If I Speak - 115: Help! My partner has been hiding huge debts from me

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

* Come to see us at Crossed Wires in Sheffield on 4th July! https://crossedwires.live * Ash talks to Moya about falling birth rates and the ‘crisis of association’ that’s stopping people from connecting with each other. It’s a big theory that touches on trust issues, getting offline and the coming backlash. Plus: a dilemma about financial infidelity. (Sorry about the banging. It’s builders outside Ash’s window.) Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

So you might feel that you've had more than enough of us for one summer, but just in case you are a thirsty, thirsty little piggy with your snout at the content trough, why not join us at Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield on July 4th? You can get tickets at crossedwires. Live and there are going to be other live podcasters there as well. So just in case you want to add to your yapping diet, as well as if I speak, they'll be Blind Boy. There'll be bold politics with Zach Polanski and many more to boot. So go to crossed wires dot live and grab your tickets there.

Was that some sipping ASMR for the gang? I thought the gang would like to hear me sip, but my second sip wasn't as good as the first. It was like, the first was and the second was like, Zoidberg style. Whoa, lo, lo, lo, lo, lo, lo. Um, hello and welcome to a podcast for people who are currently underwater, I guess.

I'm Ash Sarker. I'm actually very much on dry land and you are. I'm Moiloh The Maclean. I'm also on dry land. There's a lot of sea-related disasters at the moment, so I'm staying away. What do you mean sea-related disasters? Did you not see about those divers in the Maldives? You're all drowned.

Yes. Yeah. It's funny. Every time there's a disaster, because we have social media, you get a thousand and one sort of like comments and analysis of like, I would never

do this and I've been diving for 10, 20,000 years. On the flip site, even, like there's two tragedies actually that happen that's C related recently, which is the divers and then the three women who've killed in Brighton. And because news cycles are so fast moving without news

and because what news reporters do now is they report a line of news and they'll put another line of news and I've got another line of news when there's not been really any updates. People are so... We need to fill in the gap so badly and we're so desperate for like the ending

for the answer for the resolution that the conspiracy comes in instead. So there's all manner of conspiracies that are going around about both these drowning related tragedies and what could have gone on. And those conspiracies will last way longer than the actual explanations, unfortunately.

I think you're right. to do with the speed of the new cycle, the speed of the social media, like, reaction cycle. Like, investigations take time. Like, investigations take time and speculation's really quick. And I think that there is, there's obviously some really legitimate critiques of the police and the criminal justice system. But I also think those critiques are sometimes invoked to give moral legitimacy to what is just, like, rubber necking and gawking and speculating. and something which is like quite callous. Like you're sort of layering this over it to be like,

oh no, it comes with this really good political reason. It's like, you are also just like speculating over the deaths of real people who you don't know. Yeah. Which is something which like definitely bothers me. I also think that there is a thing of like people forget. And it's really easy to forget that a load of stuff on the internet is just made up. Like don't have a reaction to this thing, which has been generated by a chatbot, or someone

who was like desperate for attention and for attention and engagement. Like I saw it, which was an apparently like a long Reddit post about someone saying that they got ID'd to buy tampons in Australia. And I saw a bunch of people sort of reacting to it being like, this is so terrible. And I was like, I just think that's made up. I just think that's entirely made up. So many, am I the athletes? or relationships posts on Reddit.

It's just made up. They're just made up, guys. They're not real. Some bored teenagers invented them. This is satirized very well in, what's his name? That Tony Tallahameh. Rejection. There's a short story, interlocking short stories called rejection.

And he satirizes the unreliability of internet-based narrators very well. And the sort of like reactive. outrage cycle really well. It gets funnier and funnier. Really good book. Highly recommend. Do you want to make some stuff up, i.e. questions for me. Yes. I've already made them up.

So I've come with them an oven-ready deal for you. I've not heard that for so long. PTSD, you're allowed a long walk. Okay. The backstop. What about the backstop? This is, okay, this is the 73 questions. Questions minus 70 because we don't have time for all that nonsense and dilly dallying.

So, Ash, first question. Plain, train or automobile? Again, I can't remember fast this. I probably have. Oh, train. Train, train, train. Love train. Any particular line in Britain?

Yes. I love the line that goes along when you go past Plymouth and you're sort of like heading towards Cornwall and there's a bit which is just like right up against the sea and it's very, very dreamlike. I think I know which bit you're talking about and is it on a great Western railway line? Yes, yes it is. I do know, I do know. Love.

I want to go down to, I haven't been down to Cornwall area for like an actual holiday or break for ages. But I'm told Cornwall is absolutely overrun. I know you don't like it anyway due to the racism situation. But I'm told it's overrun. So if listeners know anything about Cornwall, is it worth going on a break or should I switch to the lesser known Dorset or even Devon? Question. Next question, Ash.

How have you found the return to work after burnout? Ooh. I would say a mix. So I've come back with loads of energy. and a desire to like hit some stuff really hard and attack some seemingly intractable problems and make them tractable. And so that's a good thing.

The bad thing is that obviously you come back in and there are structures still the same and you've come back with a perspective that some of these structures need to change but that is like one of the hardest thing to do because it requires like, planning and forethought and buy-in and like everyone getting together and having a bit of a strategic confab which is really hard to make time for because you know it's media and you're

firefighting all the time so that's the bit where I'm like ooh okay um I know this stuff needs to change but like I don't want to do it move fast and break things but I also don't want to do it move slow it never happen um so like how to find that like middle place and then the third thing is just, it's actually less about work and it's more about, like, or like my job and it's more about work in general and like it's changed relationship to the home. So now because my housemate, you know, it was like kind of running the green campaign out of our house. It's sort of, we've always been a very political household. We always talk about politics together, but it sort of means that work and political life is so threaded through the rhythm of our home life at the moment

that I think all of us need a bit of a break from it and like all of us need to come back and be like okay how do we make home home again how do you do that I don't know I don't know I'm going to insist on getting rid of the many many green leaflets and placards I'm like no let's get that out I think maybe we could have some better norms around the use of communal space. All of us work in the communal space because it's less lonely, but then it makes kitchen and living room and, you know, dining table or make meetings-y, like everyone's having their remote meetings there. So maybe we could be a bit more disciplined on that.

What do you think? How do you make home home again? Well, this is also a thing I'm thinking about a lot because it's like I would love to have a small, creative office. Basically, I was reading Lena Dunham's fame sick and she was talking about how in the early days she was in an office with a load of other people and I guess it's a co-working space.

But it seems like, because obviously office space costs so much on co-working is so clinical, it'd be really good to have just a little building of co-working in the same sort of industries, crossover, where you have a little meeting that is cheap rates and subsidised, but maybe that's a stupid dream.

In terms of making home home, I keep my work in my bedroom. I don't do meetings in, if I'm working from home, I don't do meetings in the living room. My housema does living rooms in her room as well. She sometimes works in the kitchen. But I think there's a desire not to bring it into the communal space. It's what I would say.

Yeah. I mean, it's sort of, you know, it's like a, I was thinking about this, which is the fact that we got this house together and the kitchen table is really big. I'm not saying that and if it wasn't for that kitchen table, the Herringay Green campaign would never happen. But so many of the like really key events like happened around that table, like either people meeting and then deciding that this is what they wanted to do,

a lot of the strategic work, a lot of the meetings. And so I don't want that to be, you know, completely locked off for people. Because I do see that like where the left is strong, it's because people have had the space to do it and like homes are a really big part of it. Like, you know, when you think about the, you know, Perry Anderson and Tarek Ali and all of them lots. Like, how are they able to do so much? It's like, oh, they all have massive houses in Hampstead.

Like, that's why. Like, you can run loads of shit out of that. So it's not saying that that has to be, you know, a threshold to that none may pass ever again. It's just, can we do it in a time-limited way? What people yearn for just a communal office. That's what I'm getting from this. The people yearn for easy, free,

or like low subsidised space which everyone can use. The people, yes. That's what I'm getting. Right, last question. What is the most random but pleasing interaction you've had in the last two weeks? Random but pleasing. Hmm. I can't remember.

It's not that I haven't had any. I just can't remember them. The thing is, is that I've got two. Okay, I'll tell you what my technique for, at random interactions is. Nails for women, football for men. It's very, very gendered. But it always works.

It always, always works. What do you do for they-themes? What are they into? Carpentry, woodworking. Crafts. Arts and crafts. Arts and crafts. Dawson Superstore? Did you have fun at Dawston Superstore last night?

I know you went there. They're they, no, they, them's are not all a Dolston superstore. The envies are off at the cooler underground parties. They're like playbody and stuff, you know? But look, this is, they're either the, like, knitting group or they're at, like, fold. There's no in between. You know what? You know what the most pleasing random interaction I had was?

It was a taxi driver in Norwich, um, who both supported spurs and was really, really into cats. And so we just talked about how much she loved his cat. A female cat called Dave, who they named Dave before they found out that she's a she, but still that's called Dave. Does Dave go to the knitting group or does Dave go to fold? Dave goes to the fields and brings back kills. Oh my God, my mom was complaining about the baby rabbit that the cat was crunching down on in the kitchen the other day. We heard that story three times, Ash. three times

oh and I forgot to say how do you feel about Spurs' stay of execution I'm so happy I'm so so so happy you would have had to have put me on suicide watch if we got relegated I was not doing well shall we move on

let's move on to the West Ham fans commiserations right you've got I was hearing the little music in my head of do do do do do do I was waiting for it. And then I realized that doesn't have been up to the real life.

That actually gets putting it afterwards. Do, do, do what's it? How's it? I can't fucking remember how our music goes. It's like, Okay, right, let's get to your, you've got, you have got, is it, what do you call it? It's a big theory.

I think you've got a big theory. I've got a big theory. And they're rarer nowadays because we used up a lot of our big theories in the early days. And it's actually, um, not that easy to keep producing big theories all the time. Spaffed them up the wall. Unless you have lots of spare time to think and you're a philosopher.

So this is a rare big theory. So this is a rare big theory and it has come from me reading the financial times at a weekend. So I've been thinking a lot recently about what are the issues in which the left have a way of explaining and understanding that problem. And it's not that that way of understanding it or explaining it is wrong. It's just partial. And so you see that really strongly in the conversation around birth rates because the story that the left likes to tell is that birth rates are falling because the cost of living is just too damn high.

Childcare, mega expensive. Housing, mega expensive. Both parents need to be in paid work in order to afford having a family, etc., etc. And all of that is true, but that just isn't the whole story. And then there's a story that the right liked to tell where I actually do think there's some truth in it, where they say, well, it's feminism, that's at fault. And where I think the truth is, is that high birth rates were obviously sustained by women having very little autonomy in their lives. So, you know, if you can't have access to contraception or abortion, if, you know, having children outside of wedlock is so strongly, strongly stigmatized, if you don't have the right to say no to having more children or having sex within the context of a heterosexual relationship, if you don't have much of a life outside of that of the family, that's, you know, permissible, then, yeah, obviously you're going to have some high birth.

because of that. And I do you think that there is a, shall we say, like there is a strand of feminism. I'm not going to say who tweeted it because, I just don't want to kick off beef, but someone who very much sets themselves up as like feminist thought leader was like, women don't owe you children, end of story. And I was like, no, falling birth rates is like an important thing. No one's saying that women like should be forced into having children. But like how birth rates are a product of the kind of autonomy,

women have secured and how relationships and society and capitalism all need to change in order to have both higher birth rates and, you know, humane levels of autonomy for women. Like, that's actually really important, but I digress. So the left has a story it likes to tell, the right has a story that it likes to tell. And while there's truth in both of them, it doesn't account for why birth rates are falling everywhere. So this is from the financial, times. Until recently, ultra-low and rapidly falling birth rates were primarily a concern for rich countries, but many developing countries now have lower fertility rates than much wealthier ones. In 2023, Mexico's birth rate fell below that of the US for the first time, as subsequently

did those of Brazil, Tunisia, Iran and Sri Lanka. Low and middle income countries are now getting old before they get rich. So I've put something in the script that the audience can't see, but Moia can. It's a graph. And basically, there's a bunch of countries on that graph, and it has lines for their birth rates, and then it shows when smartphones take off. And what you can see in absolutely all of these countries

is that you have variation in birth rates, so, you know, downward trend, but then sometimes a little bit up, and then a bit down again. And then you have an absolute cliff edge after the widespread adoption of the smartphone. So this piece argues that smartphones have been like a demographic bomb. And smartphones are basically displaced in-person socialisation.

So it's not just that people are having fewer children, is that there are fewer couples. So then there are fewer children. And smartphones basically, they make it harder for people to interact in real life because our social calories we're getting from something which is digitally mediated, so we don't go out and we don't meet each other anymore. But as well as finding that smartphones have sort of absorbed the kind of social energy, which would once have been expended in person,

there's also a finding that couples who move in together are now more likely to break up than they are to have a child. So I think that that takes you back into this conversation about, you know, cost of living and also like women's autonomy. But there's also, I think, something about the way in which so many of the problems that people experience in relationships and the ones which are often problems which break people up. So sexual dysfunction, ambivalence, poor conflict resolution, unreasonable expectations, all these things. get exacerbated when one or both partner is immersed in a digital world or an online world. So you think about that kind of like ambivalence and like, I'm not really present and I don't make you feel that cared for.

Like, you know, someone who is unable to put their phone down, like, that makes it so much worse. And so this is what I'm terming a crisis of everything. You know, the decline of in-person socialisation is a crisis of everything because it's is killing our humanity. The thing which makes us human is our social self, right? Like, I think that's what makes us human. And so you're seeing this just being totally eroded by smartphones, screens, digital immersion of all kinds. And I think that it's a political crisis for the left because the right do quite well when people are atomized and hostile and

suspicious. But the left, we literally have no power without people power. So that's association, organization, solidarity and coordination. Like if we don't have those people skills, we literally have nothing. And it doesn't escape me that I am part of the problem. My job is to make content that people consume on their phones through their screens. And as much as I'm like, well, this is important because it contributes to the dissemination and the spread of left wing ideas. or it's a form of news that you can't get anywhere else. I also know that I'm contributing to a separation between left-wing ideas and the reality of, like,

left-wing people power, because it's contributing to that, like, atomisation. So what do you think about this totalising theory of everything, which is so much fucked stuff, whether it's the rise of the far right, or whether it's fall in birth rates, or whether it's the kind of hostility or lack of alignment between the genders. It's a crisis of association.

I saw a really interesting graph the other day, which was talking about the changes between people aged, I want to say 21 to 35 from 1923 to now in how they spend their leisure time. and the thing that obviously took over was social media and Netflix and these really isolation, things that you do in isolation and it changed, watching TV took over in like the 50s onwards. But the things that went down were spending time with friends, doing nothing, which I thought was really interesting,

and sort of like grouped activities, socialising with other people, and now we do these siloed activities. So I think it's not just the smartphone. I think the smartphone is the, I won't say the end, because I'm sure there's an implant in our brains coming, but the smartphone is the escalation of something that was already in process, which is the screen. And the screen and you, the relationship that you have as an individual with the screen.

And I think individualism has been boosted by these like worlds that we enter on, our own and even though we feel like we're socialising within them we really are surfing them or browsing them going on this like journey into them on our own that it's kind of even when you're you know you're watching videos at gay guy movie night or you're um i don't know watching tictox in bed was it's still an isolating experience it's not it's not as communal as you think it's still you just mainly communing with the screen in front of you um and i really think you're you're kind of onto something here. I mean, the Financial Times is on something here as well. Because I, I have this, I've had this normal relationships. All my partners have been like, could you put the phone down today?

Could you put the phone down? Um, my current boyfriend has a thing where he's like, please don't go WhatsApp when we're together because when you go on WhatsApp, you disappear into a world and you don't come back for a long time. So it takes a while. It's like, I read something years ago about what happens when you break off your work to check an email and it takes like 30 minutes to get your attention back onto the task you were doing before like the work you were doing and I think about that every time I break off to go and do WhatsApp or Instagram or Twitter or something else or I take a break from your life acclimatizing back into the like world I'm in I'm trying to reset my attention span which is a impossible but also I've isolated myself and then I'm trying to

come back and I'm really crabby. I get very crabby. I get very like why have I been disturbed from this important task? There's notifications to be read. And I can really see how I wrote about this before where I talked about avoidance of sensibility, how disappearing into this world where we can craft everything to our own, her own sensibilities, our own taste, our own preferences, and it's completely frictionless and, you know, there's endless scrolling, there's endless, things to consumers at a junk food level rather than like actually feeders and we can feel like we're really doing something. I can see why that really contributes to the decline of relationships. It's funny when we go out and we see people on their phones at the table, just like couples

sat across from each other on their phones and me and my partner did this very annoying thing. We're like, oh dear, there. But it's, it's, there where you see two couple, a couple sat together and they're on their phones and you're like, they are squandering a chance for connection for this phone and I wonder if they even realize what's going on there and like the unhappiness it was when we in Florence were sat next to like two other couples and one couple was super into each other like leaning across the table holding hands talking laughing and the other couple seemed grumpy from the moment they got there the girl like made the guy take a photo and he was being like very limp and not really saying that when he talks she was just on her phone

like going and they looked really unhappy I might be wrong they might be super duper happy but there was such a jarring difference in the way these two couples are interacting and the main focal point of that was the way they were using their phones like the main symptom of that was the way they were using their phones so i definitely think there's something here and i also think the other thing that i want to bring in before i throw it back to you is that on our phones we now are exposed to so many other worlds and options so when you're on the phone it's like you see 10,000 other lives you could be living. You're looking into a, in back in the day,

this would be like the mystical pool that shows you all these other lives that you could be doing and could be engaging in. And I think they make us more dissatisfied with our lot. And that's not to say ambition is a bad thing and that you shouldn't want more for yourselves in certain cases, but I look at my friends and myself who have, I would say, severe phone problems. I think we'll probably low-level addiction to our phones, but, like, worst phone problems are the most suggestible.

And the unhappiness and fear that we're doing, we're not doing it right, that there's other things we should be doing, that the way we're living our lives, the way we look, etc. is wrong. It's all exacerbated, sometimes caused by the phone, by the spaces we spend our phone. And if you're in a relationship or you're thinking about entering a relationship and it's just like you're on, you have this smartphone world and addiction, then I think about, you know, they're having kids, all of this.

And it's like, well, what are all these other things I have to do? do first or these are the things that I want to like go and do and I'm not going to do this, I'm going to do this instead, and I'm going to actually go and do this and do this. And it's like, there's always a wanting of the grass being greener elsewhere. And I think that plays into commitment phobia. What do you think? Well, I think this thing about expectations is really important because it's not just expectations. It's also expectations being shaped by consumer choices in which the choices that you make reflect yourself and your brand identity as a human being in some way and like the way all these things feed into each other. I was talking to

my best friend who has a baby and we were talking about, you know, weaning and sleep training and all all the stuff. And she was talking about how her friend, her friend, who are in her sort of like cohort of baby having, right? Particularly the ones where like, you know, you go to the antenatal classes together and blah, blah, blah. And that when it came to giving birth and the birth plan, if something went not according to plan and a doctor was like, okay, well, you have to do it like this now.

Or like, you know, we really recommend that you have an epidural right now, you know, right now at this point. They would become, it's obviously a period of like incredibly high anxiety. but the birth plan was not just like, here's how I want to do it. It's like, here's how I want to do it in alignment with a sort of brand identity and an idea I have of myself. And then if I deviate from that, in particular because like the doctors told me that I can't, I can't do it in the way that I plan to, that lots of people like really struggled

to accept that. So I think that it's not just consumerism, which is like, oh, we do more consumer activities. it's that the logic of consumerism, which is like these choices that you make, build up a self, that that gets integrated into everything. So even something like having children and how you raise the child.

And the thing about consumerism is that it preys on anxiety that comes from really difficult, challenging life stuff. You know, having a baby, big moment, full of anxiety, wanting to fall in love, wanting to find a connection, like huge amounts of anxiety involved in that. And I think that, you know, there's the sort of, you know, when you send a reel to a partner, a friend, like, this is us, like this is you and me.

And there's like a sweetness to it, right? It's like, oh, you know, this is how I tell you I'm thinking of you. But it's also, oh, this is how I imagine we fit into a genre of couples. Or small animals. Like we are this genre of couple. So there's this sort of like feedback loop of like being trained by these images, right? You're being trained that this is what a relationship looks like. And then you get a little dopamine boost and like a pat on the head when you go,

ah yes, I've fulfilled my training. I have resembled the dog who is jumping through the hoop. In a way which I wonder, that can't be good for us. Yeah, no, I think. But then again on the other side, we've always had. models of relationships. If we're talking specifically about relationships and sort of entertainment, so like if you think about on film, silver screen, or TV,

it's not like there hasn't always been a fictional presentation of a relationship. And I think so much of social media content on our smartphones which we access is just that it's a fictional presentation of relationship, right? Like, it's funny because we do just spend our time on ad platforms now and call it social media, but these are ad platforms. And we're being sold stuff at all points and everyone is performing. So there's a real lack of trust. I think that's something that's absolutely pervasive around smartphones,

which is, which wasn't there at the start. There was a guileness, guilelessness. And, you know, quite childlike sense of trust in the internet in its heyday when I was growing up and then everyone realized that most of it was bullshit and now there's a lack of trust that is really pervasive and that's trust in one another that's trust in someone being able to stick to their word

but then there's also weird trust in people who say the most outlandish things it's almost like the snake oil salesman have really prospered and I see that again going back to dating because it is a site that's so rich for this I see this so much with like my friends and just like contacts. There'll be people who quite obviously are not to be trusted and can't be taken out their word.

And my friends will be really like, yeah, I think he's going to do the ex-wise. No, he's not. What about his actions have said that this person is trustworthy? Why are you trusting someone who's obviously like gives it all this chat and is screaming, Blarney Magna, like Blarnie machine. And yet, someone who seems quite dependable, don't trust. You know, you're posting me like, does anyone know this, man? And I find that interesting.

Why is there, why do people who go to the extremes really flourish in a smartphone environment? That's, I guess, attention grabbing. But why do people who sort of like dependable, quiet, trustworthy, almost boring in some ways when you think about it in the entertainment value, get less short short thrift. Short thrift, short shrift. What's the fucking word? Short shrift. Short shrift, yes, that's it. So give me one second. I'm just going to close the window because there's some, there's some works going on. Oh, not some works. It probably won't, but okay. It probably won't, but okay.

Sounds better. Let's hope. So you were talking about about what, what, what is, what is it that we value in people and how is that being shaped by what reads well on social media? So it's always like certain kinds of faces read well on camera and they're not necessarily faces where you go, oh yeah, that seems super beautiful to me in real life, but it's something which really works within this particular context. I think that there is a personality equivalent to it. Or if not personality, perhaps even like presentation, because like it's also so artificial. and it's so trained by the reward system of social media that I don't think that it's just like,

oh, well, this is a personality that does well. There's also a vocal style and a way of looking and a way of holding yourself and a way of having a relationship with the camera. Do you know what I mean? Which then shapes your idea of what it means to have charisma. And I think that's something which, you know, I know that a lot was written about the Gen Z stare and how trained by, like, essentially how trained by smartphones, like Gen Z facial expressions have become, but there is some truth in that. Like, there is definitely truth in that. And I think that that also has consequences for what people think of as appealing or interesting or exciting. But I also think that that also has consequences for what people think of as appealing or interesting. But I also think that. think that there is a coming backlash to all of it. And again, you can see this on social media,

which is, you know, you see, um, you know, Christian influencers being like, gave up here, and she started going to church, found a husband within, you know, 14 days or whatever else it is. And while you have to understand that all of this is part of the same grift, like, if you can see it on social media, it is not an alternative to social media. Like, and as, and I, I put my myself in that box as well is that if you can see me advocating for a break from social media on social media, it is not a break from social media. It's not really a challenge to social media because it's all being co-opted and distributed within that machine. So when it comes to, you know, Christian influences being like, get off the internet and get into church. It's like, well, I'm seeing you on the internet. Like you've got front cam out in church. Like you're, you know, you are the problem. But I think that there was sort of an assumption that secularism and consumerist capitalism would go hand in hand. And now I actually think you're seeing that decoupled and you're seeing like a rejection of the secularism element because people do want that community. But experiences of religion and, you know, whether it's church going or going to mask or whatever else it is,

these are all now being shaped by the expectations people have through social media. Like, not even that is untouched. I think more and more about how to properly get off social media. And it does mean creating, it does mean resigning yourself to living a smaller life. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean your world will become slightly smaller. and the people you will interact with will become more immediate.

And if you wanted to create a space where you're in touch with the people across the world that you're in touch with, you'd have to write some sort of magazine or publish a newsletter. That's the reason our parents had newsletters that were printed and sent out Christmas, you know, or the facts or whatever.

But I know we say things like human beings, designed to see this many people. We weren't designed for any of this shit. Like, we were designed to gather nuts and berries and eat mammoths. We weren't designed. We keep evolving. But I don't know if I want to evolve into the sort of person that would be produced by living a life through a screen because I noticed the changes to my brain and my thinking and it really scares me and it's really slow. And it's a constant, anxious, fretting, stressful state to be in. So when I think of like the smaller life, I think a lot of people have this image in their mind at the moment

of like that smaller life, that unplugging. But they're torn between this idea of like, oh, I'll lose all this. But what you will gain might be a life that's actually sustainable. You know, like, do you actually have a relationship with this person who lives across the world who you tweet occasionally? Or is that a fallacy maintained by the fact that you, you know, occasionally message on social media?

Do you know them? do you actually have a fulfilling relationship with them? And if you do, why don't you find a way to keep in touch if you really want to lock up? It's something I'm thinking more and more. Like, how would I actually be able to remove myself from social media? And also, what would that do for me in terms of, like, creativity and career? I think it's quite telling that one of the biggest authors of the world, not that I would ever reach her heights, but totally offline.

Totally offline. Whereas another huge author has destroyed her legacy by being online. Which one? Which one are you saying? Which one are you saying is totally offline? I think of Sally Rooney. I'm thinking old runes. She's not totally offline She's quite offline

She's fairly offline But she's not Like she pops up on my Twitter Every now with like a like or two Yeah like like But she's not She's not posting up a storm She's not posting TikTok

She's not No she's not posting a storm In a way that we can see Right Like who knows what goes on On Sally Rooney's Finster But she's not totally offline

And I would sort of Suggest that There is also a way in which Her work has been disseminated in the way that it has, precisely because it speaks to something of like a digital experience or a digitally immersed experience.

But do you see what I mean? She speaks to that experience, but she doesn't have to be totally present on these platforms in order to sell that experience anymore. I think there's an in-between. And do you not think that we've had enough of that experience to speak to it

if we wanted to do stuff on it? What, in terms of if we wanted to retreat from social media entirely? Well, it's not an entire thing. It's more like... All I know, like, Lena Dunham, for example, wrote her latest book, and she was on...

She's now got her... She's unfortunately for Leon Dunham because they got... had to go on Substack to promote this. She's now got a Substack addiction. It's quite obvious. She's always posts on Substack. But she said that the things that helped her mental health

the most, unfortunately, was deleting Instagram. And what was the other thing? There was something else, but deleting Instagram was a major one. on. And she was like, it's, I resisted, and online shopping, she's quit her online shopping addiction. But I think there is something to you should reduce your presence if you really want to, to maybe like one platform and get someone else to run it for you. And it's something I think about a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. It's like any other addictive substance or any other thing that

is causing this much stress and impact on your life, we would just say, well, you need to go and sort that out, you need help with that. But with social media, we're like, oh, it's fine, we'll just mentor, we'll just moderate this thing. Can we moderate? I'm not sure a lot of us can. Well, on this thing of can we moderate, and I think this comes back to my point about

like in-person association, is that these platforms are designed to be addictive and billions and billions of dollars are poured into making sure that it is working on you on a level that you have no control over. And you as an individual are not more powerful than that. And I think I've said this on the pod before. But if I haven't, I'm saying it now,

and if I have, I'm sorry for repeating myself, is that we have a really quite successful model for helping people through behaviours that they are not in control of, right? Compulsions and addictions. And it's 12 steps. And central to any 12-step program is to recognise you're in the throes of an addiction. and to immerse yourself in a system of in-person social accountability.

Like, that's so important to how that works. It's not just, okay, well, if you think really hard, maybe you can reduce your cocaine use from, you know, fucking annihilating your septum every night to, like, just a little bit. It's like, no, like, you have to recognise that you can't moderate this thing, but we're putting you in the system of social accountability, which takes you away from it. and that forms as part of your scaffolding. Like there is no willpower alone. It has to be the social thing.

And so I think that there is no way to deal with smartphone dependency without somewhere creating a stronger culture of in-person association. And I think one of the problems is that smartphone dependency, obviously has hit in-person socialisation like a bomb. And so it's so difficult to say, all right, get off of this and into this, because there's kind of, you know, it's really weak. The sort of, I'm using the phrase social safety net to mean like a safety net of association rather than like welfare, but that social safety net has got like huge chunks ripped out of it.

Hmm. I don't have a complete answer to this, to be honest. I'm thinking about the world's smaller thing. I think that is a fear that maybe plagues people quite a lot. At least it plagues me. I might be extrapolating, but this idea of being forgotten or being left behind and because now all the world's a stage and we're meant to perform on it, I think it's, you know, it doesn't matter how many followers you have. You still perform as if you are Kim Kardashian celebrity levels,

most people do at least on their social platforms we post as if that denote someone cares about what we're posting and I think giving up that illusion is quite scary but God it might be freeing I think that I mean Naomi Klein writes about this really really well and doppelganger

which is like we create these doppelgangers of ourselves which are out there which also come under attack out there so it's not just they're stronger and prettier and more vivacious and are living idealized life, also this double comes under attack. Like it, you know, you feel that you have to protect this thing which exists outside of yourself. And it's so deeply and profoundly alienating. And so that's why I kind of keep coming back to this idea of, of, um, the way in which human desires and anxieties have been hacked. And so something which makes the problem worse comes

presenting itself as the solution. It's like, okay, everyone feels. the sort of existential anxiety of like, I will die one day and what will be known of me after I go? You know, do I really exist? Am I thought of? Like, everyone throughout human history has felt that way to some degree. And that's why it's an anxiety which is reflected in culture and in writing like since time immemorial.

Like what will be left of me? What will be known of me? What's more important for me to, live a long but unexceptional life or to be Achilles and die really, really young, but everyone all fucking know my name. Like, you know, that's the first story we have. And social media sort of says, okay, well,

we'll make all of you a celebrity in your own world. Like, you too will be concerned by PR. You too will be deeply invested in image making around the self. And it seems to address that anxiety, but it just makes it worse. So I think that, you know, you began by talking about the, it's almost like a train, and it's a train bits which have been going through stations which become more and more isolated as time goes by in terms of what the kinds of activities that people are immersing

themselves in. And I would say that part of that train is also, you know, it's powered by desires and impulses that have always been in us. It's just now the institutions that have been created are so powerful and so unaccountable that they're able to pray on us completely at their will. Do we have anything positive to end this one before we go to dilemmas? Yes. We don't have to.

We don't have to. No, but I do just think like a backlash is beginning. And, you know, I think if we let that backlash, and I think, you know, this is my, like, hobby horse so like I'm getting back on it again is that there's a whole world of things that the left has we've we drank the liberal Kool-Aid too much and we were too like oh well it's up to you and it's your choice long as you're not harming anyone blah blah blah blah like if you if you make collectivity and forms of collective obligation the sole domain of the right um like we are toast we are so so fucked um but like what the right are appealing to and like what they struggle with

because, you know, they've made everyone really paranoid and weird. I mean, we saw that at the Tommy Robinson March the other week, where a random woman was, like, kicked out of the crowd for having a lefty face. Like, they just, they can't help but turn on each other in that way. But they are speaking to and trying to address this desire for in-person association. Religion is, you know, not going away. And in part, like, young people are turning to it because they want that sort of in-person association. So we can do it and we have to do it.

We just have to be, we cannot be casual about what social media and digital immersion has done to us. And if we avoid topics like birth rates because if we go, oh, well, that's right coded. Like, the right will own that. And they will, you know, ban abortion and make it really difficult to, you know, access contraceptives and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like if we avoid whole topics, people to go, well, it's the right coded topic. you have ratified an idea I've had for a while about something which I'm not going to say on the podcast so maybe more to come in the future

shall we do some dilemmas also if you want to see us answering dilemmas in person and help out with answering dilemmas why not head to Sheffield on the weekend of the 4th of July to the Cross To Wise Podcast Festival where Ash and I will be doing a live if I speak and it goes on I think all week this festival we're on the Saturday slot which is great

we're very excited about this but you can get a full you can either get an individual ticket or you can get a full festival ticket and come and see us we are so gas to be in Sheffield I love Sheffield and I will we're going to make a weekend of it

we're going to have an absolute We're going to make a weekend of it We're going to have an absolutely bender No I joke I joke I won't be making you having a bender in Sheffield That would be bad for my image but we will have fun But yeah come see us And you can help out with answering dilemmas.

We love doing that at our shows. We get the audience to tell us what they think of the dilemmas. Which is great fun. Okay, dilemma. This is our regular scheduled segment. I'm in big trouble. And if you are in big trouble and you want us to address your dilemma, even if you just want to laugh at how bad our advice is,

go to if I speak at navaramedia.com. That's if I speak at navaromedia.com. I'm sorry if you can hear some back. banging in the background. I am currently in Barcelona. I am not in my home. And there is some kind of building work going on in the place where I'm staying. There always is.

Which has only just begun this morning. Moya, would you like to read it out? Yeah. Okay. Dear Asha Moja, I have a dilemma! About six exclamation marks. I recently learned a new term, financial infidelity.

Unfortunately, it turns out my long-term partner has been hiding a huge amount of debt from me. and now I'm questioning our relationship. We've been together for 11 years. We met at university, grew up together and have built what I thought was a really settled and beautiful life. Five years ago, we bought a little flat in London and we also have a dog together. We both work and split most of our costs 50-50.

He earns more than I do, but I've had more financial support for my family. Up until now, I would have said we have a really good relationship. Strong communication, lots of love and no reason to distrust one of us. other. But over the past few weeks, my partner revealed he's in a significant amount of debt, overdrafts, credit cards and a large personal loan. All together, it adds up to tens of thousands of pounds, and he never mentioned it to me any, he never mentioned any of it to me before. The only reason it came to light is because I

wanted to have a move how soon and he kept finding reasons not to. And it turns out, we currently wouldn't be able to get a decent mortgage together because of his financial situation. What makes this even harder is there were multiple points over the past couple of years where had he told me I could have helped him out. Instead, he carried the secret alone while we continued building a life together. I've now come up with a pragmatic solution. I'm going to buy him out of our flat so we can use the money to clear his debts and start and financially. I'm really fortunate to be in a position where I can do that. Within the next

couple of months, he'll likely be entirely in my name and he should be debt-free and back on track. But while this solves the practical problem, it doesn't solve the emotional one. How could he hide something this huge from me for so long? He's told me the overspending was tied up with drinking and compulsive shopping. Since January, he's drastically cut down his drinking and now only drinks on special occasions. He's finally admitted himself that it has a problem. I do believe he's ashamed and I do think he wants to change, but I'm deeply worried about him and our relationship.

Should I stay with someone who's been so financially irresponsible and dishonest with me? or just staying and helping out financially risk enabling to repeat the same mistakes. I can't tell whether this is something a long-term relationship can recover from. Please help. Thank you so much in advance. Ash. Ooh. So when I first read this one, I was in two minds about do you address this as a should I stay or should I go dilemma?

or do you talk about it as a how do you deal with betrayal? And I actually think it's got to be the second one because it's an 11-year relationship. Your lives are hugely entwined and hugely enmeshed. And I don't think that you can say, should I stay or should I go, as if the answer is really clear and obvious and it would be the same in every context.

I think that this is more like an infidelity than it is like anything else. because I don't think that, you know, a partner being unfaithful should always be an automatic reason to break up. But I do think that it forces a reckoning with what the relationship is. So, like, there's been an element of compulsion in his behaviour, and there's a huge amount of shame in there. And I think that there is maybe a danger that because you're so aware

and empathetic towards that shame, that maybe there's a bit where you don't get to talk about how this has made you feel. And what I'm getting from the way in which you've put this together, special one is that there is this feeling of how can I trust you to be a solid foundation on which I build my life? You know, if half of my life is you, because that's what it means to be in a couple,

and, you know, you form the ground on which I feel. stand and you are part of my like architecture of stability in my life. You know, how can I trust you after this? And I think that that is how people feel after being cheated on in a big way. So my suggestion and my practical suggestion would be maybe you guys need to be in couples therapy for this. And maybe you guys need to be in couples therapy the way a couple would after, you know, a romantic or sexual infidelity because you do have to have someone holding the space for both of you to talk about this in the language of emotions.

Like you've said you've solved the practical problem, but there is still this emotional one and it's about how can I trust you enough to rely on you? Like how can I trust you enough to depend on you? And I think that would be really hard to deal with just the two of you. What do you think, Moira? I think this is...

I think you're right about some of this stuff, but I don't actually think this is a should I say, should I go to dilemma, or just a betrayal dilemma. I think this is... I've discovered I live with an addict and I don't really understand the ramifications of that dilemma. This seems to me, from the email, from what you're saying,

that you are now uncovering that you are living with an addict. Because tens of thousands of pounds from just drinking and compulsive shopping, that is the level of the spend and the behaviour to me and the way it was hidden, that is addiction. That is an addiction of sort. I mean, you've said he's finally admitted himself there's a problem.

You're talking just about the drinking. You're not even talking about the compulsive spending. There's no sort of resolution here with the compulsive spending. And what's happened is this is fine. come to life, he hasn't been able to hide it anymore. It wasn't that he admitted it and asked for help on his own. It's that it has been forced into the light. You are solving the immediate problem, but I want you to be really prepared that this is not just going to go away. The behaviour will repeat itself unless, A, your partner is prepared to get support and help, not on his own. I really don't,

I'm sure there's people out there like, I went sober, I stopped compulsively shopping on my own. You are not the majority. Most people need a village around them to stop. You need a community because these behaviours thrive in isolation. You can stop drinking and be a dry drunk the rest of your life and it's a very unhappy life. It will find other outlets. He has not addressed why, where his addictions come from, the triggers behind this. You are discovering you don't really need.

know this person because they have this completely different life. They have these completely different behaviours you had no idea about. They have these struggles you had no idea about. There is a whole part of them that has been festering in the darkness that is only just coming to light. And the question is whether they are really prepared to do the work that it would take because you can, you could drag an addict to whatever meeting. But if they are not going of their own volition, if they're not ready to start getting help, it's not going to change things and the behaviour will repeat every time they are stressed or anxious or trying to bury the emotion that triggers it. Right? This guy makes more than you. He makes more than you, but he has this huge amount of debt. This is a significant

problem. Right now what's happening is he's trying to moderate. He's cut down his drinking and now he drinks some special occasions. I don't think that's going to cut it. I don't think that's going to cut it. I don't think that's going to cut it. Shame is not going to cut it when treating addiction as well. He's ashamed. He does want to change. That's, you know, that might be a start, but he has to really try. And at the moment, you two are struggling with it again on your own. I think you have to take this opportunity to separate your finances and to understand what you're doing is saving yourself from being financially linked to this man, because you'll have the flat on your own. But, and this sounds very cold, but it's true, you have to not enable him

because there might be a point of future where he comes to you again and says, oh, I need more money for this, I'm so sorry I've done it again. If you want to prevent that, you have to already put your lines in place. I think couples therapy is a really good thing. I think he needs to get help

for his problems and understand where they come from. He might be doing that, but if he's not, you need to seriously think about what is put in place to protect your future to and understand there might be a point when you might have to leave

because of this. Are you prepared to do that? I don't think you should yet, but I think you have to really understand what addiction is and how it behaves and what it means to be the partner of an addict. Because this is the point where your lives are going to change forever. Finding out that you're the partner of an addict, it will change your life forever and you have to understand the ramifications of that. It goes beyond this one sort of, I've discovered he's got debt. I think that that's really wise. And I think that that fits together with the other thing as well is that you are experiencing this as a betrayal and a breach of trust like an infidelity,

but what has actually happened is you've discovered that your partner is an addict. And I think with both of those things, whichever way you're looking at it, it is highly unlikely you'll be able to come up with a version of the relationship that works if it's just the two of you trying to muddle through with it. Like, he needs that kind of external scaffolding

and help for his identity. addiction and you need someone to guide you through what your emotions are and your experiences of that breach of trust and your sense of, as Moyer said, like the, you know, this reality in which there is a compulsion that he's not in control of that has implications for your life and you have to set some, you know, some firewalls in terms of the extent to which that can that can affect you. You have to protect yourself. And you've got to also protect him from himself as well.

You can't enable him because you think that's the kind of thing to do. I'm really very special one. This seems like an incredibly difficult, really difficult situation. And I think that Moyers sense that this is someone who's in the grip of an addiction and that's the problem, that the two of you have to deal with, I think is absolutely right.

It's really hard. It's really hard. I hope I'm wrong, but like, it doesn't seem like it. My classic mantra, I hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem like it. No, it is really, really hard because no one wants to think that their lives are going to change forever because of this.

And because of something out of their control, it's out of his control, it's out of your control, and that is the scariest part of addiction. but there is support out there. Just don't... The worst thing you could do is minimise what it is, is my advice to you. I think we should leave it there.

Yeah, I think so too. Ash, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. I am sweating from every orifice, but it has been a pleasure. All right, bye, special ones. Bye.