If I Speak - 74: Can your racial identity change over time?

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

*Flag your Special One status with the If I Speak Baggu bag – it’s ethically made, comes in two colours and is available now from shop.novaramedia.com* Ash has noticed that neither she nor Moya is white and urgently needs to talk about it. Has her sense of her racial identity changed over time? And where does […]

Oh, oh, me, me, me, me, ma'amie. Is it yourself from the pod? It's yourself from the pod? Is it yourself from the pod? Is it yourself from the pod? it is it is your man from the pod I'm so sorry to any Irish special ones I can't help them and we have Irish special ones as I found out this weekend which is really nice maybe we should do like a World Cup of special ones

I feel like there's enough division in the world without segregating our special ones into nations most deranged dilemma wins yeah that that one's fine we can do it like that that's how we do it and if a Bengali doesn't win it I swear to God. I swear to God. Anyway, Moia, how are you doing? How's it going? What's going on? How am I doing? That's a really, I don't really know. The planets are all over the place now. Well, as you informed me this morning, Uranus is in Gemini and I just thought it would always be

at the end of your large intestine where you'd left it, but hey, it moves. And for the first time in my life, it's in Gemini, which has opened up a different way of communicating. According to astrology. That doesn't mean anything. Guys, I'm just looking for ways to explain shifts in feeling, shifts in vibes. And unfortunately, the internet furnishes move nonsense. But I think we can all agree there's been a vibe shift. Yeah, but I think maybe my vibe shift has been like a little bit of the summer melancholys just because it's a bit cloudy. But I don't mind. I don't mind. I don't get that upset with the summer melancholys. I'm like, ah, this is just something to enjoy. You will listen to the music, which makes you

tap into the summer melancholy whereas i mean this is the difference between me and my partner which is um we've talked about this before the different ways in which we like exert weight in the relationship so for me it's the superpower of obstinacy for him it's powerful emotions so for him when he gets the summer melancholy he'll be like nothing will ever be good again like he's the kind of person if he gets a cold he's like what if i can never breathe through both nostrils ever again yeah he lives in the now that's what that means he lives in the now he's he's fully He's the most embodied motherfucker on the planet. Wait, what's your summer melancholy music?

Give me a taste. To be honest, I've been listening to a fair bit of Miles Davis. Just to... Very chic. Just to feel my feelings. I've been listening to Miles Davis. But I'm sure by the time this actually comes out,

I'm going to be effervescent again. I just don't mind. feeling a bit sad if that's what I'm feeling. I don't fight it. I'm just like, let it happen. It'll move. I love feeling sad. And I'm a Pisces.

No, I'm going to stop this. I'm going to stop this. I'm going to stop this. See, melancholy is weird for me because, you know, an Ares with a Leo rising. You're right back in the mud with me. I drag you straight back in. Lift me out of the mud by asking me some questions. How about that?

Great, because I've prepared. them. Sometimes I do these questions on the fly as this as I may have noticed, but this week I sat down and I prepared because I'm getting my life in order. Right. Question number you know, you find a £5 note on the street. What are you doing? Pocketing it. But the thing is, is that a £5 note on the street for me is money which is meant to flow through your hands So it goes in my pocket, but it will leave my pocket very quickly. And I don't know what I might spend it on. I might spend it on a sandwich.

If there is a well-timed homeless person, they might get it. If there's a well-timed coffee shop, they're going to get it. It's just, I see it as like, I'm picking it up, but it's leaving my hands equally as quickly. But I will not have a plan for it. The phrase, a well-timed homeless person has sent me to the book. Yeah. I love to be a well-timed in this person. No, but it's got to be before the coffee shop.

Otherwise, the coffee shop's getting it. I'm just being real. I'm just being real. I'm not going to pretend like my first thought is give it to someone like, you know, who is extremely deprived. That's not my first thought. But if they're there, they'll get it. They'll get it.

Okay. Right. Question number two. Nightmare Blunt rotation. Pick three people. It doesn't even have to be the worst people ever in the world. It just has to be three people that come to your mind when I say the words, nightmare blunt rotation.

Okay. In this situation, I've also taken a hit off the blunt. No, you're sitting in the room and it's out. And then these three people come in, you're like, I can't do this, I've got to leave. Oh my God, it could be basically anyone. and that's just that's just how I feel about people sometimes um they've all taken a hit with a blunt actually and they're about to pass to you and you're like listening to them talk

and you can't do it Matt Goodwin yeah Melanie Phillips and there's somebody who maybe I can't say because I have to encounter them sometimes but every time I think about them it sets my teeth on edge and when I think about them and I think about who would I throw out of a window if it could be consequence free for me legally it would be this person

just to say they don't pop up in my social life in any way they are a political opponent but sometimes I have to encounter them and I do it's it's more than just oh you're a political opponent with whom I profoundly disagree I find them incredibly incredibly snaky they have a snaky demeanour and yeah yeah if I could consequence three consequence free put them through a window I want 100% would but I don't want to say their name that's a good one I totally understand I totally understand thank you sharing who would yours be okay one is a

organizer on the left whose name I can't say one as a former romantic interest whose name I can't say and the final one would probably be Kirstam or West Streeting

I can't pick one of the two West Street would probably be more annoying I know everyone hates Kirstammer but like I can't express the depths of my disdain for his total blankness and amorality but also how boring I find him he does this really annoying little self-laugh

or we're like ha ha like that can you imagine him high just going on and on and on he's he would be really oh there's a third person a secret third option who's just a random guy that I remember meeting twice in my life

and each time being trapped in conversation and be both creeped out and bored, and he sticks in my mind as a particular, really egregious person. So I've got through. I mean, there is something about Melanie Phillips because I was trying to work it out, you know, when I'd only ever read her stuff,

do you really believe this? Do you really, really believe it? Or are you just doing that thing, which like many right-wing people do, which is like you're sort of cycling through narratives and images and you're trying to work out what sticks and what sort of stimulates the emotion of outrage best? which is like a, you know, almost scientific process of experimentation and refinement.

She really, really believes it. And so because she used to be a panelist on Morales as well, afterwards, like this was just in the sort of like before the show bit. She thinks that global warming's been made up by all the scientists and there's a conspiracy amongst all of them. And I was like, oh, you really think this. You're not just saying it because you want to, you know, undermine support and consent for a green transition.

You really, really think this. And so she sort of blinking at you behind her glasses. You're like, what the fuck? Yeah, that would be a trippy one to encounter, especially if you're about to get high. Like an evil Edna Mole, just blinking behind the glasses. Okay, I have a third question. And it's a...

I think this is a fourth question. No. Oh, is it? No, it's a third question. Sorry. It's a third question. Yeah, it's because you're taking the hit of it. blunt. Okay. Okay. This is an axis, but it's not a, there's not two-part axis. There's only two

things on it, right? And I did adopt this, borrow this from a very nice man in my past. So, thank you. It's been, it's been adopted into the wider group and I just remembered it the other day because my friend bought it. Okay. At one end of the axis, have I said this before? Have I said the words flavour pack and plumping agent to you? No. Okay, great. So there's a flavour pack. So say you had a meal like barbecue ribs and rice.

The barbecue ribs are obviously the flavour and the rice is the plumping agent. In your group, are you the flavour pack or you the plumping agent? Do you furnish and facilitate? or are you the spice? It depends. It really depends. I think if you asked me this a month or two ago, flavor pack.

Right now, I'm a plumping agent. And I think that that's good. It's good to sometimes be the spice and it's good to sometimes be the rice. I really respect the rice and I feel like I'm mostly the flavour pack Oh my God, you're 100% flavour pack Yeah, but really funny

Can't go too deep into the story because it's not really myself But someone once suggested to someone else That they were a plumping agent rather a flavour pack And it caused a huge fight Because they did not like the idea of being rice But that to me shows a disrespect of rice Because they think rice is black No, you don't know rice

Clearly you don't know rice like which ethnicity does the best rice oh that's too hard and also depends what you're talking about I mean I'm obviously very partial to rice and peas but I also love East Asian rice

but then Southeast Asian rice is it's too hard what you want me to choose between a birriari and egg fried rice what do you ask you want to choose to Joloff and rice and peas this shows how good rice is I think for me

personally number one rice has to be the Iranians because when they introduced me when they introduced me to the Tadiq which is the sort of crispy bit at the bottom which everyone fights over

that's the crack cocaine of rice but also shout out to a fragrant jasmine rice the turks i see you with your little broken vermicelli bits in the rice and i appreciate that cooking it in the stock i do that because of you my own people birriani i mean come on come on rice so good it's got to have a little pastry protector at the top come on see what we mean up plumping agent it's great to be a plumping agent plumping agent okay

shall we get on to the main meat of the matter though it's the flavor pack of the matter all right so i've got something for you and it's not a big theory and it's not an intrusive thought it is a note of curiosity because we've never spoken about this directly head on just about it because moya i don't know if you've noticed neither of us are white i mean in the winter sometimes i edge it in winter you're assimilating hard no I go a bit yellow in winter I'd say that's more well

when I'm not well the tops of my cheeks go really yellow that's how you can tell that I am sick sick um so apologies to any listeners who are now reaching for the smelling salts because you didn't know but yeah here's the bombshell neither of us are white and I was thinking about how do you talk about this

in a way which doesn't just become it pollid poll And I think that for me, the way in which you can talk about it but have it not become this really sort of essentialised fixed thing because I think that that's one of the things that Edpoll does which is that it takes a characteristic and sort of says how you're going to experience it is going to be the same across your life and also is going to be really uniform across your whole community

which is just not true. I mean, these things can be so, so contextual and particularly augmented by class. So my first question for you is, how has your sense, your experience of your racial, your ethnic identity changed over time? Obviously, I'm going to throw all these back to you, just see, no.

Yeah. That's the whole point of this. We've got to compare and contrast. And I think it'll be an interesting compare and contrast because one, I am mixed as the common parlance has it, which is hilarious, because it's just like mixed with what, human versus human. Like, okay. But my ethnicity for those who don't know is what I like to call the Commonwealth 101 mix,

which is Black-Jamaican, white British, Commonwealth 101 mix. Oh, that is Commonwealth 101. Yeah, it's like the most basic one. on but I'm very light-skinned because my dad was I don't even know if I get to be called light skin because light skin is usually when you have two parents of ethnicity whereas mixed you just get called mixed it's such an interesting divide I've noticed over the years anyway no that it's my place but I would I would say more years are lighty yeah I'm definitely light but it's like I'm people just look at me and be like mixed because

it's like I don't even qualify for light skin because I'm so light do you know what I mean Anyway, so I'm British, black Jamaican, and white British is how I would describe. No, he wasn't British, Jamaican. What the fuck am I about? Sorry, he was from Kingston. Straight from Kingston, went back to Kingston, all of that. How's my sense of identity changed over time? So I grew up, as you can probably tell, with my white family.

So I didn't grow up with a strong, and I've never grown up with a strong sense of connection to my Jamaican culture or side, which is often why I don't tend to talk about it that much, I think, or like I don't, I haven't tend to laissez-in on my mixed race identity as one of the main defining parts. It's like part of me, but I'm so disconnected from that culture, like the black Jamaican culture in particular, or just Jamaican culture at large, that it would feel fraudulent, I think. There are things that I have and things that I do

that make me feel connected to my father specifically, like my mum, it's really funny the other day, my mum was telling me about how I have all these unconscious traits from him, like the way I kiss my teeth, the way that I, like, wake up in the morning, obviously the way I look, my eyes, the way I stretch, like certain, like actual traits I have about idleness, et cetera, which makes me feel connected more to him.

But the Jamaican culture at large, I think when I started really, it's so funny, and this really shaped obviously the way that I feel about racial identity is often a social construct. I mean, it is a social construct, but like it's so contextual, how contextual it is, is I didn't fully get a mixed race identity with all the sort of cultural connotations of that and the stereotypes and sorting in the categorization that has until I moved to London because there weren't enough mixed race people around to create that identity

and it wasn't put on me and it wasn't assigned to me. And then when I came to London. Can I ask you a quick question at this point, which is, If everything else had been the same, so who you were raised by, how you were raised the cultural context, but your skin was darker and your hair texture different, do you think it would be the same or do you think you would feel more place to sort of either claim mixed identity or more of your Jamaican identity because by nature of your physical appearance, it would be part of what people assume about you? well the thing is people do always assume my mixed race like everywhere I go they just don't know where I sit everywhere I go this is one of the things

that makes me feel very validated that they can see that which is funny because I get that external validation people always like I always get where you from whereas my sibling is very she's white passing essentially and I think it's been a lot more difficult for her because she hasn't had that external validation

and feedback of people clocking that there's a mixed ethnicity in there that there's something, you know, I was on holiday in Turkey recently and a guy put it so perfectly in sort of like, it wasn't broken English, but it was in second language. I don't speak Turkish, so I ain't judging this. But he was like, oh, you're, like they were so surprised I was English because of my colouring. And they all kept thinking I was Turkish, which was also funny.

But he goes to English? Because someone else thought I was Italian and French and then he was like, oh, I could have sworn you're Turkish. He was like, but you're not just English, right? You're mixed up. And I was like, I am mixed. up you're like ever ever I go that is the that's the way people uh clock me or try and engage with me like from men on the street who are doing that annoying hissing thing where they're like

miss miss and they're trying to get talk to you so they're like honestly they're like fucking calling a cat it's so funny my favorite things to do is walk past men who are going miss miss and put my headphones in like what's you mean miss who are you fucking oliver from you know charles dickens miss get on with yourself but they'll be like where you're from where are you from oh and i'll be like guess and i'll be like oh brazil oh i don't know there's some other place and sometimes they'll be like our caribbean but rarely but they can tell so i don't even think it's a case of being dark i think if i had darker skin and kinkier hair i might feel more able to claim some of that but i think without the direct connection to jamaican culture i would still

feel a bit odd about it because it's like you know there's people out there who have ethnicities like they're from Chinese backgrounds or they're from white backgrounds and they are Jamaican because Jamaican is a mixed up culture that's the whole point of that island everyone was sort of like imported to that island over there like over different centuries for various reasons and then they get all mixed up that's the whole point of Jamaica like you get all mixed up um so it's not even the skin tone it's like the complete divorce from the culture I think I would just uh I don't know what I would do I always wish I've always wished that I had more extra tear and darker skin, which is such a weird thing to say.

And I know is like, you know, probably a bit of, there's probably a bit of, like, I don't think fetishizing in there, but definitely just like a longing for even more of a visual connection to that side of myself. But I was never one of the kids who wished they were white. Like, God forbid, that would be my worst nightmare. I am so happy to be the color I am. And I've always wanted to be darker, which is, which is like, great. Like, I don't want to sound like a weird fetishizer, but that was definitely part of it.

So I really had gone on quite a bit and I need to ask you about how you're No, no, no, no, I was listening. It's a rich subject. I've got loads of to say, so I'll ask you first. How's your sense identity changed? Because you grew up in North London and that is very different.

Well, and also, I grew up just unequivocally brown. I mean, I was talking to some friends about this which is I remember being at primary school and we had the substitute teacher who was clearly fucking cracked in the head. And she arranged us by skin color on the tables one day. What?

What are the apartheid? Yeah, she wasn't way. She was a black woman. I remember this really, really well because I remember being like, which one am I? And she was like, you go on the black table. And I was like, okay, politically. Obviously, I didn't think that at the time. She was like, that woman is 80s.

That woman is pure 70s and 80s. I have no fucking idea where any of that came from. I just remember being about like six or seven years old and being like like okay guess I'll go over here um so you know I think the way in which we're having this conversation is really interesting because we're weaving between culture ethnicity and race so race is something which is like invented purely for the purposes of racism right like you know you have ways of um expressing dominance and superiors superiority before race gets invented and usually it was religion and then race has to get

invented because when you're conquering other peoples other lands and you don't want them to be able to convert into being a human being which is what converting in Christianity would do is like oh shit we need something else and this thing is going to be race and so I think that that's where you can get you know the the absurdity of you know if there's a no black, no Irish no dog sign it's not as if bengalis could be like okay well where none of these they'd be like no no no when we said black we also meant you um you know so that's how race works right it is a it is a function of racism it is made to do racism then you've got you know obviously um ethnicity ethnicity is different um it includes uh language

and geography and particular cultural practices and like all of the stuff and then you've got culture because you can be the ethnicity and not be raised in the culture. And the thing about the culture that I was raised in was that it was always really, really, really mixed. So in terms of the family itself, every single person in my family has had a marriage which is mixed either by race or religion or both, right? So like, you know, everybody. My mom and my grandma's friendships, and to refer to them as friendships are sort of wrong, right? Like, this was family, right? These were my aunties, these were my uncles.

More often than not, weren't South Asian. And more often than not, they were Caribbean, African, Irish, like, big old Irish influence. And that came from the political movements that they were a part of, anti-racist movements, trade union movements and because my grandma was separated from my grandma and because my mom was divorced you know the stigma about those things within the South Asian community was so strong that like it just meant that the experience that other South Asian people at my school would have of like going to what they were called like you know it's like the community function like you know the community functions which are usually like at a banqueting suite somewhere off the North Circular

I never went to any of them. Like, I never went to any of them. I never went to any of the mailers because it was so hostile to both divorced women and women who had mixed marriages. So my grandma was born Hindu, convert to Islam to marry my grandfather,

my mom, Muslim, married and divorced to Hindu, married a Church of England, raised atheist. So because, especially that bit of mixed marriages between Hindus and Muslims is so uncommon, was not raised in that sort of, you know, sense of like a South Asian community. You know, my grandma's closest friend, we called her Mashima, because you have home names and, you know, the government names.

So Mashima was sort of like one of the home names, and she was like, you know, a South Asian communist. And that was the one South Asian that my grandma wanted to hang out with. There was this, like, hardcore communist woman. So it's funny because, you know, people, whether they're like racists on the internet or people who think that they're being woke, kind of project all of these assumptions about what my experience of culture must have been like. And it just wasn't that at all. But also part of why they're able to do that is because I am unequivocally look South Asian. So I don't have mixed heritage in terms of my parents.

Right, both of them Bengali, just my mom, Muslim Bengali, my biological dad, Hindu Bengali. So I don't, you know, I'm just unequivocally brown. But also, like, you know, how these things like shift by context is, I think, for me fascinating. When I was in Mexico and we're in the south of Mexico in Chiapas, which is sort of closer to the border with Guatemala, there's a very, very high percentage of people who are indigenous, and indigenous culture is a lot stronger there. I was doing double takes every five seconds. I was like, I swear that's my uncle. Like, they just looked so binguali to me. It was insane. And then it went the other way as well, which is they would assume that I was indigenous, but like moved to Mexico City or something.

So rather than trying to speak Spanish to me, and my Spanish book, by the way, it's horrific. like, so, so bad. Very mal. They were trying to speak in an indigenous language to me, and I'd be, like, pointing at, like, my tall white partner being like, no, I am like him. I am a gringo. I don't understand.

And so in terms of how it's changed, I think that, like, my sense of racial identity was not very complicated growing up. Like, it just, it wasn't complicated. I didn't experience it. complicated. It was varied and nuanced, but I was just like, that's normal. Where it became, where I was experiencing it in a different way, really started when I got to uni where, one, I was encountering many more white people who had never ever grown up around people of colour. So what I was getting reflected back to me by the white people around me then was

really different from the white people I grew up with. And then the second thing is that You know, you've got your, like, you know, your ACS, you've got your, like, you know, Indian dance society, da-da-da-da-da. Like, you've got these ways in which people are sort of like expressing or experiencing their culture in ways which are quite segmented off. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It just never appealed to me or spoke to me. And that's the moment where I felt a bit like, oh, I'm in this, like, really weird in between place where there are. are lots of cultural things I have in common with white people around me, whether it's like political interests or like, you know, what kind of music or whatever, but also some

cultural elements which are really, really different. Again, actually, music. So music could be something which you had in common and also like really didn't. Our feeling of like comfort around being in like a big diversity really, really different because a lot of them are like coming from places which weren't that diverse. And that could be like really quite spiky. And then you also had the kind of like id poll moment emerging where like I'm not ashamed to say um you know because I think it was important to move through it I latched on for a little bit so I was like oh wow finally I've got a language which can uh express all the ways in which I feel like I am being treated differently by people with whom I am in the exact same social saying like I'm experiencing

this world completely differently even though I'm in the exact same social saying um and it it was important for a bit, but then it was such a hindrance, such a hindrance. And I think that this is sort of like the interesting thing about talking about race and ethnicity, which is so much of the time, you're speaking from a position of like longing for connection, like longing for connection, longing for community. And also at the same time, it's a way of thinking which can really, really inhibit connection and community and seeing other people as human beings in the same way that you're a human being because on the one hand

you can fetishize people and you can turn people who you think have got more of an authentic experience into these sort of like you know, mystical totems of something that you don't fully understand and then also on the other hand

you know from very real experiences of like racism, discrimination, prejudice and aggression can turn people into opponents when maybe they're not. Have you ever read new people by Danzi Senna?

No, I have not. Oh, I love that book. It's so funny. And it's about this very light-skinned mixed race girl and her fetishization of blackness and how she like perms her hair and then braids it and like tans herself to be darker. And it's set in like, I want to say the late 90s

or maybe the early noughties and she's all in like the berets sort of like radical sector of, I think New York. but it's a very interesting observation about culture and the way and authenticity, as you put it, and she becomes really fixated on this one girl who she thinks is very authentic. And it's just a really, I've not read anything like it and it could only ever come from someone, I think,

who has that mixed ethnicity, who can observe those gaps between worlds and also the lack that some people feel, but the weird attempt to find something that's not really, like, real or fixed about an ethnic identity. Anyway, anyway, anyway, just a recommendation of people listening. Just a little reading recommendation.

Okay, so you're talking about that. You talked about, like, finding community with people, and I know one of the things you wanted to ask was what was your experience of community growing up, but, like, I want to ask that to you as well. And also, in what ways do you feel Bengali, apart from the fact that you are Bengali? Like, what are the cultural trappings of being Bengali that you have experienced?

I mean, so, like, the first thing is that it's so much around food, it's crazy. So when I think about, like, in what ways do I experience and express my culture and my sense of, like, this is where I'm from? It's not just through what food do you cook, like, do you cook a birriani, do you cook a burita, do you cook a lamb curry? It's also about an attitude to food and hospitality because sometimes, Sometimes I've gone to white people's houses and I've left hungry. And that would just, that would never happen at my mum's house or my grandma's house to the point where, like, your food being foisted on you can feel overwhelming

and, like, there's an element of dominance to it. But that's something which is, like, really important for me is that, like, if you're in my home, you're getting fed. And, you know, the times where, like, say someone's, like, dropped by to like pick something up or drop something off and I don't have food for them like I feel like

completely racked with guilt there's and and you know these things are obviously like shared across cultures as well this is just me at the risk of doing the Simpsons bit of like if you never notice

that white people drive like this and black people drive like this at the risk of sounding like that another one was a very different attitude to fighting over the bill so my mom and my aunt

the theatre over who's going to pay at the restaurant, it begins the moment they step in. So they'll walk into the restaurant. A waitress says, oh, may I show you to your table? And my mom will like grab my aunt and go, don't listen to this old bitch. You know, she's got dementia

and if you take her money, it's a crime. Like they're starting at that level of like real extremity. And there's the, you know, sneaking off to pay and blah, blah, blah, blah. and I was really shocked because and you do that like it's not about having money like they did that when they had no fucking money because it's just it's a thing you do and it's just like very robust culture of like hospitality and so like again like you know starting at uni or something and like when I'd be like you know doing the theatre and no one would fight me on it I was like what the fuck what is going on like like the script is different like it's just it's not a shared script so I feel so bingawly when that stuff is going on and I think that there's um like a political history which is really important a political history of my grandma my great aunt who uh like fought

against the British in the 1930s big part of like the family story and how we make sense of ourselves but in terms of like community like who was my community growing up who as my community now, like, it was just really mixed. I couldn't say that I was part of a Bengali community because all of those things was so, like, I've never heard anyone talk more shit about Bengali's than my grandmother. Like, she just couldn't fucking stand.

Like, she called them, like, Bengali, middle class, vapid, shallow. Like, she couldn't stand it and she didn't want to be around it at all. So I didn't experience that kind of community growing up. But what about you? What about you and your, experiences of community? Well, obviously I went to a very rural school in the middle of the English countryside, so

all my mate's white. How many kids of colour were there at your school? None, apart for me, when I was there. I originally went back, and again, there was one in the year group that I was teaching. You locked eyes with them. I was immediately, I was like, you and I. No, there was a bit of like recognition, it was funny. Yeah, I was the only kid of colour in my year, which is crazy.

And at the time, I repressed a lot of things about school, and not because it was bad, because I don't, I don't, lots of my childhood is kind of blocked out, and I don't really know why. It was a beautiful childhood. Things come back to me. Oh, no, we also know why. People get, I actually experienced, like, a traumatic loss in your early. Yeah, but like when I was 10 and, like, when I was 10, and like, when I was, Yeah, no, but I think that like, I think that when that happens,

like your memory can get a bit like scrambled. Yeah, maybe. But if people prompt me, I can kind of go back to places, but a lot of the time there's things I just don't remember people. I don't remember all of this stuff. But because when I got to university, various things were alerting me to the fact that maybe

I was perceived as different, even though that wasn't necessarily negative but I didn't realize this until later I didn't allow myself to realize it was just like small what people would call microaggressions but at the time they didn't feel like aggressions they felt like a validation of my identity because people recognising that I was mixed race

like you know people always asked me to rap or they would give me certain bits in the songs thing or like you know I was sassy or like I'd always be pigeonholders like the brown one blah blah blah later it became something a bit more sinister I remember going through a Facebook out. And I must have blocked out a lot of this stuff because I didn't realize it. It wasn't bullying at all, but it was definitely, there was racism, but it was like this weird

good-natured racism. And well, later, much later, I went through a Facebook album and I realized I was tagged in a number plate. I must have been tagged when I was like 15. It's at the N-word. And I hadn't clocked that at all at the time. Not even clocked. Didn't, it just went over my head. And I think so, I think people used to call me that sometimes, but I don't really remember, like, much about it. and then I remember once at a party in college, I was at the party with like the cool girls and there was another mixed race girl there who I think had grown up with a black parent

and was much more secure in her identity. But I remember so distinctly one of the girls, the white girls saying, as a drinking game, let's watch this film and take a shot every time an N-word comes on the screen. Just like looking around like, what the fuck? Does anyone else hear this? And I didn't say anything.

These were all like a different group that I'd been invited to because it was a friend I'd made in like a class and it wasn't even that I thought I just had so much disdain for them for the rest of the night I was just like what the hell am I doing here but it was crazy to me

because one of the other girl was actually in that group like she was really friends with them and she was darker skin than me and the fact that this blonde girl could just say that so easily and she was trying to be cool she was one of those girls who like wrapped every word of Drake

and like really was fetishized black guys at the same time and there was I remember at college there was a couple more mixed race kids and one of them and I got into a real sort of almost competitive edge. She was really horrible to me. And then I was horrible back

because, or rather, I was just like, I don't like her and she heard. But she was really competitive with me because I think she'd been so used to being the only mixed girl and she was very like, that was identity. Whereas mine was much more about being like the loud reading girl.

I had a different identity that was more important and central to me because being mixed didn't carry that much currency where I was. And then there was this one mixed-race guy who was absolutely freshised by the whole college and all the girls wanted him, he was like the most popular guy. And it was really interesting to see the difference in the way that people were received.

And I just didn't feel like a part of that. And also, you know, I was quite gawky. Oh, at least I thought I was like gawky. I hadn't really like learned. I didn't know how to do my hair properly. I was used to type and just put in a bun the whole time and have like two strands. come down here, which I still do in a little way,

but I had them just there and everything else to scrape back. And people used to say I look like an orthodox Jewish kid because of like the way my records were just outside. I just didn't, I was trying to make myself more unobtrusive, I think, a lot of the time. And then it flipped and suddenly mixed race kids were part of the beauty standard. And I often think growing up, I think a lot of my identity is also, my racial identity has been, so connected to the beauty standard

because at the point that I was just coming of age, suddenly being a bit brown was really in. And I was the exact right type of a bit brown. And I have, you know, very Eurocentric features and, you know, curly hair that's the right type of manageable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Even though I've always wanted, as I said, I've always thought, like,

I don't know how to put this because it sounds so mental but I'm like I just don't understand the way that the desirability hierarchy is Amir Svassian puts it works because I've always just thought

people of colour like God was so gorgeous and like the darker the skin the more beautiful I think people are but that's just me that's just me that's just me

I'm sitting here I'm ready to be fetishise Moya fetishise more I'll fetishise you I honestly it's crazy to me I get a bit I presume there's some sort of like weird guilt in there

or self-loathing or something like that, I don't know but I will often look at like white men going down the street with like the most boring basic white girl. I'm like, no, no, it's mixed race men as well. I'm like, what are you doing, bro? What's in your head? What's in your head? Can you not, have you not got eyes?

Do you not have the same eyes I have? When you watch Love Island and you watch like the most beautiful women being passed over simply because they have dark skin, it is crazy to me but then I sound like one of those fucking like caping like I'm an ally vibes but it's not that I'm just like it's no but the thing is is that like it's

you know this stuff is so mental and like you know I and this is also something which I've changed in my thinking on a bit because I think like when some of this stuff happened

it was so so painful and then the solution to like feeling that kind of like humiliation or that lack of value was to go like all in on idpole. And now I can both see how fucked up it was and how bad it was, but also I can give a little bit of grace to people being young, by which I mean like, you know, in their late teens and early 20s and thinking about all the ways in which I was probably a knob in all sorts of ways because I was trying to work out like who I am and how do I relate to other people. And it's just sort of shit that

because, you know, people were raised in a racist environment that their way of, like, managing that or trying to puzzle through that process was to be, like, racist to me. Like, I can sort of hold both of, like, you know, hopefully, with the benefit of time and age, you grew out of it. But I remember, like, going out with someone and, like, he was himself mixed, you know, it wasn't white,

who was like, yeah, I'd find you prettyer if you were white. like I remember like very very close friends of mine at the time saying all sorts of stuff which was like racially it's quite fucked up including like you know like oh well I was sort of saying oh well of course I'm you know I'm more beautiful than you because I'm white and I'm blonde and then like try to sort of come around with it by being like oh but where I'm from white and blonde is boring so because you're so tan you know you would be considered more beautiful and I was like what what what like I thought we're meant to be friends are why are you

saying this to me um and then also this is something which actually gives me hope which was in my late teens early 20s many of my friends who are white who I'm still very very close friends with now and part of the fact that our friendship is so close is because we've worked this out of how to handle this thing together is that when racism would happen and I'd be really angry is that it would freak them out and so I remember being at a party and this guy said something really really racist to me which was like you know oh well you know everyone says that you think that you're white anyway and I was like what the fuck um and I like you know shoved him out my way and just was like I'm going to a different bit of this party and he just kept following me around and then I went to

the toilet and came out and he was like waiting for me and he was like oh I just want to It was like, I'm sorry that you got upset. And I was like, no, the problem isn't me being upset. The problem is you said something fucked up. And then he said something even more fucked up. And I remember he was like standing at the top of the stairs. And I was like, brother, you really need to get the fuck out my way because I'm going to push you down these stairs. And I'm not going to regret it.

And then because I said I was going to push him down the stairs, like everyone was like, oh my God, Ash. Like, you know, how could you say something so violent? Now those same people who were like reacting in a way which made my anger the problem would react really, really differently. really, really differently. And so at the time, it made me feel really isolated and it made me feel really like a hulking monster. Like I felt like so brown and so different and so much more angry and so much more disruptive than everyone else.

I just sort of felt like I don't know if I've got a place here. But I'm really glad that I actually didn't throw, one, that guy down the stairs because I'd have gone to prison. But two, I didn't throw those people who reacted poorly at that time away because I think also through those experiences and through our friendship, things probably shifted a lot. And also my reactions and my ability to articulate what I'm feeling is like really, really different. And like within my own relationships, like I am in a mixed race relationship. It is London and Yorkshire, two very different races. you know obviously he's white British and I'm you know I'm Bengali like British

Bengali how we talk about race and how he deals with my anger about some of the stuff has really really changed as well and so I you know this is something which is like you know people talk about emotional labour a lot like well why should I have to do the emotional labour it's like well that's because you're a human fucking being and like other human beings are so long and like if you're brown then being long is going to play out in an inherently racialized way and yeah you do have to be more patient and more emotionally intelligent and um you know able to stick things out that's that's the hand you got dealt and like it's not fair but but that is the reality whereas i think that like a lot of the idpole stuff would sort

of be like you can throw people away and i'm like sure you might be morally justified in doing so You might be morally justified in doing so, but I don't think you're going to have a happier life. I've got so much to say, and it's like, we don't even have time to say it all in. Like, I'm so interested in the point that you're planning to make, which is about do you think being a person of colour

confers, like, social or cultural capital? Because I think that's such a rich topic at the moment, and it really depends on who you are. And also, this thing you're saying about. Yeah, expressing anger. I know people of colour who, I would say, are very angry and very disruptive, but they also, it's been exacerbated

by the way they're treated because of their ethnicity as angry and disruptive. So they can't separate, they can't separate, like, their actual need to emotionally regulate and move through the world with that thing from the way they're also racialised.

Like, the two things are intersecting and being true at once, and it's so hard in those circumstances to, like, examine your own behaviour and think, okay, actually, what's the healthy thing for me to do versus, like, what am I basically being gaslit and racialized about? Which is, how do you even talk to someone about that? Because they are right.

They are being racialized. They are being treated as, like, you know, someone who blows up. But then they are also someone who massively blows up. Like, what do you do with that? But, yeah, I want to talk about the conferring the social cultural capital. Because we both are people who, I don't know, I want about class in relation to this. We're both people who've landed in jobs or come to jobs and they're outside the mainstream media, I would say, but they are in media and we have found you particularly success as being a face and it's come with a lot of racial abuse, it's come with a lot of mistreatment, but you've also had a lot of success in this job. And how do you think your racial identity relates to that?

I think I actually think it's more gender than race. And I'll tell you why. How producers work when they're booking for something like question time is, you know, the government representative gets, you know, the mostly way will take anyone. Same with the opposition. And then the rest is like, they're like, oh, what's the gender balance? So I think that I could be the exact same person politically in in terms of like technical ability to debate and be a man and have had maybe like five or 10% of the opportunities that I did because so much of it is them going, we need to balance this panel. So I don't think that it's race so much as gender.

where the sort of like cultural capital bit plays out is like one the way people who have more liberal politics by which I mean like not Marxist not class based politics is that you know they often sidle up to me and say things like you know white men am I right and I'm like and often it will be it will be white women saying that and I'm like like like um I always find that like kind of kind of funny um and there is this sort of thing of like by virtue of your identity characteristics and the fact that you're prominent people project a whole story onto you and i think that that projection come sometimes comes from a lack of their own politics communists don't do it marxists don't do it it's it's liberals of of all ethnicities uh

and all genders who do that kind of thing, in a way which I think is obviously beneficial in terms of like, oh, it's increased my following, but it's not the political effect that I want to have. Like, I want to turn people into anti-racists, which is different from being an idyll person. It's very, very different. These are not the same thing.

On turn people to anti-racists and communists. I don't want people to go, oh, well, Ash, as the woman of colour, you know, like, why is grandmother Willow is opening her mouth and then we have to take what she's saying as gospel book and that does happen like that does happen like and especially with people that don't know me very well and especially white people who don't know me very well is that they become so shy and they'll start apologising for themselves before they say anything and I'm like oh for fuck sake man cut to the chase like I don't need I don't need this um performed deference and actually I don't want it like

I actively don't want it but what about you how does the how does the social capital stuff work for you Um, I think the fact that I am mixed and I middle class means that I've been invited into a lot of spaces where I wouldn't. And the more that I get into them, the more I'm like, the problem of racism in this country is so deeply entrenched. Because when you're the only brownish person in the room, you have to be like, why am I the only brownish person in the room? Yeah, I do work. I'm fucking twice as good. as most of the people in here, and I've had to, you know, and I probably deserve to be more pay and all of this stuff.

But the fact I'm the only person, that means that something about me has allowed me to get into this space where others who are better than me, or would be, if they were given the opportunity, have not been allowed in this space. Why is that? One is that I'm a palatable shade of brown. Two is my class background, I would say. And I think gender comes into it too, because, you know, there's quarries to fill. Everyone's like, oh, like, you're not here as a token.

Sometimes I am really there as a token. Oh my God, yeah. I'm there as a token so much. And I, that doesn't mean when I'm not, when I'm in the room that I don't then show how good I am. But I'm very aware of why I've been invited or why I've been allowed in it. And it's like there's many companies I've worked in where I am literally the brightest person there, which is crazy.

And me and a friend who is now in a very powerful position, um, told me this day. And she is a black woman. And she was like, yeah, I'm allowed in these spaces. because of my class background and because I know how to, I can speak in the cultural register of the decision makers and speak their language essentially.

And I think that's so overlooked. Like I see people, I see people of colour who are very middle class and they only focus on their racial identity and they don't examine about why they can be in positions. Like I saw someone the other day complaining about an incident at a, like a bar and people were talking about gentrification

and like, oh, they've been gentrified. I was like, this person who is complaining is literally a very posh middle class black woman who lives in Islington and you're talking about gentrification. Do you understand who's doing the gentrifying? Like, do you understand how this works? It doesn't, your skin color doesn't cancel out

your class background completely. Like, that's not how it works. These all intersect. Do we know about intersection and intersectionality? Do you understand how that works? But here's also the thing about intersectionality, which is people treat it like, a model of like addition

so you add this to this and it equals this here's something which like is like fucking unsayables that I think that like in some ways and in middle class spaces men of color get a rougher time than women of color in certain ways and I think that like and like I've seen

it happen like I've heard I've heard you know somebody somebody who I spoke to who you know very high up in publishing

was like asked me basically I was your partner white and I was like well I can't exactly fucking say no can I and she was like oh I thought so

because like you know men of colour aren't feminists so I was like I wanted to be like well actually my white partner is a misogynist he's not but

there is a way of looking at you know particularly within these sorts of like elite middle-class spaces of like looking at men of colour as violent and patriarchal. Which means that it's easier to be accepted and do the sort of, you know, travel through the social mobility slipstream in some ways as a woman of colour. But if you've got a model of intersectionality

where you're going like, oh, well, woman plus brown equals da-da-da, you're going to miss all of that. Yeah. You also, though, I will say as a, it's not just women of color, there is also a hierarchy. There is a racial hierarchy, sorry. Dan Abbott was right. I am in elite middle class spaces all the time.

There are no black people. That is the one thing in your organization that I used to work for. There's no black people. In my organization, there's no black people. There's very few black people in the media, in a whole, in senior positions. They're usually relegated to junior positions. They are patronized. They are not trained.

They're not developed. they're just kind of left to get on with it. And then if they fail, people just like, well, it was inevitable, it was inevitable. The lack of structural support. There's like, people look at careers, you know, the financial sector accessory. If you're, if you're ever in young millennial black spaces,

you'll notice that there's like a real focus on like getting the bag up, like generational wealth. And sometimes it's because money is almost, it's not a meritocracy, but it is, and it's not colourblind either, but there is more of an ability to move straight with the money. It's like, well, the money talks.

We'll go for the money because the money talks and at least then we're getting money, like, you'll suffer this. You get into media, the insiduous nature of racism against black individuals, it's overwhelming, it will crush you. And I've seen it happen time and time and time again.

I just think, like, it's crazy to be like, there's no hierarchy race in the country. Spend a day in my industry and you will see the way that black people, are treated. The difference between there being one or two black people in a group versus being in a group where people are majority black and how other people are relating to them is like night and day. Like there are some times where I've been in a group which is majority black and I've suddenly felt not because of them but because of how people are treating them and

the intensity of the racism and the fetishization that I feel like I'm living on a different planet. I'm saying this as like a dark-skinned Muslim woman, right? It is fucking different. Like, it is different. And it is so intrusive. Yeah. In a way which is really hard to, like, I feel like when I tell the stories of like what it was like to be on a night out in like a majority white club in a group of people who are majority black one single night where people were like grabbing arses touching hair becoming violent um you know like walking up to my friend who's a professor of law being like spud me brough like you know some fucking like fred again looking

like spod me brough remember i being like excuse me you know some of the same of of it was comical, but some of it was so deeply violent and intrusive. And I think one of the things about media is that, like, media needs you to have a degree of generational wealth. It needs you to have it because of how long you have to work for no or low money. Like, it's, it's so, I hate the word classist because class, classist makes it sound like it's about, oh, do people mock your accent or not like no it's like here is this barrier like here is a barrier and like the way in which you hop over it is like can you afford to live in london uh do you have people you can live in london with for free um like all of these things and race and class they're not separate

categories like they can be when you're talking about uh like middle class individual like of colour but they're not separate things like they're really not separate things and it's it's you look at the difference in household wealth and generational wealth between black british people and white british people again like so stark so stark I haven't more to say but we've got forcibly have to move on at some point so is there anything else you want to touch on before we can do like melan in episode two at some moment episode two there's just so much to cover when it comes to these experiences because they're so nuanced

and they're so fragmented. I will say mixed race people are obsessed with being mixed race and shut the fuck up about it. Like, okay, you live in a liberal space, okay,

okay, South Asian girls with green eyes. It's like, okay, bro, we get, we really, we really do get another thing as well. Why is a white boys love moving to me so much?

Where's the rest of my beautiful brown boys? People always assume that I just date white men, it's not true. Like, I've been in I've been from day dot equal opportunities as soon as I touched on in London I was out there okay most of my boyfriends have not been

or three of them have not been white Caucasian and yet and yet so just because I work in a very white industry does not mean that I am limited to white men just a message for everyone out there who maybe just because I'm married to a white man

doesn't mean I ain't gonna get married I ain't shacking myself down But it's such a cliche. It's such cliche. Shall we move on to I'm in big trouble? Oh yeah, if you're in big trouble, you should send us an email to if I speak at Navaramedia.com. That's if I speak at Navaramedia.com with your dilemma problem.

However, what you should not do is send us an email and then retract it a few days later because I'm sorry if you send us an email, and I say this with love, guys, we might read it out. And we might read out and record it before you have retracted it. So you need to know, if you were sending us email, think about it first. Really think about it. Like, I get you want to unload. I get you want to write it out. But write it out and don't send it to us and take a day and then send it when you really know you want to.

Because we can't just keep pulling the stuff. Remember, this is a podcast. Yeah. This is a podcast. It's not the hollow of a tree where you can whisper your secrets like in that one car Y film. That's a therapist. And we are doing cod therapy. We're not even charging you for it.

So just think very carefully and long and hard. Like, feel free to write it out to us, write as a letter that you never will send. But before you actually do send it, take some time is all I would say. All right, I'll read it out because I actually want you to be the first one to give advice to this. So I think that you'll have some interesting things to say. Dear Ash and Moyer, I thought it would be interesting to have your take on the T app for women, which allows women to post photos of men and discuss them with. without them knowing. I'm worried that it will normalise harassment similar to what I experienced

at university. I was a mature student in my 20s and I believe some of the girls created a group to discuss men similar to what the T app promises to be. I was in an unfortunate situation where I was placed with a group of girls who took a disliking to me immediately and made a drunken mistake with a girl who lived in the same building. I quickly discovered the girls were spreading rumors about me and what some of them were doing crossed boundaries such as organizing fake social situations to try and gather more information for their gossip, and they were scouting through my social media to find people I've interacted with to inform them of the latest rumours. In the end, one of the girls who had a tendency to make things up

was punished, but it took months of the university denying anything was happening, and me getting in trouble myself, before they even acknowledged this was happening. I was in a new place trying to make friends, and I felt I couldn't trust anyone, and my reputation was permanently tarnished without me knowing who or what is being said. I'm now back home, but years. later, I'm still not over it and therapy doesn't seem to have solved anything. I've put on weight and my muscles have shrunk. I've stopped putting in the effort to improve myself and I don't see myself ever getting into a relationship after this. I'm worried that this could happen to other people outside of university settings with apps like T dating advice being launched and are we dating the same guy as planning on launching an app in 2026, with it currently being a network of Facebook groups. I see no reason to get myself out there or work on myself with people giving these communities legitimacy, kind of regards. there's so much going on here. There's so much going on here. I don't think your problem is the apps.

No, but I want to split into two things, right? First of all, the T apps already blown up because it was a terrible idea. I got a press release about this app a few days before it blew up and I almost thought about a screenshot and being like, wow, the worst idea in the world, but I didn't. So the T app was an app where initially it was supposed to be where women could share,

but it's the whisper network essentially, but made commodified and you could share information about if someone was on or check if someone was on the sexual offender register or the sex offender register but there was also a thing where you could check if you could share if someone had green flags or red flags

and it was for women and it was about men so it was primarily heterosexual dating platform but like dating information sharing network it got hacked by I presume loads of people 4chan apparently that's an that you guys were saying it's on the 4chan post now they're sharing all the women users making a map of all the people who've used it all the data's been leagues blah blah blah the t app and are we dating the same guy are expressions of a deep paranoia and mistrust they polarise gender relations i think they're completely terrible relations developments in the way that we talk

about dating and dynamics and dating they are not keeping anyone safe they're keeping people scared those are two different things completely um sometimes i go and are we dating the same guy to just to check i'm still normal because i'm like what's going on here are we dating the same guy as one of the saddest things i've ever been on it's it monsters just the concept of individual man it's filled with like paranoia distrust of both the posters themselves and the people they're posting there'll be people it's all about ownership and this fear of like not getting hurt it's not about keeping people safe at all it's like people will post a man being like i've been talking to him for two days anyone recognize him any red flags i don't know what to do he hasn't like it's just

it's it's it's like a howl of pain and uh incomprehension at why dating doesn't work for the women using it and i think it is i don't even want to use the toxic it's just very very maladapted. It's not healthy. It's so maladapted and also it's so self-limiting. Like I was talking about this in a different context. I was talking about it in a political context, but it also applies here. Feeling safe and feeling empowered are often really different things. And like, there is always an element of risk to your psychological safety and to your personal safety when you're getting involved with someone else. Like, and it's frightening. But if you fixate on it, you're never going to get out, you're never going to feel safe enough. Yeah. And you will never feel safe enough. That brings us

nicely around to the person who's written in because your problem is you fixated on what you have done and you can't admit whatever you've done I don't know what a drunken mistake means I don't know whether it was you know you crossed a boundary yourself and they landed on it whether it was a misunderstanding whatever you can't even say what it was and I think what's happened is your guilt about that has festered and turned into self-victimization what those girls have done was seemingly disproportionate they reacted to hysterically, all of that, I don't know. I don't even know the details of the instance.

I can't actually say that for sure, but it sounds like from your telling, that's it. You are letting them control the rest of your life. You are victimizing yourself to a degree that is blaming them for everything. My muscles have shrunk. I've put on weight. I don't see myself ever getting a relationship after this.

I don't see no reason to put myself out there or work on myself with people giving these communities legitimacy. This has nothing to do with the community. This has everything to do with you. you know I think you need to admit whatever you did and really look at it

and then forgive yourself to be brutally honest because this is all about not being able to admit something and not being able to forgive yourself I can't say whether those people should forgive you I don't know what happened you call it a drunk of mistake

again I don't know what happened because you won't talk about it to yourself but you are blaming these women and the trauma of being on the end of this for you know the direction of your life since no you make these choices you have to own your direction in life and i'm saying this with like tough love because you're not around these people anymore you feel like you can't trust someone your reputation is permanently challenged i get that

i get the paranoia but no one else is going to deliver you that trust you have to build it back up yourself no one else is going to be able to pull you out of this hole you have to build it back up yourself you have to choose to want to move on i'm afraid right now so special one you are drinking poison and hoping someone else will die and like moya said i've got no idea what happened here right what you call a drunken mistake feels like it could be anything from insensitivity uh misunderstanding an unwelcome pass across boundary something more serious i've got no idea. And, you know, what you seem to be describing is, is some, a group of girls who sort of took up a crusade as their own and added to whatever, whatever it was that happened,

narratives of their own, which were, which were overblown or disproportionate or untrue. And I can really see how traumatic that is. I have had close friends who've been in situations like that. And I've seen up close how wounding it can be. I mean, any form of social shaming and sort of ritualized humiliation and, you know, being at the center of the circle of pointed fingers is, you know, is traumatizing and really difficult. But right now your way of dealing with it is to sort of tank your own life and blame it on these other people. You know, if you reach the end of what I hope is a very, very long life and you look back on it and you see nothing but unfulfillment and you go, oh, you know, but it's really these girls' fault,

what do you think happens? Nothing. They don't know. I've got no idea what the afterlife is like, but I don't think they get punished for it. Like, it's just you. Like, you've got one life and the only person it belongs to is you. So I agree with Moyer. I think that part of the fixation and the resentment with these girls is coming from a certain lack of acceptance, either a lack of acceptance over what it was you did,

you know a lack of ability sort of accept that and forgive yourself and to sort of really think about like all right well how have I changed how am I a different person rather than it being like a drunken mistake where I was like well my judgment was just bad that one time is going okay but how am I a different person now right how am I a different person now not just because those exact circumstances aren't my circumstances right now but how would I behave differently if the circumstances were the same right that's that's an important part of of being able to accept yourself is to be able to think of really about the ways in which you're different. Also accepting that things happened which were outside of your control, which was this shaming,

and it happened. You can't rewrite the story. You can't go back and wish it away. It's done. Kulas, it's done. You only have control over your present and your future. You have absolutely there is no purpose on fixating and ruminating and gnashing your teeth about it because you can't change it like it's done it's a part of your past it's a part of your experience and the last thing is you know on this show we talk a lot about how Silicon Valley has taken some of our deepest darkest fears and desires whether it's a desire for safety fears of being hurt fears of dying alone own desire for connection and created apps which bring out the worst in in us right

Instagram brings out the worst in us in so many ways you know the dating apps we've talked about this before like the way in which is gamified and marketized and you know makes people very shallow you know this app like the T app or like you know are we dating the same guy like again I really God knows like I know what it's like to be hurt and I know what it's like to be misled and I know what it's like to be trampled on. But there is no solution to feeling vulnerable. Like, you know, dating is about feeling vulnerable. And these, these apps bring out the worst in people. But there is an irony in that the paranoia which is driving people to the apps is also, I think, driving you special one. Because of the fact that these apps exist, you're now

writing off the entire idea of finding a relationship. You know, the majority of people have not heard of these apps, right? Let alone use them. I have not even heard of them. And I think that the more time you're spending isolating yourself and learning about people through online discourses, the more jaded and cynical you're going to become. But people are not their online selves, right? People are not always, you know, terminally online. That's just me and Moyer. Don't take what most women are like from us we're tapped um but and so you know i think that this self-isolation is is it's the isolation that's making things worse not the apps i think in your case special one and you've got to get yourself back out there yeah i'm sorry but it's time time again we have

to learn this lesson there are people around us who can support us but no one is coming to save us but ourselves feel the rain on your skin no one else can feel it for you right to wrap this up I've been more than McLean you have been Bengali my whole life right time die

all right see you next week bye bye bye bye Thank you.