the subject, still saying that they didn't like Blake Lively. I've seen such interesting, fascinating, mad takes online. And I think there's almost this defensiveness for people who think, well, you know, I wasn't sucked into this hate campaign. I just think that she's really annoying. And I think, I don't know, I think the response to it is quite telling in and of itself. I mean, you're allowed to dislike anyone. Those interviews that she gave were her. Nobody, you know, gagged her and force fed her lines. She obviously had given those interviews, which were kind of unpalatable. But there's an undeniable fact that it just literally felt like being taken upstream it felt like so many things resurfacing from years

and years ago and I think there is a serious question of media literacy and questioning why do things resurface at certain times who is benefiting from certain situations I'm not saying I'm perfect at this I'm definitely not you know'm definitely not. I would have been suckered in by so many things over my life. But I think that's the thing that we need to come to. It's not, is Blake Lively a good or bad person? Is the detailing of the allegations all correct from either side? Who's the person? Who's the villain? I'm seeing so many people get stuck in the semantics of it, the he said, she said. And it's not about that. It's about the fact that these PR smear campaigns are so easy to contrive online and to the point that you can just get pulled into the direction. And until a piece like this comes out, it is undetectable for lots of people. I think that's the point of it. Yeah, because she's saying that she had an unsafe

work environment, whether you think she's a dickhead, whether you think she's unrelatable, whether you think she's vile for having a wedding on a plantation things that people have been talking about forever her allegations are not i'm a nice person everyone should be nice to me it is and you can go and read that i think it's 80 page complaint that begins with a meeting that they had january 2024 so again like another seven months before this came out the movie came out a full year ago from now where she says here are my complaints that it was certain men on set including Baldoni that he was sort of making sexual comments talking about porn telling her that you know he's spoken

to her dead father like while he's dead talking to her personal trainer behind her back to ask about her weight these are the allegations it's a kind labour issue. It's an issue of misogyny. It's like you do have to put those things aside. And I think anyone who at the time of all this coming out, shared their own stories about why they don't like her. So I think if this turns out to be true, you've been used for the ends of a malicious campaign. I think you should be annoyed at that. I think you should be very critical of the fame machine. And maybe going forward, I'm going to try and question how I feed into that how I'm a part of that as a person on the internet who will get stuck into the discourse and loves to comment I think it's quite scary yeah and one thing I wanted to say as well reading the piece

this is something we brought up in that episode and now we have the context for it the fact that she was really giving quite light fluffy interviews during the press tour. Well, the production company and the people at the higher top said that there should be a really empowering press tour. They encouraged the fact that it should be a really positive space and everything should be very positive about the film. So Justin Baldoni had been going in an opposite direction against the wishes of the production company and the people filming it she was doing what she was supposed to do you can find that you know distasteful the interviews didn't come off very well but there was that huge piece of context that none of us had any idea of the other interview the one that really blew up with I know I'm saying her name right the interviewer Kshertsi Fla and it was

her and Parker Posey and she was pregnant. It's now come out allegedly that, so she released that interview in August 2024, even though it's from years ago and the title was like the interview that made me want to quit my job. She also released a video during the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial that was like positive about Johnny Depp, which again feels so underhanded and cruel.

I was going to say, she said hashtag justice for Johnny Depp during the Johnny Depp one. Oh yeah, yeah. And so on the rest is entertainment. Richard Osmond made a really good comment, I thought, actually, where he said it's kind of similar to Greg Wallace in that there's this litany of accusations where if you just had one of them, you could kind of go, someone's made a bit of an off-color remark there. And if you didn't have all the evidence that she has, there's a way that you could kind of get over it but if you put all of these things together

it adds up to something really nefarious and really kind of cool and misogynistic and quite harassing and I thought that was quite an interesting way of putting it and a reason why these men think they will get away with these things because they're all in their own minds each individual instance is insignificant enough that it's like, well, I haven't committed a crime. I haven't done anything illegal. I haven't actually crossed a boundary. And it just makes you wonder what the conditions are that people are working under. Because again, to reiterate, if you're a younger actress and he's saying these things to her, how does it make you feel about Hollywood men in general? I I mean I'm sure we've never felt

too favoring of them but you know Brad Pitt Johnny Depp there's a long list of these men who have hired these crisis PR teams it's a terrifying idea that these women's lives can be ruined just by men orchestrating these smear campaigns yes it's so it's so gross and it's so grim and the success of it is the thing that also just makes me feel so bad about it it's not just that these things are happening it's just that it's quite easy for these things to pan out and I mean even in the text exchange between Justin Baldoni and the people the crisis management team a lot of the stories weren't planted by them so it was like quite easy for things to grow and reproduce and just spread by what allegedly is you know a level of orchestration from them but a lot of stuff they hadn't touched it just was that easy for

it to just grow online when it comes to hating Blake Lively the amount of hate that can just like befall on a woman for seemingly no clear reason is just it is just absolutely terrifying I it really does make me feel quite ill the only thing that seems kind of fundamentally different from the court case with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp or the several court cases is the positioning of power she is a woman so she's obviously this is it happened we've seen it happen quite successfully but she is a lot more famous than he is and already we can see she's getting public support in a way that amber heard didn't she got kind of covert support and her former co-stars from and her friends from sister of the traveling pants alexis biddell america frara i do forget the other one they

came out and said in no uncertain terms we support you this is disgusting amber heard herself has said something so that is the only thing i think, this could be a slight turning of the tables. But as we've said before, men in Hollywood, they can beat women up. They can rape women. They can be paedophiles. There is really nothing. And I'm choosing real examples from real famous men in Hollywood who've had their image rehabilitated. They can do those things and come back within one year, two years, at tops, five to 10 years. A woman can be cocky. She can shoplift. She can do any listening of minor crimes and that can be curtains, or at least that will be brought up. She'll be laughed at it. Whereas the machine works so well for these powerful men to return,

to kind of get job prospects. Armie Hammer just did an interview where he said, I'm kind of fighting off job offers at the moment. It's really exciting. I'm coming back. It has not been a long time. He will be a star again. All of these men are. And I do think that if nothing changes, nothing changes, but actually does need to change for the whole system to stop rewarding these big, powerful men. I don't know if Justin Baldoni does have the source, as it were, the power behind him to pull what a lot of other powerful men have pulled, but he certainly seems to be giving it a good go. The other thing that I thought was absolutely fascinating was just seeing how the sausage is made through the piece and just, you know, crisis management team saying we've got

the Daily Mail on hold, we've prepped them them first stories all of that kind of stuff and the text back and forth between the media that very much cushions something like this when it comes to a smear campaign I think I thought it would be a lot more smooth I it's not it's just literally picking up the phone texting a guy you know on the print desk and just being like yeah we're gonna start hating on this woman because like we don't really like her you ready to go and somebody being like yeah I'm ready to go to start hating on this woman because like, we don't really like her. Are you ready to go? And somebody being like, yeah, I'm ready to go. This sort of, I couldn't believe it's literally just there in plain text. It just shows how easy it is for men to feel like they are able to control the narrative that they're able to behave in any which way and that it can be solved. I mean, I just, I cannot believe the brazen and

callousness of the whole thing. But I think the problem is, and exactly what Sarah says in the piece is just that people love to witch hunt women women's personalities are at the forefront constantly if you're not likable you will not be successful a man can do anything and if he's talented or clever or whatever it might be I mean historically pretty much every single man in history who's been remotely successful creative or a genius has also been inherently cruel and evil and done some of the most like heinous things and a woman has to I don't know I'm thinking back to now like Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner and him trying to paint her as this like party animal and not a very good mother I want this to be you know something

that's really going to turn the tide or at least shed a bit of light on just how easy it is to hate on women but I think fundamentally for as long as we value women pretty much based on their sort of like likability factor, which is such an ephemeral thing anyway, what does it even mean? What is the measure for that? There is none. It's going to be very difficult for this to not keep happening. But I am glad that Blake Lively also has the backing of her husband. And I love that he kind of told Justin Baldoni off his fat phobia when it was her husband.

He's been like a great ally and actually unlike Amber Heard who did who unfortunately was her partner as often is the case who was the perpetrator so she didn't have a man in her corner and it's very frustrating that you need a man in order to validate anything ever but it helps it is miserable but that is true and I was reading this thinking this might be be it. This might be the Watershed moment. I think off the back of this, the general public of which we are members, I think the more we learn, the less likely we'll be willing to be used for Hollywood PR machines, millions of pounds just to do like playground drama on this scale, like pathetic. I don't want that to happen. But then I think of someone like Meghan Markle and the documentary that told us in very clear terms, how the relationship between power and press and stories being planted, like kind of these seeds that become scandals. We see it every single day

with Meghan Markle. It goes on, even though they've said, hey, this is how it happens. This is how this sausage is made. We still go, it's happening. So then I think of that and I think maybe actually there will always be women as collateral maybe things aren't going to change and then I get very glum so it's yet to be seen but not too hopeful. Meghan Markle is such a good point I am flabbergasted that the Daily Mail every single day publishes tens of stories that people on Twitter are still it really shocks I genuinely it annoys me how much it shocks me because it shouldn't be shocking but I cannot believe that people are still it's it's it's actually embarrassing as humans that

people are still like begging for her downfall and on that note are you guys gonna watch her new series on Netflix it looks really boring but I feel like we have to discuss it we'll probably discuss it let's be honest I kind of want to watch it to support her well we will we probably will because we will talk about it but it does look a little bit like, here's how I make my avocado toast that the Daily Mail said was responsible for, you know, war and far off lands. But I will. Oh my God, I forgot about that. Yeah, it will be, I can't, you know, the spin of it will be, the reaction will be fascinating because her haters will be absolutely falling over themselves to find moments that are awful. I just, sometimes it just does take the

right angle like megan markle again she's a woman of color she has like become this bastion of sort of everything that the woke haters hate maybe blake lively is the perfect flavor of person that she could like she has the right privilege the right access it maybe it's like she will be the person because it did make me desperately sad that amber heard came out in support of her and just no one came out in the support of amber heard so maybe let's have our fingers crossed and our optimistic eyes on good point and um and hope thank you so much for listening this week just a reminder we've expanded the everything is content

universe with a brand new everything in conversation episode which is gonna be out next wednesday if you've enjoyed the podcast please do leave us a rating or if you want to spoil us a review on your podcast app five stars please also follow us on instagram at everything is content pod where you'll find us getting even more stuck into the discourse and you can even join in yourself see you next week bye