Everything Is Content - Salt Path Swindlers, Queer Ultimatums & Brad Pitt's PR Machine
Episode Date: July 11, 2025Happy Friday EIC-heads, we're back with another dose of content.On Saturday The Observer published an investigation by writer Chloe Hadjimatheou into the bestselling book The Salt Path and the couple ...behind it. The film adaptation was also just released about 6 weeks ago and stars Gillian Anderson and Oscar Isaac as the couple. The book has been billed by the Guardian as 'A beautiful, thoughtful, lyrical story of homelessness, human strength and endurance' 'Luminescent. A literary phenomenon' by Mail on Sunday and “a beautiful story and a reminder that humans can endure adversity' Stylist. But as Chloe Hadjimatheou discovers, it may also be a little too good to be true...Next up, Ruchira's been utterly obsessed with Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Queer Love series 2 or what everyone actually calls it i.e. Queer Ultimatum. The series brings six couples together. Each of these couples have one person who desperately wants to get married and one who doesn’t. The latter have been issued an ultimatum by their partner I.e go on this show with me and by the end if you don’t change your mind we break up. We discuss!And lastly, we need to talk about Brad Pitt. Allegations against him have been in the public eye for years now, so why is he still, Hollywood's golden boy?We hope you enjoy, and always, thank you so much for listening. O,R,B xxBeth's been loving: Here Comes The GuillotineRuchira's been loving: The Rehearsal Series 2Oenone's been loving: NYT GamesThe real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperationThe Ultimatum: Queer LoveBrad Pitt's Fooling You Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I'm Beth.
I'm Rachera.
And I'm Anoni.
And this is Everything is Content, your one-stop shop for worldwide web analysis, culture picks
and celeb gossip.
Books, films and your latest weird crush, we've got you covered.
With a shaken-up can of pop culture, spraying you with a crisp fizzy drink of good content.
This week on the podcast we're looking at the real salt path, a queer reality TV show
and Brad Pitt. Follow us on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod and make sure you hit follow on your podcast
player app so you never miss an episode. Before I ask you both what you have been loving this
week, we as a podcast would love you
if you gave us a review on Apple or Spotify or both. We're an independent podcast and
reviews make the world of difference for us. They help get us on the charts and keep us
going and growing. Thank you so much to everyone who's done this already too. We love you.
So girls, what have you actually been loving this week?
I have rekindled a previous romance of mine with the New York Times games app and I have
actually started playing Wordle again, which I hadn't done for a very long time. I'm playing
Wordle, I'm playing Spelling Bee, I'm doing the crossword. They're the three I choose,
but that is what I have been loving. I have to let you know, I'm a gamer.
I'm a gamer girl.
That is so fun.
I tried doing the crossword over the weekend
on the New York Times app and that's not easy.
That is a difficult game.
Well, the weekend crosswords particularly hard,
but also, because I used to do it,
I used to do it every single day last year.
I was really addicted to it, but the hardest part of it
is it's loads of Americanisms.
So that's often what will catch you out
is actually that it's not that difficult.
It's just, we don't use that word
or it's like spelled slightly differently.
Once you get into it, once you get into a rhythm,
it does start to get slightly easier.
But on the Saturday and Sunday, particularly,
I do have to, I fill in everything I can
and then I turn on auto-check
and then I play kind of cheating,
which is where it like shows you what's right and wrong. But the Monday one I do it like I do it as a time
against myself because the Monday one's really easy so you can always get that whole thing.
But Saturday, Sunday are much more difficult.
Do you feel sharper for having done like I remember doing I want to say Nintendo DS like
brain training or something and I think it did genuinely I mean I mean, I was 14 years, probably younger actually.
I was probably 11 years old.
So my brain was probably quite sharp already.
But I remember thinking like, I'm working out my brain.
Does it feel like that or is it just for the sheer joy,
the love of the game?
I think it doesn't, do you know what makes you feel
like that is like a cryptic crossword in a newspaper
because then you'll actually feel like a detective
because you're like putting clues together.
This is not really cryptic.
It's more just guessy.
I don't think it, I'm sure it's better for you
than other phone-based activities, I think.
But whether or not I'm getting sharper
or learning anything apart from, you know,
what Americans call certain things,
I'm gonna have to unfortunately say I don't think so.
But it does make you feel quite smug
because it feels like a good thing to do on your phone.
So I like that.
I think that is a good thing to do on your phone.
You're definitely better than me.
Oh my God, thanks.
What have you been loving, Majira?
Okay, so I have jumped straight into the world
of the rehearsal series too.
And I can confirm it is brilliant.
It is so, so good.
And even as somebody who, I guess,
has mild flying anxiety,
I would say it's about a two out of 10.
It crops up now and then, but it's not, you know,
it's not every flight.
I can watch this and I can get through it,
but I do want to say, if you do have flying anxiety, this might set
you off because it is very heavy on flight crashes, details of pilots' personal lives and
how that might affect them on the job. So go in with this warning. Do not watch this if that could
trigger you. That is a very serious disclaimer I'm going to put out there. But if you can get through it, I think you're going to love it. It is so insane. It's absolutely
batshit. More batshit than the first series, I would say. There was this awful, horrible
simulation that he did that should have been laughable. But by the end of it, I felt moved
to tears. I can't really explain to you why without you having watched it.
But it's just like complete Nathan Fielder exceptionalism in terms of both
making you want to cry, laugh, making you reconsider life itself all at once.
And there's just micro second.
It's so bizarre.
So that was my first thing.
My second thing is, did you see Ayo Adabiri and Claryo
on the side of the Sabrina Hyde Park concert over the weekend and them doing the Apple
dance?
Yes, so iconic.
Yes, I did see this. Very cute.
Yeah. I don't really have loads to say about it other than I just, I feel like now I've
maybe sharpened my feelings around Ayo Adabiri and I might be in love with her.
That's it really.
I'm not gonna lie with you,
I did think you were in love with her already.
Yes.
Oh.
Because I think she was like,
I'm not what I've been loving, maybe it was,
but like this was podcast when we were,
I think it was like at least a year ago,
maybe over a year and you were like,
you brought her up at the beginning of an episode once
and I think maybe it was like what I've been loving and you're like my queen, I had a berry.
So you have been, I'm sorry to break the news, but you have been in love for some time now.
Oh, I mean, you know, I'm not going to lie, this isn't the first time other people have told me
who I'm in love with. Can I ask you on the flying anxiety things? I'm now way more of an anxious flyer than
I ever was when I was younger. And it seems to be a lot among my friends as well. Is that
do you think you just get more risk of us when you're older? But like, I can get quite
scared on a flight in a way that I never really used to.
That's interesting because I feel like I've gone the other way. I think I had a really
bad period maybe like a decade ago and I've come
out of that. That's sad though. Yeah, I wonder what's made that happen for you and your friends.
What do you think, Beth? I think it's risk adverse as you get older. I think it's something develops
in your brain and you realize how dangerous life is. You lose that youthful feeling of like
everything will be fine.
And I'm kind of very important in the universe.
And of course, I've never been a plane crash.
And you're like, I could.
And I'm similar.
I told everyone for a long time,
I'm not at all scared of flying.
And then I was like, but I do cry now
every single time it takes off.
I was like, it's a little bit housekeeping.
I just do a little cry and then I'm fine.
Once I'm up there, I'm like, I'll take my gin and tonics
and I'll be on my merry way. But on the way up, yeah, I definitely have locked into a fear
as I've gotten older. It's a real shame.
This is, I don't know if this is a good thing to say, but I always do a prayer before when
it's taking off and I'm not religious and that's my ritual. And I feel like I have to
do it every time because every time I've done it until then, nothing bad has happened.
Oh yeah. I have so many things like that for myself. I don't say pride, but just rules
in life that I've done it once and then it's like, oh, now I can't not. My friend's dad
does this where I think he changed his shoelaces or something before a match and then they
won that match. So now every single time he goes to watch this football, he does something
that's actually not that easy to do because he's like, if I don't do it, that might be
the reason why we lose, even though I think they lose all the time, even when he does.
So relatable. Okay, Beth, what is your favourite this week?
So quite unusual for me, what I've been loving is a podcast. It's Here Comes the Guillotine,
which is I'm sure you both know, it's a newsy slash entertainment podcast that's been about
since 2024, I think, and Scottish comedians,
Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher McArthur Boyd discussing the hot topics of the day.
It's so funny. It's really dark because the news is so relentlessly dark, and also they are
Scottish comedians. So what do you expect? But I'm finding actually, it's quite uplifting
to have people joking around about the state of the world from a position where it's obviously care
very deeply about justice, but also like shit's funny. They'll tell the truth about it, but
they will also make joke after joke after joke. And I have gone back actually just to
get a sense of, I went back to the first few episodes because I wanted to grasp the format
and the format seemed to be there's to be, there's no format,
there's no theme, they just talk. Which seems an odd thing to do for a current affairs podcast.
I'm like, these are just affairs, they're not current. But it's really funny. It's really funny
how they are making a podcast and they're very clear on this is going to be almost impossible
to sponsor this because they're slacking everything off. They're telling the truth about
global affairs in a way that has
become in this post-truth world, quite unfashionable and not sellable at all. In the very first
episode, if you've not listened, it's a long discussion, very funny discussion about Frankie
Boyle's online, fresh on slash relationship with a suspected female neo-Nazi. You just
don't get that with Richard Osman and Marina Hyde, which is a
shame. But yeah, it's a friend I'm listening to who's not aware. It's like liberal leftist
politics, world events, and a lot of personal anecdotes from Frankie Ball, who you will
know, Christopher McArthur Boyd, who's a early 30s male comedian, and Susan McCabe, who's like a 30 something, early 30s male comedian and Susan McCabe who's a 40 something
Glaswegian lesbian, I believe. And I'm hooked actually. And if you don't listen to this,
I'll be surprised. Ruchira, I don't know if this will be your thing already.
I know I've not even heard of this, but this sounds really funny and I definitely want
to listen because what you said about it being like
truly unfiltered I'm actually fascinated with now I need to hear what that sounds like.
Yeah I need to listen to it, I don't listen to it but I'm actually literally going to follow the show
right now. I do love Frankie Ball although once I went to see Frankie Ball with an ex years ago
and I found it so extreme that I actually couldn't laugh and I was just getting offended the whole
time because I am unfortunately of the snowflake generation but I think I've kind of grown out of And I found it so extreme that I actually couldn't laugh and I was just getting offended the whole time.
Cause I am unfortunately of the snowflake generation.
But I think I've kind of grown out of that now.
What was the level of humor?
Because I saw him once as well
and it was quite a lot of pedophile jokes.
And I can't, yeah, that's what I remember of it.
Yeah, I think it was the same.
I think it was around 2000.
It would have been like 2018, 2019.
It was definitely pre-pandemic. And I think it was, it was just stuff where I was 2018, 2019. It was definitely pre-pandemic.
And I think it was, it was just stuff where I was like,
I don't think I can laugh at this.
Cause there's certain things I think you can laugh at
when they're either about the person,
they're taking the piss out themselves
and they're giving you license to laugh at that,
like thing that you couldn't normally.
But yeah, when it's jokes about like paedophilia
or I don't know, like child trafficking or something.
Yeah, I just, I struggled to, took
a fall at that, but maybe that's a weakness on my part.
I don't think so. I think it's also like, it's for some people, it does feel like galvanizing.
And I think for them, that's exactly what it is. It's like, they care very deeply. It's
from the angle of like they are, like the world is fucking shit. These people are dreadful.
But if you can, and if you can offer that, great. But at the beginning is fucking shit, these people are dreadful. But if you can, and if you can
offer that, great. But at the beginning of the episodes, early episodes, they're like,
this podcast is not suitable for all viewers, which they later changed because it sort of
sounds like they're saying like, this is for no one, but it's very much like an adult podcast.
Dip your toes. Some bits I think you'll be like, ooh, but it's clear what side they're
on, which is like the side of goodness and justice. But some people would be like, no, no, no, because it's not it's not snowflakey.
It's not woke for the sake of being woke.
It's very much here's what we think.
Nothing's off limits.
You will wince at a few things.
That's my disclaimer.
That's good. I do think I'm ready for that more now.
I think when I was younger, I almost wasn't like evolved enough to be able to.
I was very more black and white. Sounds good. I've already, I just followed it on my phone. So I'm down.
So first up, a long and twisty story from the world of literature. On Saturday, The
Observer published an investigation by writer Chloe Hajimathay into the bestselling book,
The Salt Path and The Couple Behind It.
The Saltpath is a 2018 memoir about a middle-aged couple called Rainer and Moth Wynn, real names
Sally and Tim Walker, who claim in the book to have fallen on incredibly hard times following a
failed business investment with a friend who then takes them to court, which results in them losing
their family home, becoming functionally homeless just around the time that Moth slash Tim is diagnosed with a terminal
neurodegenerative disease. The book follows the pair over a year or so period as they use their
meager remaining income to walk the 630 miles southwest coast path, camping along the way and
learning a lot of themselves and humanity as they rely on their own grit, relationship and the kindness of strangers.
Since publication, The Salt Path has sold over 2 million copies and author Raina Wynn
slash Sally Walker has written two sequels and has a deal with Penguin for another. The
film adaptation was also just released about six weeks ago and stars
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs as the couple. The book has been billed by The Guardian as,
quote, a beautiful, thoughtful, lyrical story of homelessness, human strength and endurance,
by Mail on Sunday as luminescent, a literary phenomenon, and stylist as a beautiful story
and a reminder that humans can endure adversity. But as Chloe Hajamathai discovers, it may also be a little too good to be true.
Former colleagues and acquaintances of the couple say the account is exaggerated and
in part entirely false and misleading. According to Wynn slash Sally, she and her husband lost
their home as a result of their generosity being abused by a friend in business. A different former acquaintance though, Ross Hemmings, alleges something quite
different saying that Wynne slash Sally is a thief who stole around £64,000 from her
husband Martin Hemmings while working for him. And after the police got involved, she
vanished only getting in touch again via a London solicitor who forged an agreement
stating that Wynn slash Sally would pay all of the money back so long as Martin signed
an NDA and agreed not to pursue a criminal case, which he did.
The money that Wynn slash Sally would use to pay the Hemmings back would come from a
high interest loan from a relative of Moth slash Tim's. This seems to be where things
got really bad for the couple and the people that they owed money to as this debt was subsequently transferred, the loan was called in and when they didn't
pay they were taken to court and the ruling was pay £150,000 or have your home repossessed.
What seems to have followed this again is quite convoluted. It involves rumoured attempts
to recoup this money that may or may not have been totally above board and don't paint the couple in a good light at all. And it's a really explosive
piece for something that feels quite quaint, bucolic, not explosive at all. It's so well
reported on as well. And I just really love this piece. I will say I did have to read
it a couple of times to make sure I was fully following it, but it is
well worth the time. It's great reporting. And we cover literary drama on this pod whenever it
arises. How did you both react to the details and the allegations of this article? And did it seem
like a juicy story or was it kind of a little bit winding, meandering a little bit too long?
I just gasped at nearly every paragraph. It got worse and worse
and worse the more you went through the piece. So I was on board. I did find it very detail heavy
in the sense that because it's quite legal, things like that really jumble my head. It takes me a few
reads as well to get my head around what exactly is happening in the different names, especially
because I hadn't read the book, I've not watched the film yet. But I wonder if I'm going to do that now retrospectively,
almost going in with these glasses on with my eyes sharpened to what the real case is.
It's absolutely crazy that this story that won the hearts of so many people where this
couple who had fallen on hard times, according to this piece are allegedly
the villains, IRL, not the victims. They're the people who conned this other couple out of the
money that they claim in the book and the film is the money that they were conned out of. It's
absolutely mental. And Oni, have you seen it, read it, read the piece?
I was really looking forward to watching this film. I've actually listened to
Jason Isaacs being interviewed about it, I've seen loads of press about it and I haven't read the book.
And I actually was a bit cross that I hadn't read the book. So I was like, how's this passing by? It sounds straight up my alley.
So my first proper interaction with it, engaging with it, is in this piece. And it's so damning.
In a way, it's kind of laughable and funny that the publishing houses like had no idea how much they'd been swindled in the retelling of the story.
And obviously, there's that really famous Nora Ephron quote, which is, all memoir is
fiction and all fiction is memoir.
And that is true to an extent, but usually that means you kind of change some of the
truth of the story, but the emotional truth is essentially true.
And often in memoir or in nonfiction, it's very hard to
convey a full picture of the truth without betraying other people's stories or things
that you know, maybe aren't yours to tell. But it's in this case where they just so brazenly,
I think that's what makes you or me certainly feel not a lot of compassion towards the couple
because not only did they defraud people, they then also had the temerity
to go forth and kind of position themselves as the victims in the whole thing. I don't
know if it almost puts me off watching the film because it just feels so much like it's
built on a lie now. But I do wonder and as she said in the piece, you know, people will
still go on to enjoy this film. And actually, this is definitely going to be one of those
things where lots of people just will not see this piece. The salt path will, I doubt, be remotely impacted by
these findings because it's got such a big names attached to it. The book did so well.
I'll be interested to see how far this does carry, even though I found it extremely damning.
I was also really shocked. And I found it really interesting that they did go near his
really shocked. And I found it really interesting that they did go near his medical diagnosis, because that's often quite a messy area to touch. And she does outline in the piece, you know,
there's nothing to say on the contrary that they're lying, but also does get, you know,
these medical experts saying it is unusual for someone with the condition that he has to go on
living so long and to keep kind of being able to actually kind of become better. And so
that's also dangerous. It reminds me of other things we've spoken about on this podcast
to do with people sort of saying that they've been able to improve their health or, you
know, extremely bad illnesses through holistic ventures, which they then peddled to kind
of sell you something. So there's so much in this piece. It's the Saltpaths Windlers, I guess.
And actually, I should say, so since this piece came out, the couple or at least Raina
Wynn slash Sally Walker has responded to the piece calling it quote, highly misleading.
And she added quote, we are taking legal advice and won't be making any further comment at
this time. The salt path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared,
an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true
story of our journey. So it's like, I imagine it has been fed through lawyer if they're pursuing
a rebuttal or whatever else it is. They are not hoping this all goes away. I don't think it's like
they fired back quite soon after it. It is very interesting. One, the aspect, the medical
aspect because on the face of it, you're like, yeah, that's really no one's business. Everyone
deserves absolute privacy on the matter of their health concerns, their illnesses, seems
an absolutely egregious thing to do. But as the piece kind of gets into, so the condition
he has is corticobasal syndrome, which is rare disabling. But as the piece kind of gets into, so the condition
he has is corticobasal syndrome, which is rare disabling. And as the piece explains,
usually proves fatal within six to eight years. And Tim slash Moth has lived with this for
12 years and could be like medical marvels, miracles, wonderful things do happen. Nothing
is like an exact science. And I think it would be shocking for any of that to be misrepresented.
But I think the important point there and any of that to be misrepresented. I think
the important point there and why Chloe includes this is some people are saying about the whole
thing like, okay, it's a broadly true account of a year or two of people's lives and maybe
it's okay that some things were left out. Maybe it's okay that they aren't beyond reproach.
Nobody's perfect. It's still heartwarming and hopeful and we do need those stories quite
desperately so maybe it doesn't matter. Other people are saying, well, actually, the money in the ceiling allegations
are bad enough. But if there is any falsehood in the health claims, that would be a really
rotten thing because the idea here is that he was given and is given a kind of boost
by the exercising and the walking. Like he would have a bad brain scan one week and then
things would be more promising next time. And it's, yeah, it's all speculation. But
I think that's where it becomes like public interest a little bit. And when you do lay
bare the quote unquote facts, or if you sell a story and you go, this is true, and people
go, okay, so I'm kind of getting from this, that if I have something like this, or if
I have this, then there might be healing to be had. That's when it becomes like, what
actually do we owe each other of our own private histories? The whole thing is actually, it's
testing my feelings about living in this post-truth world, and what makes a good story, and how
much truth do we owe each other. And I'm not entirely sure what I think. I think
because I'm so fed up with the bullshit of it all, I mean it all being everything in
the world at the moment, I'm really short-tempered about it. I'm like, I just want to know what's
true. The idea of doing all of this for profit, the idea of it just seems egregious if this
is true. I just feel it's just such a sour taste in my mouth.
Yeah, I totally feel the same. Just on something something you said, and only about the reach of this
possibly reaching less people in the piece, the Observer says that since it came out in 2018, the
book has sold 2 million copies, which is huge. And yesterday, as part of work, I saw the the Salt
Path Observer investigation was trending on Google trends in the UK.
And I just checked and it's not really been picked up by the U S apart from
deadline at the minute.
So it will be interesting to see if this, you know, sparks across the world,
because this is truly a global bestselling book, but so far it seems like the fire
has like only really been spreading in the UK.
Yeah. I think you're probably right on that at least for now, but I'll be surprised if the New York Times don't pick it up in
the next few days. But I agree with you. I think, I don't know, the piece did a really
good job of trying to tease out the nuances of memoir and writing really does allow for
artistic expression and memoir famously is about, as you said, memoir and writing really does allow for artistic expression and memoir famously
is about, as you said, the emotional truth and what do you feel was worth sharing and
what are the kind of poetic justices that you can flourish onto a story because really
you are building a narrative out and not everything is neat and sequential in the way that a story is.
But I just, I felt so black and white about this. It felt like none of the emotional truth
was left in the story if all of these allegations are correct. If even a fraction of these allegations
are correct, none of that story makes sense. It's a house of cards that has completely
fallen apart and the story just isn't real. And none of it felt like even
close to memoir fact, nonfiction to me. What did you think Anoni?
Lily Allen said something on Miss Me and I'm sure she said it really off cuff, but I genuinely
found it so profound the other day. She said, you can be honest without telling the truth.
And I've really been thinking about it. And I think what that means is they could have been honest and said, we lost our house. And that was
what made us decide to, you know, go on this long adventure, which would be honest, but
it's not the full truth because, you know, the reason why they lost the house was whatever.
But then they've been dishonest because they've then lied about what's happened in order for
them to lose
their house. Do you know what I mean? There's like a really fine line between being honest
about something without disclosing the full truth. What's hard to take in as this level
of fabrication or like active lying that seems to have happened to the point where it actually
it makes the whole story dishonest because it frames them as the victim. And I think that that's
kind of where it sits with me is I don't think that in art or in writing, you necessarily have to
purge your... And also maybe if you're really mortified, I mean, they obviously have committed
crimes, but if it's not integral to the story, if that isn't the point of it, then maybe you don't
necessarily owe that. I'm not sure about how I feel about that, but there's a world in which they could have omitted
certain things without doing it in the way that they've done allegedly, which also frames this
story as something completely different. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I totally do. Yeah, I completely get what you mean. It's the level of detail to present
themselves as the victim that really sours the story. Also, one thing that I'm obsessed with is just the reminder again of the amount
of book deals that can be made without a level of interrogation or scrutiny. We spoke about
it with Apple Cider Vinegar and Bell Gibson. This piece mentions another memoir that I
looked up after where the memoirist
talks about having been in jail and part of these horrendous accidents where he nearly
lost his life and having been addicted to drugs. Years ago, it was an Oprah Winfrey
book selection and it turned out that lots of the allegations he made were just not true. And now it's build as, I think,
fiction or basically not memoir like it was before. But it's crazy. In my mind, you get
a book deal and it must be so rigorous, but I just keep getting reminded that that's just
not the case. They don't necessarily hold the facts that you make in those books to
account.
I think if it's about you or something happens to you, they don't necessarily challenge it.
But if you say like, X, Y, Z happened to me by this person, you'll then, you either have
to have, I think, three points of contact to back it up and say, I can give evidence
that this happened. Or you have to change it because that's more about defamation and being sued and stuff,
or you have to like change the information.
But I think if you're saying it happened to you,
they trust you as the narrator of your own story
and I guess you can't sue yourself.
So I think that's where the public,
like sorry, the publishers protection angle comes in.
They think, well, if you're saying it,
I guess it must be true about you,
but it's more that the thing they worry about is, will someone else, which is happening
now with this book, but they didn't know that, I guess, will someone else come in and say actually
what they've written is factually incorrect? And I guess, I'm sure it must be quite an unusual type
of character that does fabricate such big things about their own lives. I would imagine that's not
that common. Or maybe I'm
very naive.
It's also just like the omissions of it all because it could be everything, like so much
of what they say is true, but then they've admitted like, for example, it's the idea
that they were homeless and then there's reports in this that, oh, but there was the French
property. The idea that, yeah, we've lost our money. And it's like, but how did you lose your money? And here the allegation is you committed quite a serious, egregious crime. And it's the hubris
of it all. If this is true, it's a tale of audacity. It's shocking to me the idea that you'd
be so brazen to be accused of a crime and to kind of so desperately seek to get away with this.
The report is that she was questioned by police. They said, you will come back tomorrow. You've been accused of
stealing 64 grand from a former employee. You'll need to come back. She vanished and
then gets in touch via lawyer. It's the idea you would do that, get sucked into this hella
situation and then pursue writing a book about it. It just feels like
maybe at that point you think, well, I've changed my name. I'm going by a pseudonym.
Enough will be changed because of the legalese. I probably will get away with this. But then
it's pursuing fame and visibility even more doggedly by making the film, signing off on
the film, and then just posing on the red carpet, standing next to like world famous actress,
Gillian Anderson.
If that is indeed what happened,
I cannot understand those associated behaviors,
whether it's like, it goes to your head,
whether you think, well,
everyone involved in this story is like older,
maybe a few of them have passed away, slash irrelevant.
It's just like pure hubris.
It's like, I know allegedly, allegedly, but like you would kick yourself, I think, at
this point for being like, I've gotten away with this for years.
And now, because I wanted a little bit more, this has all come out.
That's what shocks me most about this is the audacity of people, the gall.
I cannot for a second understand what drives someone to do this besides the obvious rewards of like fame and money,
but there has to be a limit because this is was all unnecessary. Best selling book, no one's really
you know, 2018 that could have just been a nice little earner. You don't have to go on the red
carpet. I have a question for you both and I completely agree with everything you said, Beth.
Why do we stan someone like Anna Delvey? And why,
you know, in the age of post scammers, somebody like an Elizabeth Holmes became quite a cult
figure. But you know, the salt path has absolutely horrified us. I have a theory, but what do
you think?
I think Anna Delvey was like scamming massive corporate, like big hotels and like conglomerates
and like, it's like taking from
the rich to give to the poor. It was quite glamorous. I mean, she obviously was scamming
rich friends, but I think the hilarity in that was that everyone around her was also
buying into her fakeness. Like it was their fault that they kind of got taken in by her.
Whereas I guess with this story and also to go back to what Beth was saying, if you're
so brazen as to steal 64,000 pounds off your employee, which by the way, your employee is not Unilever. It's like a local person that you've known for years, who's
an individual as individual as you are. If you're that brazen, then I guess there must
be a certain sort of personality type or something that means that you do think you're above
the law and that you do think that you're entitled to take whatever you can take and
that you're not going to get caught. I do think that that must be part of their idea. But yeah, I think
that it's just, I think it's that I feel like it depends on who the victim is in this and
everyone in the story and the piece, you just feel so sorry for them because they seem like
lovely working people who, whose livelihoods, there's one guy who's like, they still owe
me £800. If you see them, can you get that £800? And they were like, they must have the money now. And that's
just, that's just really sad, you know?
I totally agree with you. It's the injustice of it. Whereas I feel like those other people
in other stories, you know, they're going to bounce back. There is a sense that every
single victim in this story just never bounced back. They just had to deal with it. And that
is so unfair. It's so, so, so unfair.
And there was a time where the scammer was like, country sexy, this is exciting. Caroline
Calloway capitalised on it and so did Anna Delvey. And I think we're kind of through
that. And this is not a sexy country crime embezzling from an employer in the early 2000s.
I think it's awful that actually you can spin that kind of crime and manipulation into a media career,
but that is the way of the world. Times have moved on and I just can't see this
ever having that gloss of it's kind of can't because it's just simply not.
Can I counter that quickly just with something that Carolina Donohue wrote on Substack, which is,
my hot take on the salt path is that a huge part of boomer culture is that every single one of them has either defrauded or been defrauded by a former friend.
They are our elders. These are their practices. We must respect them. I read that and laughed
because actually it's so true. The boomers loved defrauding each other. It's such a
thing. I even really remember at school, like people's parents, there'd be stuff going
on with people doing a little bit of fraud.
I don't know this side of the world. I'm not familiar with that. I need to do some digging.
So I have been utterly obsessed with Netflix's reality series, The Ultimatum Queer Love,
or what actually everyone calls it is Que ultimatum series two. Each of
the couples and there's six couples in this one have essentially one person who desperately wants
to get married and one who doesn't. The latter has been issued an ultimatum by the partner who
wants to get married and what this means is they all have to go on this show, this reality show,
and if by the end the non-agreeing partner
doesn't change their mind, that couple has to break up. That sounds absolutely wild, right?
We'll just wait, it gets more nuts. The couple then have to swap partners with the other couples
on the show to see if they could be happier with someone else in a trial marriage. During this
process, they actually temporarily break up with their original partner and start calling them their ex
even if they've been together a decade plus and after this kind of trial
marriage with a stranger essentially they return back to their original
partner and do the same thing with that partner and have to make a decision by
the end of those three weeks. Vulture summed it up perfectly for me with the writer Zoe Papoulis writing quote
No dating show format is perfect, but in a world where most of them rely solely on bad communication
between straight couples, it's a cherished experience to watch other lesbians struggle
with things we understand, like overcommunication, the inclination to get matching tattoos with
someone you've
known for one week, and the impact that one charismatic, masked lesbian can have on a
group of queer people. Have you both been watching this? Am I wild for thinking this
show is just so, I don't know, so incredible, bizarre, wild, but worth watching? I have
to know your thoughts.
I started watching this and I was actually quite like a leery of a concept which involves
an ultimatum. The whole concept of it really alarmed me and I was like, I'm going to need
to run the tapes back and understand exactly what's about to happen. It's these couples
talking such loving terms about one another at this kind of round table dinner party and
you're like, but wait, now they're going to break up. It's very odd. And I wonder, I think I kind of echo the thoughts of that vulture
piece. I think my brain has been broken a little bit by modern reality TV dating shows
because they are so toxic and they've been so unlovely and so unfocused on love for a
really long time. I don't think it's even a part of my criteria anymore for the dating
shows to involve like real feelings and love. There was a
time when I did love that. Now I think I'm just watching dating shows to watch mess and to watch
content creators get their start. The stakes are so much lower. I started watching this and I was
like, oh, this is not that. The stakes are really high here. These are people that love one another,
have spent sometimes a decade together and really this is the last stitch
attempt to make themselves feel whole and make the relationship work. And there's so
much love. And I watched the first episode and I was like, okay, this is about investment.
This is about commitment. It's not strangers, straight people snogging each other in like
ball pits of goo and pulling each other for chats. This is like the stuff of life.
And so I think my challenge here will be to watch this through eyes that have to
pretend they've never seen Love Island USA, which as we know they have.
So I have started watching it and it just feels like a completely different
beast than anything else on TV.
I also have only just started watching it.
As you guys know, I'm not the best with reality TV,
but then that made me enjoy this more because it is different because you're already kind of thrown
into the deep end of you don't have to watch people kind of getting to know each other. Well,
you do, but there's like a pre-existing real depth to these relationships. So I'm really only early
on, but I think it's funny, it's something you just said a minute ago, Beth, about it, like it's so extreme. But in heteronormative relationships, this ultimatum is, I would
say, happens in like 75% of couples that you hear about where women will go, I literally
said to him, like, if he doesn't propose to me, I'm leaving him. And then they get engaged.
It's such a thing, it's such a flippant kind of thing that people use, that there's something
maybe interesting about seeing it
in a queer relationship,
because you just imagine that queer relationships
are more partisan or that they don't conform
as much to these traditional structures.
So I do think it's quite like an interesting,
it shows how weird the ultimatum is in general.
Like I do think it's such a funny thing
that we have these ultimatums.
I flip-flop about marriage, I never really know what I think,
but I think what this shows quite interesting and the premise in what it does is that does it
make you kind of question what commitment really means and whether or not there is, because these
couples are ultimately really happy apart from the fact that they disagree on marriage, right?
But then the fact that they're then able to be swayed and to leave their long-term relationship,
I think it shows how much agency
we have in relationships and in love, that it's not some sort of like fated by the stars.
You find that one person and then when you're with them, it's like, that's it. But I do
find it so interesting that marriage can be that disruptive, that the lack of wanting
it can be enough for people to not want to be together forever. But I think it's because more about that lack of security that thinking that,
you know, if we don't get married, then maybe they'll leave me. But this show kind of proves
that actually this is all within your control because sometimes it's the people that want
to get married that are leaving, you know?
Yeah, everything you said is so right, especially the bits at the end, because I, with the straight
version essentially, I feel like loads of the couples are so horrendously toxic and
marriage is this almost like final card to use to hold and pin somebody down because
they can feel that they're kind of escaping.
And it's really yucky, honestly, the straight version is really yuck. Whereas this version, it feels like you have a few, not all, a few couples who are really
actually doing very well.
So it's bizarre that they're on this show and by the end, you know, some things work
out with these couples and it almost feels like, well, what was the point of going through
this horrendous process?
Is marriage worth all of this?
It feels hard, I guess, as somebody who does want to get married one day, to see somebody
wanting it so much that they could go on a show like this and reality TV is a better
answer than just kind of maybe letting marriage go.
So what you said really chimed with me because that's exactly how I felt too.
And the second part is I do have to say
that kind of cliche about over communication
and lesbians falling in love quickly.
I'm sorry, but the show really did live up to that cliche
and that stereotype and they just,
it was absolutely crazy. Two of them
get matching tattoos. That's not a joke in the vulture piece. Two of them get matching
tattoos after a week of knowing each other. And the partner of one of these women, when
they find the tattoo obviously has a meltdown because they've never got matching tattoos
before. Like what's that?
That's wild. That is so, it's so wild. And I think that's it. It's like, I was going
to ask because I just didn't know like, surely this was a straight show. And if so, was it
absolutely dog shit? Because like, that is an insane thing to do. Okay, the matching
tattoos to me, but also like the way that everyone's talking about each other in the
first episode, like how deeply they love one another. And it's like when straight people talk about each other, it's not like that. When it's
kind of like, often the male counterpoint is like listing things that are done for him.
Whereas this, this is, you know, women, lesbians, queer people, listing things about their partner
that they just adore. It's very loving. And of course I'm early on, relationships as I know will fall apart and reform but it's just bonkers that it does then become, okay I've left that relationship,
I'm now with someone I met three weeks ago, I can't understand what possesses someone to go on a
show like this knowing that might happen. The idea itself feels so archaic because it's literally
yeah the idea of shit I'll go off the pot, let's get married.
But actually, I think the point is when it's like queer love, when marriage is not meant,
when historically marriage was not, I guess, meant for you, it was sort of not designed
with your mind and modern marriage therefore, you can yoke it to everyone. You can be like,
no, it's not that I just want to ring. It's that I want to know, I want security, I want to know, I want to feel safe. I want to know that you see me and you want to make our lives
bigger together rather than this historic notion of submission and like the old wall and chain.
So I think I actually went into it being like, this is really archaic. I don't know how this
can work. And I'm like, oh, it kind of does work because it's like, do you see a life with me where
we commit to one another and like stand by each other's side? If not, let's release each
other, which is kind of beautiful. And I'm obviously not for a second assuming that because
it's queer people and lesbians that it's going to be utopian dating and no one's going to
misbehave because everyone is human and humans fuck up and are full of foibles and contradictions.
I embrace for that, but I'm like, this is a quality
to this that it feels weird that it happens under the umbrella of something that feels
so heterosexual, which is, marry me or I will leave you. But the way it's unfolding so far,
I'm like, there is something so distinctly other about this that is unrecognizable and
feels in its essence way more expansive than I'm sure the show could ever achieve. It was like
Dave and Becky, she wants to get married, he just wants to go to football. I'm being
reductive to straight people, yeah again. But I'm getting something from this that it's
the contradictions, the contradictions.
I have to say it gets messier and messier and messier. You both are in for such a ride.
So if you've just started and
you don't know how this is going to work out, stick with it. You will be on quite the roller
coaster and there are some many, many plunges. FYI, this week Emma Spector also wrote a piece
for Vogue titled Respectfully, Why Would Anyone Go On The Ultimatum Queer love. And I think that sums it up really.
So we need to talk about Brad Pitt. In a piece of vulture, Angelica Jade-Bastien writes, Brad Pitt is fooling you. There have been allegations of physical and verbal abuse by Brad Pitt from both
Angelina Jolie and his children in the public domain
for a few years now, but thus far it seems that in the court of the public, his image
is pretty untainted.
And Bastien writes in the piece that Pitt has been so successful at this rehabilitation
that most of the public don't even understand what he's trying to rehabilitate himself for.
She goes on to say that his press tour for his latest
film, he has limited it to outlets like Jack Shepard's podcast, which isn't an interview
but a conversation where the star won't be pushed to address more prickly personal or
professional matters. And six days ago, he jokingly read his thirst tweets with his co-star
Javier Bardem. A day before that, he got cheeky over Britishisms with his other co-star, Dancin Idris, and
in his latest glossy GQ profile, Pitt gives an appearance of unmediated candour even though
he isn't asked about Jolie or about his estrangement from his six children, some of whom are reportedly
legally stripping his name from theirs.
Which I also thought may be perhaps served as a good reminder for why rigorous traditional media being absorbed by celebrity and social media
interviews isn't always a fairer or better system like we spoke about in last week's
Everything in conversation and the piece goes on when the f1 movie premiered over the weekend
It became the most successful box office opening of Pitt's entire career
Bastien says it has always sold a particular vision of American
white masculinity, one predicated on charisma, unflapability and seamless confidence. His
deafness in removing the specter of violence from his own narrative is a reminder of the
ways his violence against women is normalized. It isn't that people don't believe in what
happened to Jolie on that plane. They just don't care. And I just found that last sentence
so damning and actually quite chilling and I think it't care. And I just found that last sentence so damning
and actually quite chilling and I think it's true.
And I wonder, is it just because he's so beautiful,
so handsome, is it his PR?
It certainly feels like he's done an incredible job
of pulling the wool over the eyes of the world.
And a lot of the pieces about how he talks about
his relationship with alcohol and his subsequent sobriety,
and that kind
of is acting as a means to excuse him from his behaviors, absolve him of that person
because it wasn't him, it was actually the booze. I want to know what your relationship
is with Brad Pitt, whether or not you've, because I've been really aware of this, but
I have to say I haven't necessarily actively disengaged from his work in the way that I
have with other famous men.
And that's a problem on my part, which I need to interrogate
and I don't necessarily know why.
I feel like I, yeah, I have an aversion to him now.
It feels like oil and water.
Every time he comes up, I just like,
I have the immediate, ugh, ugh.
So I do have that, but I can see why it would be so easy to not have that because he has
just been front and centre for the last few months.
So I don't know, there's a reason why PR strategies like this work because they are successful.
And the other thing I just wanted to point out quickly is that GQ cover, I don't even
know what to say about it. I saw somebody tweet it was
giving open casket vibes and I think that really nailed it. He looks frozen like a vampire that's
been resuscitated and I don't want to be rude, but also I think it's fair game because of everything
you've just said. It was a very strange cover visually. I'll leave it there. But yeah, no,
I have the yuck feeling with
him and yeah, I'm finding it easy at the moment to just kind of just have that aversion wall
come up. What about you, Beth?
Beth Poulson I think it's so interesting to frame this
in regard to like his attractiveness and especially that cover, which yeah, got a lot of kind
of catty, not just catty comments, just like on the nose,
that man looks weird. But it was a really common refrain and remains to be in around the Johnny
Depp allegations. And the following critique is that like, wow, he's so old and revolting and
ugly and look how hideous he is inside now. And it's been interesting to see to watch Brad Pitt be
criticized, obviously less so for reasons which maybe
we'll unpack because I think he does remain very conventionally attractive for the most
part into his 60s and whether that's good genes, skincare as I think he said, or as
is rumored, a cheeky facelift, it doesn't really matter. But there's definitely an element
of like, when it's harder to skewer here, one because the story is less explosive, for
want of a better word, because we haven't really had that public trial, they're handing
a lot of it privately, the details have been quite scant. But like, pretty privilege is,
it's more than just like an easier ride through life. It's literally like trust and social
capital assigned to hot people that furnishes them with an almost total ability to get away
with whatever they want, if they're also men.
I think that has been a really interesting part. It is absolutely not of no consequence that he is
and remains really hot. People have had a crush on this man, an attraction, a fondness for him since
the late 80s, early 90s. It's so twisted up in that. Of course, Johnny Depp has a legion of fans, but he has aged more
realistically and looks quite old. Whereas Brad Pitt has sort of frozen himself in time,
which I think is quite a neat little trick for also freezing people's opinion of you
from where it began in like 90s, 2000. Good bloke, recognize him. He looks nice. I think
it's a lot harder for people to understand, okay, it's possible this person has done the most heinous and abusive things
and is actually just a dull, horrible bastard. So that's what I think.
I think because he was always positioned as the golden boy in America, when him and Jen
Aniston were together, they were the golden couple. I think when he went
over to, you know, Angelina Jolie, he still, he was, he nailed the strategy of never having the
fallout from having had an affair or crossover between those relationships. He always remained
unscathed. Whereas the women were always pitted against each other. They face the brunt of that
huge scandal. He just had nothing.
He was Teflon, nothing stuck to him. And we're seeing the same thing here again. And something
about his image never, never weathers a scandal. He's just, whether it's PR strategy, which
I think is part of it, the fact that he's good looking from what you said, the fact
that he's a man, he's done this time and time again.
And also, yeah, just to go back to what you're saying about pretty privilege, Beth,
we've been primed since we were children
to see villains as ugly as that being manifest
in the way that they look,
especially in like Roald Dahl books,
every single fairy tale,
the villain is someone unattractive,
the good person is beautiful and attractive.
So it's not just like pretty privilege.
Yeah, like you said, it's actually run so much deeper,
like we're psychologically primed to feel more trusting. And even the sort of like Brad Pitt and George
Clooney were always pitted as the sweet guys. And whereas Johnny Depp is the darker, he
was had that kind of energy. He's more rock and roll. So even in those really, it's quite
insipid, stupid ways, we just, I think, find it harder. And I wonder if it's also because I do get
a yucky feeling. I do feel an aversion towards Brad Pitt now since the information has come
out. But I think it's almost like I'm waiting for a collective sort of cancellation. And
because it hasn't happened, it makes me distrust my own feelings. And I also wonder if it's
his interesting and I don't know how to feel about it because I love Jennifer Aniston,
but she's been quite chummy with him ever since this news has come out. Like there's
been interviews where they appeared together. There was that famous Zoom where he goes,
does he go, hey, Aniston and she goes, hey, Pip or he goes, hey Jen, she goes, hey, something
like that. And they've been seen on red carpets. And again, it's like, it's sort of, it's almost
like you're being gaslit by his presence within media. There's absolutely no, even
with sort of Shia LaBeouf, he did actually disappear for a bit. There was more of a sort
of, he then obviously was welcomed back with open arms and he walked the red carpet at
Cannes and he had his reappearance. You know, all of that seems to have disappeared again
now no one seems to care. But there was, there was at least some moment, whereas with Brad
Pitt, there doesn't seem to have been an actionable moment that you can pinpoint where he has
actually fallen off the radar. And that ability to kind of stick your face
above the parapet, even when all of this is happening, even when all of your children
are kind of disowning you, there clearly is power in that because it's certainly wrong
footing me a little bit in my, I probably should feel more ardently that I will never
watch a film with him again. I should separate myself from enjoying his work. But if I'm just being completely honest, I
don't, and even it's awful and I've read everything that is alleged to have happened, but somewhere
there's a cognitive dissonance in my brain where I can watch an interview with him and
Jennifer Aniston and kind of forget for a split second, which I can't do with Johnny
Depp, Shia LaBeouf, any other sort of different famous men that have been accused of awful behavior.
I feel the same. I feel like I'm a bit in this tussle with myself when I'm like, why
don't I feel that revulsion? Because I think it's the maybe it was the divorce filings
or some sort of court filings where, and the lawyer said, quote, well Pitt's history of
physical abuse of Jolie started well before the family's September 2016 plane trip from
France to Los Angeles. This flight marks the first time he turned his physical abuse on
the children as well. Jolie then immediately left him. The details of this, and they are
scant, but the details we have are all really revolting. I wonder whether, because we didn't
get what perhaps the public feel that they're owed in terms of a celebrity breakup of this,
or celebrity breakup that involves these allegations, we don't get the court case. We don't get
the details. We feel they were owed. We sort of go, well, I'm not getting involved until
I get what I'm owed or like I can't form an opinion. I can't take a side until I've got
all of the juicy details. And it's like, that kind of is the bottom line of it. Just because
we don't have like public resolution or pages and pages of court
dogs, it doesn't mean that as the general public, we're absolved from caring or allowed
to go on kind of stanning this man. Our role as a collective is we're continuing to rehab
this person's image who is alleged to have done things which are sickening and intolerable
and disgusting. It's just very odd. I'm trying
to grapple with why exactly. And it's what it says in the piece. It's not really that
people have gone, yeah, fuck Angelina Jolie. What a great guy. They just don't seem to
care. And is it maybe that we just haven't reached saturation point with information?
I'd be really fascinated actually to hear what listeners think because I'm certain there's
a clearer idea. I just don't have it. Lae It does. It feels like the tide is dragging
us in a direction and it's so easy to just be swept up in it and to make a decision on him or to stop
consuming him or to have an active revulsion to him takes effort. You have to almost like stand up and then like walk the other direction
and like swim against the tide. So that isn't to diminish the fact that everything around
us is pushing towards just, you know, saying, oh, whatever, like, it's fine. Let's just
live our lives and like a tweet involving him. That definitely is a thing. One thing
I also wanted to bring up is his production company Plan B Entertainment has
put out some very feminist pieces of film, which I think also helps in this kind of confusion
around how to take him and take this situation.
So in 2022, they came out with She Said, which is the film obviously about the New York Times
investigation into Harvey Weinstein.
And they also did Women Talking and Blonde. the film obviously about the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein. They
also did women talking and blonde. I think it is this big picture of his public image.
It is probably more difficult to square everything for some people because how can somebody be
producing these stellar feminist pieces of work and then also be capable of committing
this atrocious thing? The reality is obviously everyone is difficult, everyone's naughty, bad people do good things,
good people do bad things. It isn't just a case of it's impossible for a bad person to
make good films about women, you know, and victims of sexual abuse. So there's also that
addition to it. It is a very complex situation for people to, I guess, understand.
But at the same time, like you said, the details that we can see are so egregious. And it's
so easy in this media landscape for PR and spin to just take over everything. We've seen
it time and time again with the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni case. We just get swept into
directions and it's so hard to just stand up and push against it. But that is
kind of the nature of internet culture at the minute, I think. And also I love Angelina Jolie.
I've been obsessed with her since forever. I think she's one of the most interesting and intelligent,
amazing women and she's obviously so strong and she's always doing just incredible work.
But I wonder if in the eyes of a lot of people, she's not a perfect victim because she had all of that controversy when she was younger. And, you know, if you compare as
people used to with Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie, again, it was like sort of like the
angel and the devil, the dark girl and the light. And then Brad Pitt again was seen as
this sort of golden boy and Angelina was this, you know, kooky knife playing, tattooed, blood
drinking, snogging her brother, whatever
else she got up to, woman. And I wonder if that plays a part of it. And maybe because she seems
in the eyes of the public unscathed, you know, she's doing this incredible work, she looks
beautiful. Maybe people find it again hard to square because they're like, what is the fallout
from this? Because she's, they're doing it very privately, as you said, Beth. But it makes me also
think of like, for example, I would never go to a Chris Brown concert and I find
it really shocking when people do. And maybe that's what you said, Ritira. It's like, there's
not really anything to action in this. It's like, I do feel a bit. I also often wonder,
part of my thing around it is like, I see stuff about Brad Pitt and I'm kind of looking
around like, does no one else know? because Why is everyone just not talking about it? So then I just don't really know I'm like, okay
And I don't really do anything was when there's like an actionable thing eg. Lots of people are going to Chris Brown
I feel really outraged by it, but this whole thing just seems very like passive and
I don't really know
What to say or what to do? I don't know. I find it very odd
I definitely a hundred percent obviously believe Angelina Jolie, but I don't really know what my place is in this
conversation.
Yeah, I feel like the only actual thing here is like en masse, like just a dismantling
of celebrity culture, which just feels a little bit out of reach, but it's like there's so
much sycophancy from like the journalists that are currently writing completely hero-worshipping
pieces about him, knowing exactly what we know because they're journalists. It got me thinking, I
don't for a second miss the kind of heat magazine catty tabloid of the noughties at all, like
sexist racists did so much harm. But there's something in like, there was a time when we
understood celebrities as something other than deities and other than upper-loved faves
and superhuman untouchable. And I do think their power has
increased and is continuing to increase to the point where you can sort of do anything
you want when you reach a certain level of fame, as long as you have those accoutrements
of attractiveness, money, public opinion, or decades of good favour. And I don't think
we should go back into zooming in on women's toes and calling female celebrities like ugly hags, but there's something, I do crave the
collapse of celebrity culture that currently goes all the way from like hero worshipping
stands to trained journalists doing the work of PRs for no good reason. And I just, especially
for someone who has been accused of those things. And I think that's not an easy answer, but there has to be a give at some point. This surely has to reach its saturation point,
its tipping point at some point. It can't just be like, oh, you can do crime. Okay.
Yep. Actually, you are quite good looking. You've been famous. Crime is legal. That's
completely batshit.
Maybe it is also that there is just a sense of helplessness and hopelessness when it comes
to violence against women because the thing I keep pointing to is like a cancellation,
but actually like there should be legal massive repercussions to committing violence against
women.
But I kind of even have been forgetting about that in this conversation because so infrequently do we actually see
anything come of it. And I think that's what maybe creates like a tiredness because it's
like, what are we supposed to do? It's like an exhaustion where constantly you're just
finding out that these people who are hero worshipped are violent, cruel, misogynistic,
and then they just carry on working. So I think there is a point where
people don't care, but I think on behalf of women, there's also a point where it's like,
what are we supposed to do? They're just going to carry on being more and more successful.
And I think that's a real, there's just a real exhaustion, I think, where it's like,
okay, we've heard this story time and time again. Is anything going to change? Evidently,
no. And we're seeing it with the P. Diddy trial
and there's so many names that we could put forward now.
And I have seen a lot of pieces as well about, you know,
did me too do any good in the end?
You know, what is, where are we?
It doesn't feel like we've come on very far at all.
Thank you so much for listening this week.
Also, have you listened to our latest Everything In conversation episode? It's all about
celebrities suddenly spilling the beans on their surgeries and whether this is helpful
or harmful.
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