Life Uncut - Dating Younger Men, Making Anxiety Beautiful & Traveling the World Solo- Uncut with Sarah Wilson

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

Hey Lifers! How do you feel about your phone blocking your nudes? Yes, no, maybe? Are you into the consent of it? First up we unpack the new update coming to iPhones that is going to ask you whether you'd like to receive potentially explicit material! Speaking of technology, we've got two cracker accidentally unfiltereds for you today and people, step away from the phones (and chat GPT). Content warning - In this chat we speak about pregnancy loss and termination from 1 hour 20 mins. Joining us today is the incredible Sarah Wilson! Sarah is a multi-New York Times best-selling author, podcaster, international keynote speaker, philanthropist and climate change advisor. Sarah is 49 & has been single for 15 years. We chat about why she likes to date younger men, how Aussie men measure up to internationals, 'lost boy' syndrome and socially dating 'up' or 'down.' Sarah's 'I Quit Sugar' business was really successful. She sold it off in 2022 & gave everything to charity. She now lives a nomadic lifestyle with 2 suitcases of belongings and travels the world solo! Sarah lives with Hashimoto's disease and bipolar. In our chat we speak about how she manages anxiety and navigates so much uncertainty.  If you'd like to follow Sarah's podcast, writing or socials you can find everything here! If you have an accidentally unfiltered, your most embarrassing story, please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xx  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura. And I'm not in the mood. You know why?

Because it's a public holiday. It's Monday morning. This episode goes out tomorrow. And that's a fair reason to not be in the mood. You want to be homed on public holiday things. Yeah, everybody else is on holiday. Why aren't we on holiday? I don't know.

Why aren't we? I mean, I just got back from Hamilton Island. Exactly. This is true. And I've spent my whole weekend picking mandarins. So really, I should just be pleased with that. Okay, we had wildly different weekends. I had like a sex-filled, amazing, beautiful, tropical island weekend.

And then I looked on your Instagram and you were so wholesome. You were picking mandarins in the yard. The girls had the baskets. It was really cute. All right. I want to hear about your sex field weekend. Although I did give Matt a blow job. So at least I get some brownie points.

Did you? Just one. Thank you. We just high-fived. Did it for the team. You know why I'm high-fiving? Because I know. I know you don't like that.

Did it without expecting anything in return. That is a selfless act. well lauren not all heroes wear capes sometimes people just give and this weekend yeah i'm i'm like a charity worker don't put that on your cv do not and that is also not a tax write-off this year i gave four blowjobs to charity i really hope matt doesn't listen to the start of this i'm sure someone will tell him anyway i mean it was a good time okay well that was that's a great thing thank you and so we did that and then i also picked mandarins they're two separate two separate things that we did so you did it for because a lot of people don't believe it or not a

lot of people don't blow job to completion they blow job just to get in the mood for sex but you didn't do that you just you didn't get sex you didn't do anything you just just it just was a giver just gave just gave the gift and then I went to sleep and that was my gift even I'm shook by that would you do that would you keep the gift not often you're the gift that keeps on giving would you okay tell me about your weekend let's not talk about my sex truly that's probably all we need to know about it but I would love to know about Hamilton Island uh Hamilton Island is actually I was genuinely blown away I wanted to take Ben somewhere amazing but I also wanted to go somewhere that I haven't been it is so beautiful so beautiful I feel like everyone goes there and

then they're like how is this place real I was like how have I not been here before how have I made 35 years of my life it was a two hour flight and we were in heaven I think in Australia we get into this groove of we grew up here like australia is such a beautiful place we grew up on the beaches we're used to nice weather and we have great food and we have so many amazing landscapes around australia but you get really used to it and i think there's a level of just not taking it for granted but maybe not being as blown away as other people but taking ben there now ben's from switzerland but if you haven't been to switzerland there's no oceans there's nothing like that it's all mountains just cows mountains and chaos it's just green grass and cows so seeing ben's reaction

to it made me also it made me so happy but it made me realize how incredible it was because he's like this is actually he's like i cannot believe places like this exist oh yeah so nice and we went out snorkeling and now ben's not a snorkeler we got a noodle we shared the noodle we held hands and snorkeled the great barrier reef and it was the cutest thing we were like little sea otters floating down the barrier reef together holding hands I suggested it because the boats drop you a long way away and then you will drift with the current for ages they're like we're going to drop you here we're going to drive the boat down a long way and you float down so I said to him why don't we just get the noodle and cruise so there's no rush you don't have to think about

it and it was actually amazing we just cruised the barrier reef he saw so much he hadn't seen like the fish there it was just incredible and seeing him so blown away and look I really wanted to do something very special and i wanted to go all out so i look cost me an arm and a leg but i got a helicopter flight and he's never been in a helicopter and it took us to this private beach where you sit down and you get a blanket out and you have champagne and it was it even blew me away i was impressed by me i was i was like fucking high five myself in the back i was like you nailed this britney and he got out he was like babe how the fuck am i supposed to ever top this he's like you've ruined it. How am I ever going to propose? How am I going to do anything? Like I can't beat

this. And I was like, babe, it's not about competition, but competition is healthy. You peaked too soon. You peaked on a non-occasion. That's the problem. It's not a birthday. It's not a Christmas. It's not like a marked special occasion. It was just a holiday. So now you fucked up for yourself and for him. Well, I almost thought about dropping a knee. I was like, should I just, I've just nailed it. Should I just do it? Should I just drop the knee? But it wouldn't have landed. He would have said no. And also watching him with the wildlife was the best. We're walking along the beach or romantic we looked into the forest and he's like can you just imagine how many monkeys are in there living their best life i'm gonna say there are no monkeys in their best

life he thinks there are monkeys here it was it was really cute but i guess he's never been to this side of the world i just want to circle back for a second what do you think ben would say if you were to drop a knee like if you were to this holiday if you were like do you know what fuck it i'm gonna take matters into my own hands because i don't i mean why is it that we always have to wait for the guy to propose in heterosexual relationships if you were to do it what do you think he would say heaps of women do actually propose you're a woman out there and you have proposed to your partner I would love to know the reason why you decided to do it okay so I was like oh my god this moment is so beautiful so I actually dropped a knee I put a knee down and I

looked at as a joke I looked at him and he was like get up and I was like okay I got up and I was like what would you do if I had proposed today like later that night I was like what would you have done and he's like i would have told you to get up but he would have said no because brutal oh and i said but babe what if there are people around watching he's like well i would have whispered to you i would have said yes and i would have gone this does not count i'm just doing not to embarrass you but for him he's like he'll be the one that does it so traditional so boring 100 well you guys got to meet ben on the last episode on thursday's ask uncut we had like an interview with him at the start of it it was delightful we've had so many lovely people reach out saying

how nice he seems he seems so nice he is really nice he's a good actor he's he played it up on that no he's a goodie but also if you want to hear more from ben we have him joining us on thursday's episode of ask uncut where he's going to be answering some listener questions so if you have some specific questions for him or if you have a question which you would like a man's perspective on a man who thinks that we have monkeys in the wild here in queensland it may not be advice that you can actually use but look it'll be a good laugh okay i want you guys i'm gonna i'm gonna put this video up so you guys know what i'm talking about that you're listening at home but laurie and producer keisha we're at my house recording this right now okay so i want to

tell you this live we were speaking last week about how ben saw a spider in my house and how he was just absolutely shitting himself he's like babe spider i want you guys to turn around now because i can see the spider he was talking about there's a fuck off there is a spider in the corner of our lounge room now please look can you even see that from here that is the spider that he was scared about i'm i will film this and put this on instagram for you guys it's about the size of a grain of rice i reckon it's not even a five cent piece no it's not it's a grain of rice that would be the length of a grain of rice yep and i said i'm gonna leave that there because that'll get all the bugs and stuff and he's like nah man that has family somewhere and i'm like no he doesn't

he's just a little he's a tiny little house i don't think spiders are herd animals okay let's get into what today's episode is about this was recorded a couple of weeks ago like maybe a week and a half ago when we were in the thick of dancing with the stars i was off doing the cha-cha But Britt and Keisha got to interview Sarah Wilson, who is the woman behind the brand I Quit Sugar. And it is truly such an incredible chat. And one of the things I love the most about it, and it is leaning into this like relationships and dating side,

is that she is somebody who enjoys dating younger men, which I think really goes against the grain of what society says is acceptable. I think when it comes to age differences, often we say, oh, it's okay for men to date younger women, but then it's also sometimes looked upon as a bit questionable when an older woman dates very young men? The chat with Sarah is, it's up there with one of my favorite chats. She's one of the favorite women I've spoken to. And that's for a multitude of reasons. She's not just the person behind I Quit Sugar. She's a podcaster. She's multiple

books. She's writing a book at the moment. She's a keynote speaker, a philanthropist. She is such a huge activist for climate change, but she's also incredibly funny. And we did speak to her a lot about dating, but not necessarily just younger men, which she does love and she's happy to tell you about, but older men too. The same week that we spoke to her, she had just moved to France and we will talk about that, but she had dates lined up every night ranging from 25 to 70 years old. And I find that so interesting because she's just interested in the person and for whatever reason that might bring. And I'm sure a lot of the young men don't bring a lot of interesting chats. I think the young men probably bring other stuff. She also spoke

about dating international men in comparison to Australian men. She spoke about this thing called lost boy syndrome and we spoke about socially dating up or down and that's kind of a status level that was a really interesting part of it if you're someone who struggles with anxiety or even if you have someone who is close to you maybe you work with them or maybe they're a close friend or a partner who struggles with anxiety Sarah has a whole book called first we make the beast beautiful and it's about her experiences with anxiety and she has this really quite unique perspective on I think in society we look at anxiety as something that we need to manage something that we need to struggle with and battle through and medicate and kind of suppress

where she has this quite interesting perspective of actually people in history that have suffered with conditions like this have been some of the most creative and innovative people and so instead of suppressing it we need to learn how to make it beautiful and how to kind of work it into our lives to make it work with us. Sarah is someone who has bipolar and anxiety disorder as well as Hashimoto's and that's kind of how the whole I quit sugar thing came about. Well before we get into that there was something else I wanted to bring up. This is an update that's happening on the iOS 17 which is like the next Apple update. Now Apple is trying to cock block you all but maybe it's a good thing. Basically they're bringing out this type of AI cock blocker.

Like a censor. Like a dick pic blocker. It's not an AI cock blocker. They're not going to run to your date and be like no no deal no so if somebody tries to send you a dick pic solicited or unsolicited it'll come up with before it sends you before you receive the image there's going to be some sort of like wall that pops up that says are you sure you want to be receiving this dick pic and then you say yes no and then you can like opt in as to whether the dick pic is one that you can send to or not i think it's titty pics too and like vagina yeah we're saying dick pics but like subjectively we think yeah subjective yeah it's not we haven't done a study but i think that's what it is but it's the idea of yeah unsolicited nudes it will now say do you want to receive this

which it's like you know I think if you're sexting and you're masturbating and it's a bit of a mood killer when there's a tick yes no maybe to proceed like to proceed with caution I reckon I'd be I'd be like yes I love that you're asking for my consent okay I think that this is a brilliant idea because we have all I mean I shouldn't say we have all I think most of us have received an unsolicited dick pic at one point or another of course i literally got one three days ago i get them in my dms all the time from who strangers instagram dms and i can tell what it's going to be because you know when there's a picture that comes up that's like blurry but you can almost make the outline out you know when instagram because it senses it it senses if it's material

oh like from a person who hasn't messaged you before yes yeah in my dm request just a stranger sporadically it'll happen and only happened a couple of days ago and it was i could tell what it was through the screen and I didn't click on that one but two, three weeks ago I got a different one and it was a big, giant, angry penis. I can honestly say that since I have started posting mum content, no one has sent me a picture of their dick. You can't watch yourself.

Not even Matt, not even my husband has sent me a photo of his penis since becoming a mum, which look, I think that that's offensive. I think I'm still fuckable. someone send the woman a dick pic someone that's what she's saying why don't I get the dick pic yeah someone will send you one no they won't please don't look please don't okay I shouldn't say that I think everybody has experienced it but I do think that if you have been online dating in say the past 10 years or 15 years how long online dating's been around if you've been proactive on the apps there is a good chance that you have received an unsolicited nude whether it

be and we shouldn't just say dick pics obviously it happens on both sides of the coin I'm sure it happens just as much on platforms such as Grindr if not more than what it does on some of the more sort of heterosexually skewed platforms but I guess the thing with this is is that when we were younger or when it would happen it was almost as though and it's absolutely not the way it should be I know it was offensive but I do also remember just being like oh like fuck off and block you know the onus was always on you the person receiving it to protect yourself to block yourself from that person or to tell them that you know you don't want that whatever it was but I do think it's interesting that this new change will mean that the dynamic will shift because somebody who

is on that potential receiving and someone who's going to be the victim of a dick pic which is what they are can block that before it even is going to happen but as you said Britt it does create the situation where when you are wanting something and you are having a sexy moment with your partner or with someone that you're flirting with it does put a little bit of a dampener on the whole moment where you're like yes I would like to receive a nude do you just do it once and then you're like yes i only want to receive nudes from this person no or is it every time but imagine that you're at your climax and you get that it's a mood killer for most people for keisha just that was the consent button comes in she's like i mean for people in

long distance relationships i wonder if it's like yes i approve always from this person but what i'm more interested in is does it send the person a notification this person declined your nudes so don't send them again I don't reckon it will I reckon it will just not deliver the content I think it absolutely should it should be like hey just letting you know like because then you don't have to do your own dirty work right like people find it uncomfortable to say like I didn't like that I don't want this or they do the block and delete whatever it is it like almost makes it easier for people who are conflict avoidant they just have to reject the nude and then that person gets a little notification that pops up saying nude rejected I saw something kind of related to

this the other day that was the most brilliant thing i've ever seen come out of reddit someone said we need an app called cancel plans or cancellation so basically you get the app and you put your plans in that you have with someone else let's say hypothetically laura you and i have plans for dinner tomorrow night we put the plans in and i can click i want to cancel and if you also click i want to cancel we both get a notification confetti goes off it's amazing plans are cancelled if you don't click cancel plans go on and you never know that I wanted to cancel plans it only activates if both of this app doesn't exist yet but it needs to so that if we both want to cancel plans we don't have to have the awkward conversation this is a terrible idea

it's gonna make people so we're never gonna turn up we're never gonna leave the fucking house because somebody do you know what we need accountability we need those friends who make us do things because the problem is is that everybody has the feeling at one point or another oh I can't be bothered I can't be bothered and then you get bothered and you get dressed and you get out and you have a great fucking time and the problem is that we all had that moment where we go I can't be bothered to go to dinner tonight is there a joy more pure than when someone cancels plans and you didn't want to go but then you don't know that if you went you wouldn't have had the time of your life yeah and like your life is not going to change or get better by sitting

in your house watching 400 episodes of whatever it is that you don't know it's why it used to be so good i remember when you'd finish school you'd ride your bikes right because we didn't have phones then because that's just how old we are we used to ride your bikes and you used to know that all the friends would meet up on the corner after school so you had to go even if you went to say you couldn't go you'd be like mom dad if your mom didn't let you you'd be like i have to just go and at least tell them i'm not going so you'd get to ride your bike to the corner and say guys i'm not allowed to play today and then you'd ride home i want to be leonardo dicaprio in wolf of wall street with the money fanning going take my money for this app i would pay so much you would

never do anything you wouldn't you'd put your audio on you would sit in front of your tv and you'd put your audio on and you would never leave no keisha would just be staying at home accepting and rejecting news i think it's great the only thing about the sending nudes thing that this has raised a question in my brain is have i ever sent an unsolicited nude hundy like you 100% would have maybe unexpected but i don't know whether they've ever been not one time you don't on instagram how if you've sent a message to a couple of people it comes up at the top with like send to these five people every now and then i'd be like you know what send it welcome everybody has received one that they didn't want how many of you have sent one not realizing that it's one

that that person probably didn't want to receive because you don't know well that's just it right like i would honestly sit here and say i don't think that i have ever sent a nude that i didn't person wasn't happy to receive, but I've definitely sent nudes that they didn't ask for at the time because like the conversation was heating up. I didn't say, Hey, would you like me to send you a nude? I just sent one. And then obviously the conversation progressed, but I wonder if in that moment they were like, I want this, or they were sitting at their desk, like probably not the time to be sent a photo of your ass, Laura Byrne. I mean, we've spoken about dick pics loads. We wrote a chapter on dick pics in the book. In this phase of my life, I didn't realize that they were that

prolific or that much of a problem that ios needed to try and kill them off but it turns out people are still experiencing it it's an ongoing issue and soon iphone's gonna deal with it and you know the best thing on that that iphone have done they're changing the autocorrect so you don't have to say ducking anymore they're taking away autocorrect ducking now you can say fucking literally nobody has ever written duck this in their entire life that's what i mean it's taken them the all this time no one is saying duck me duck you like no one is saying no one cares that much about ducks I love ducking stupid ducks are cute anyway with all that out of the way I have an accidentally unfiltered for you guys and funnily enough it has to do with phones my sister does not

live at home with us but she still uses my parents apple id account I have been telling her for many years that she needs to get her own account but she has never listened to me one morning I was cooking breakfast and my mum was sitting at the table on her phone and suddenly I hear my mum go oh my god and then she called dad over to have a look oh no I then hear my dad say oh my god what is this out of interest I then head over to the table to see what all the fuss is about and there it is on my mum's phone multiple nude and sexy photos of my sister in compromising positions and sexy lingerie what had happened was that my sister's sexy photos had synced automatically to the iCloud and had been downloaded to my mum's phone on the premise that I would literally die

if this had happened to me I never told my sister I did however set up a new account for her and her photos no longer sync to mum's phone why did your mum call the dad over your dad doesn't need to be involved that's the weirdest part frank quick frank that's the weirdest part you're such a good sister for not telling unless there was no do you know what unless it wasn't they weren't face photos so she didn't under the mum wouldn't have understood what was happening maybe it was just like titty pics and butt pics and stuff and she thought someone was hacking the phone because my parents wouldn't understand technology like that i don't i think if she wasn't sure how they'd gotten there and she was a bit like what the hell's happening I think that's why she called

the dad I don't think she did it to purposefully embarrass her daughter I actually have an accidentally unfiltered that came through from one of my friends so he had been messaging this girl on hinge and they'd been going back and forth and things were going well and they were about to go on a date like you know it was getting to that point where they were finally going to set up a time to meet right so in the early stages of conversation anyway he went out with some of his work friends and had an absolute blinder like way too many beverages were consumed but he didn't want this girl to think that he wasn't interested in her he wanted to keep the conversation going so he was far too many beverages deep when he had to write back a message to her and so he realized

like I'm too drunk to text her back right now so what he did was get chat GPT up and ask it to send a message for him like craft a message to this girl he needs to be banned he needs to be banned 100 not one part of him sober him thinks that this is a good idea but here's the message he sent it to me after we were talking about this because i just lost it the message read hey i get it you've got some pretty impressive walls up so you should but just between you and me i'm a trustworthy person i know you've just met me so i know it's all a bit foreign but feel free to take a chance let those walls down and get to know me you can't date with chat gpt i don't think anyone actually is though i don't think anyone with a sound sense of mind or in a good headspace is

using it i can tell you this story is very true i saw the message i mean like i think normal him would have not thought that that was a good idea but drunk him was not making the same decisions but i reckon there's a lot of people that would probably rely on it people that maybe not be confident or have a way with words or be I reckon there are loads of people doing it well if you're somebody who's not confident and you're using chat GPT maybe it means that your chat is so bad that that chat is actually better like it's not going to get you anywhere but it's still better than what you're putting out either way there's no there's no good outcome also catfishing of the texting world I reckon it's the catfishing of everything though people using it for their jobs

people using it for their dating it's just not a good solution yet maybe in 10 years time I would rather receive a hey than that chat gpt message hey that's it we know my rules on hey how are you i would never reply to that on a dating app at least there's a little bit more to go off me a hey any day of the week what was the response i don't know what the response was but i definitely know that they didn't go on a date so you know how shocking if she's listening he's sorry he's a good guy you should go on a date with him all right well on that note it is time to get into the chat with the wonderful sarah wilson and a bit of a trigger warning sarah does talk about her experience with pregnancy loss and termination in this chat.

It's towards the end of our conversation with Sarah. I'll put a timestamp in the show notes. Sarah Wilson is a multi-New York Times bestselling author, a podcaster, an international keynote speaker, a philanthropist and a climate change advisor, just to name a few. All of this at only 49 years old and she lives a very unique life.

You may have known Sarah from the very early days of I Quit Sugar. That's where I first came across Sarah, but she's been incredibly successful since then. In 2022, she sold off I Quit Sugar and donated the earnings to charity. She's here today to chat to us all about her life, dating in your 40s and how status impacts dating, as well as traveling, adventuring around the world solo because she's just moved to Paris where she's joining us today. Sarah Wilson, welcome to Life Uncut. Lovely to actually kind of meet you. It's ridiculous that I'm on the other side of the

world when we finally meet, because I think we don't live that far from each other in Sydney. Yeah. Well, normally. Yeah, normally. Well, we do now because I definitely do not live in Paris. How is Paris? How have you found yourself in a beautiful Parisian apartment? Well, probably a little bit of madness. I lived on the road for 10 years and then COVID happened and I based myself in Sydney for four years, which is the longest I've lived anywhere in literally decades. So this is more my natural environment is just having one bag and throwing myself into the world. So I've been here five days. And given that you've introed with this idea of dating in your forties, and I'm only just in my forties now, but I've been

on four dates in five days. That's my summation of Paris for you. And you've only been there. Literally. And the men turn up, the men turn up because look, women listening from Australia, you know what I mean right like I've had so many no-shows the bar is so low the bar is around it's just below my ankle bone back in Australia it's on the ground people say to me what's your criteria for a man I'm like a pulse in his own teeth that's where we've got to it is actually so funny we talk about this all the time like Laura myself and our producer Keisha we constantly talk Keisha has been recently very recently dating and she said to me at the start oh my god he's just amazing like I don't know where I found him and I was like what do you mean she's like he wrote straight back to

my message and he said yes to dinner and I was like what I was like that is that is what we're basing our husband material yeah that's the bar you just moved to Paris so you've been on four dates in five days which means you hadn't even unpacked yet and you'd lined up a date yeah pretty much I mean they were lined up from Australia so these are guys that I've met on dating apps and they reach out to me and go, when are you going to be in Paris? Are you ever in Paris? And I'm like, yeah, I will be. So yeah, they sort of range in age sort of by a couple of decades as well. Last night I was on a date with a 76 year old. He's a philosopher. I've known his work for a long time. So it wasn't quite a date, but it was really romantic in the

sense that it was just Paris. Sarah, did he have his own teeth though? I mean, 70. He had his own teeth. With all the veneers around in Sydney right now, I'm not surprised that you've had to like add this to your criteria. So was that a date for you or was it a date for him and you were just intrigued? No, it was a date in the French sort of way of doing things where as a woman, you get respected, you get treated well, you get complimented on how you look, all of that kind of thing, just basic considerations. But no, it wasn't a date, but it was an intellectual date, I suppose. He's a super bright guy. He's written, I think, close to 50 books in his lifetime. He's one of the leading philosophers. Yeah. And then we strolled around. Yeah. So it's lovely. But

here the men are genuinely curious. There's an arrogance, certainly, but it comes from a genuine self-confidence. Whereas I find back in Australia, I think there's a little bit of lost boy syndrome going on at the moment, which I get because I think Australia is going through some fluxes. and so everybody's having to adjust, the Frenchmen don't need to be sort of do this machismo thing, you know, the oh, and talking loudly and acting as though they don't care. So it's refreshing. But we'll see. I'm five days in. I mean, it's, you know, rose-colored glasses. Did you ever date in Australia? Did you ever date Australians? And what's the comparison? Well, for women listening out there despairing and you want to feel better against somebody else's

experience i was single for 15 years in australia and i only went on dates and had really wonderful experiences when i was traveling so when i was back in australia during that four-year period that i mentioned i had 21 no shows in a row in a row i challenge anyone to beat that record yeah it became a joke so you had set up dates and then of course i'd have to right because women listening you would also know that you've got to do the hard work you know the whole hey we should catch up for a coffee somewhere sometime to which you reply oh yeah somewhere sounds great you know I mean eventually I'd sometime yeah so I would suggest the time the place you know I'd literally put my balls on the line and then I'd turn up and it'd either it'd be a combination of either the

guy just doesn't show up to the coffee or the drink or they cancel literally three minutes beforehand which is i mean you're there i know before you're at the date you've done your makeup you've done your hair you've you've arrived well you've done the hard work right you've got ready you've shaved the legs like it's a whole thing yeah exactly well this is now what i do right i'm inversing murphy's law so now i don't shave my legs i literally wear a tracksuit you wear your bridget jones's yeah yeah and so it's just tempting it right like the chances are the inverse of Murphy's law is, or the, you know, sort of, I guess, gamifying Murphy's law is that if I do that, they may turn up, but it still hasn't worked. But yeah, so it'll also be a case

of, and this is the classic one, where you say, hey, let's catch up Tuesday and they go, great. And so then you sort of get to Tuesday three o'clock in the afternoon and you send the message going, are we still on for tonight? And then you get the no reply. I count that as a no show. So that's also included in. Okay. So the 21 that this happened to, were any of them repeat offenders like did you give them a second chance or was it kind of like once they bail once they're done well yes because the bar's so low we all give them second chances third chances because we're like come on it was the same guy 21 times you could do it no it wasn't the same guy it wasn't 21 chances but what happens is of course like two weeks later you get a hey

you know in your inbox right oh the zombies we call it something yeah resurrect from the dead and they're like, hey, how you been? Sarah, I got one the other day that was like, do you hate me from someone who ghosted me weeks ago? And I was like, I don't have enough care in my body to hate you. No, that's what I'm like, yeah, I do. Fuck off. Mate, you just stopped replying to me.

I don't have enough emotion attached to you. Gosh, Keisha, that's really indicative, isn't it, that the interpretation of their own awkwardness is to project an emotion onto you. you must hate them right if something's not working out here that whole it's kind of a form of gaslighting right you're responsible for the emotional dialogue here do you i feel like we do a whole podcast on just these 21 men do you follow up with these men that have not shown up or ghosted do you send them a follow-up text do you just abort mission and wait for them to come back

with a zombie what do you do it's a combination i'm old now and so what happens you are not old but I'll 49 is pretty old I mean I don't feel old it's a number but the sheer years on the planet means I've got experience but the other thing that happens and it's this is going to sound old is your estrogen drops off right you start to head in toward you know towards menopause one of the great things about that estrogen basically makes you care about a lot of shit as you go through menopause you have less fucks to give about the wrong things right and it frees you up to care about the stuff you do care about and so you get quite bullshit and that's why we turn into Karen's right? It's because we're like, I don't care. I'm just going to say what I want now because after

45 years of being silenced. So with these men, I will often confront them really calmly because I don't have a lot of emotion attached to these guys and I'll call them out and stuff. And sometimes under the pretense of just don't go and do it to another woman. And admittedly, a lot of these men are younger than me because the men my age, I think are even more petrified of me than the younger guys well that is something I wanted to get into because I'd read something about you in the Sydney Morning Herald and it was very intriguing to me now it's intriguing because my partner's five years younger than me my ex is seven years younger than me I date down age range yes no sorry typically yeah I date down in age range I don't know if it was always

intentional it just sort of fell that way but you have said that you sort of lean towards dating down which is funny because they're the people that don't show up as well the men are probably not emotionally mature enough, yet they're the men you seem to be leaning to. Why is that? Do you use that because you have trouble finding somebody that is willing to meet you on your level that is your age? Well, what I would say is in fact, men my age are worse than the younger ones. They're actually more scared. So they've picked up the behaviors of the younger generation from the dating apps and we've all done it, right? Women are doing it as well. It's the vibe and the technology actually enables it. But I find that men my age are even more confused,

more scared than men in their 30s. My father has a good theory on this. He reckons that when guys have got testosterone in their system, it gives them this bravado. And over the years, it also starts to dial down and they lose their mojo. And also, older men have had more knockbacks. they don't have as much confidence whereas the young guys they've just got that sort of that rawness you know where they'll give it a go the other thing i mean i'm really going into the weeds here the other thing is is that i think younger guys who are not wanting to commit they're faced with a generation of women who are getting married younger like my generation we didn't get married my friends did not get married you know i'm sort of a child i was in my early 20s in the early 90s

And that was full austerity. There wasn't a lot of money. There was a recession. It was all about feminism. It was the grunge period. We didn't wear makeup. We wore secondhand clothes. We didn't wear bras.

We wore flat shoes. It was all that kind of thing, right? What that's sort of done is created a certain sort of mindset. What's happening now, I find, is with the younger guys. The younger guys, they had mothers like me, right? I date guys who have mothers the same age as me. I love that so much. Literally.

So they're being brought up by feminists and feminist teachers and then they get to their sort of late 20s and, you know, early 30s and the women are sort of a different type of woman. They're wanting to get married. Like, you know, that's actually been shown statistically. They're getting married and, you know, we've had a period of incredible opulence in Australia, in the West, right? And so that creates a very different dynamic with women.

Women's rights and body shape and role in society shifts with the economics of the time. And you'll see over here in Europe where they're actually going through the beginnings of a recession. The cost of living crisis is really affecting and fashion has changed. Women are dressing differently. And that's happened throughout history. If you think of the flapper era in the 1920s and 30s, war and the depression, women's bodies were straight up and down. Women were in the workforce. You had the suffragette movement. Women got the vote. Women are out there getting all these kinds of rights. Anyway, So there's a bit of a background there. So yeah, I find that men who are not wanting to get married,

they're wanting to focus on their career. They're quite creative and ambitious and all that kind of thing. They're going, well, who do I date? Older women fit the bill because we're not going to demand anything of them. We're literally going to be in the present, having a great time, not wanting to get a ring on our finger and not wanting to get pregnant anytime soon. So I think I actually find more engagement, genuine engagement, like old school engagement, where they're actually interested in me as a person among the younger men, which is great, you know, when they turn up. When they turn up, that's exactly right. Sarah, something you wrote about in one of your recent newsletters kind of to do with this topic,

it was titled, I'm a spinster, I spin well. And in that piece, you wrote something that really intrigued me. And you basically said that the term spinster, and I guess we could use cougar, like there are all of these terms for women who date younger men and who are open about their dating life and that it's exciting and that they're passionate lovers and things like that. It's not equivalent to the term bachelor. You know, we seem to kind of have this view of the way that we use the word spinster that is negatively geared. Have you experienced that? Yes and no. I think it's more that women take that on ourselves. We perceive it and I've got a real mindset that I've had for a very long time. Where the mind goes, the energy flows. So if you focus

on that for yourself. That's what you'll get back from everyone. You'll get that perception back. So in many ways, I've operated almost oblivious to the fact that I'm meant to get married and I'm meant to be doing all of these things. And I've just got on with things. And every now and then I go, oh God, yeah, that's right. I've missed that memo. So the spinster thing is interesting though, isn't it? Because this term started out along, I think it was in the 1600s to describe women who were really good at spinning and because they could spin it meant that they actually had a skill set that was valuable and they had their own income what do you mean by spinning is that like a material thing spinning wool thread we're talking a long time ago yeah

I just pictured people who were really good on the dance floor like spinning around and I was like okay Keisha's younger than us Sarah so see that jumper you're wearing back in the olden days so yes these women who could spin thread right whether it was silk or wool it was a spinning wheel anyone who was really good at spinning it meant you had your own income right you were financially independent so you could come into a dynamic you know with something to offer and that was seen as a really good thing so these women that went off and had you know careers so to speak sitting around a spinning wheel were seen as a desirable entity so you were considered a spinster. Unfortunately, now, obviously, that's taken on a derogatory connotation. But yeah,

I think the world is shifting. We are in an incredible time of flux for all kinds of things, including gender roles, including like, look what AI is doing. I mean, I'm sure many of your listeners think about this, like we're hearing about it, how's it going to affect all of our jobs? Everything's up for grabs. And so we are in a great dynamic time to redefine all of these things for ourselves. And in fact, I like the idea of slipping, like while everyone's been distracted by all of these rules and ideas and fears, I basically just kind of put on my backpack and piss on off to Paris or whatever and get on with my own thing. You know, like it's a really good time to not be stuck in those roles, these stereotypes and constricted laneways.

And not that we're going to, we're not going to harp on about it, but just on that, I do know what you mean by saying that spinster now does have more of a negative connotation to it because when you think of the you know the antithesis the bachelor the equivalent for a woman immediately people like well what's wrong with it why did she get to that age and she couldn't have the family and she couldn't have the kids i want to get back to i mean i feel like we dove straight into dating then and i could talk to you for a hundred years on it but i want to go back to the start you've worn many hats in your life but in the early days you somehow got a job as the editor of Cosmopolitan but you'd never read the magazine you didn't wear heels you weren't into that world

how the hell did you wriggle your way into that one oh look it's gonna sound oh it's gonna sound ridiculous so I was I mean I've never applied for a job in my life I've just sort of well I've just been a ball of enthusiasm I think like really dorky enthusiasm where I'd put my hand up to do everything so I'd moved to Melbourne and I did work experience at the Sunday magazine which is now called Stella magazine and it used to be based out of Melbourne and I went in there and the editor who was from the UK she just didn't even notice me on the last day I said hey thanks for having me and she said oh who are you and I said the work experience kid thanks for having me she didn't even know you were there. She was a bit like that. How old were you at this point, Sarah?

I was 23. So I'm backtracking slightly, but she asked me, oh, well, what do you think of the magazine? She was being polite. And I said, oh, well, I think this is great. This is great. But your food and wine pages are shit. And everyone's talking about how bad they are. She said, oh, well, I have no interest in it. And she said, well, why don't you come back on Monday and tell me what I should do about it? So I went and learned what was called Quark Express. This is like, we're talking just as the internet's happening, but it was called the intranet. So you could only email people in the same building, in the same company. And it was a time when we had to share a computer between three people to get the job done.

So I know it's really, we're talking to shortly after the last ice age. It was just after you finished the Spinstar material wheel. That's it. Pre-industrial revolution. I just left my country home where mum and dad were like, you got your spinning skills sorted, off you go. So I learnt QuarkXPress, which was a design program. I went and interviewed a bunch of restaurants and I took the liberty of turning it from one page

into three pages in the magazine and redesigned the whole lot. And I presented, I said, I think this is how it should look. And she said, right, you've got a job. So I became the food and wine editor. I was the youngest person by 20 years in the office. So that when Beyonce got big, this is, we're talking that era. Before Beyonce got big, I interviewed Beyonce. I was sent to Japan to interview Alicia Keys, this new artist called Alicia Keys. So I got all these opportunities. So I was writing all that and then I started writing opinion pieces for the Herald Sun and I shared a page with the really conservative writer, Andrew Bolt. So I was this kind of young left-wing writer and I just kept on putting my hand up and

I'd do it for free. And then eventually they realised they had to pay me for these things that I did. Anyway, somebody from ACP, which was the company that owned Cosmopolitan, came down from Sydney. They were asked by Rupert Murdoch to look in on the magazine and just do a bit of an overview. And she reported me back to head office in Sydney. they flew me up and met with me. And initially it was like to edit Woman's Day or something, or be associate editor. And I didn't really know why they were flying me up. And then

eventually they flew me up again and just said, hey, would you like to work for Cosmo? And I'm like, yeah, sure. Anyway, three weeks later I moved up and I didn't realize this, but they made me editor. So I had to fly to New York and meet the big head honcho, Helen Gurley Brown, who started it all up. So yeah, that's how it happened. But I'd actually been mountain bike riding I came off my bike so I arrived on the job with my foot in a brace on crutches years later people said to me oh we felt so sorry for you having to arrive and I'm like oh really like you know because everyone's wearing heels and I'm wearing a cowboy boot on one foot everybody was wearing pink and more pink and lots of sparkles and I'd just moved fresh from Melbourne so I was

wearing like black with asymmetrical pockets you know and I'd never owned a hair dryer or a hair straightener. And in fact, to this day, I've never owned a handbag. I've had like little clutches that people have given me, but I used to get offered handbags and I always refused them. And so why was that? What was the aversion to the handbag? Two things. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Being given stuff for free is just something I never have done. Like I just don't do it. And I'm an anti-consumer. I'm a minimalist. It's always been my principle since, you know, since I was a kid. I've always campaigned against waste and consumption and also buying into the capitalist imperative like it's

just the way I am you know which is hilarious because I sold shit to young women that they didn't need in a magazine the largest magazine in Australia but it you know that was it was a job and I enjoyed it and I took it very seriously and I loved it absolutely loved it but yeah the other thing is I've never wanted to be defined by a brand like you know if you wear a particular a kind of bag, you're sort of saying, I am this kind of person. And I've always preferred not to do that. I write about this in my book, This One Wild and Precious Life. I have a chapter on capitalism. And it's not like I'm like this rabid socialist, like I fit in super well, like I am girl next door, mainstream kind of person, like I'm not radical in any way. But I do like to

question things. And I got the definition of a cult, right, you know, from Wikipedia. And I lined it up with what how capitalism works and basically it's just word for word for word the same sort of thing but I think the other thing about sort of that buying into that kind of thing is nobody notices that I like nobody stops in the street and goes oh she's looking a bit ratty she's got like the Qantas toothbrush bag as her wallet and you know this sack this is my sack that a friend you know gave me in London and it had his library books in it or something like that that is my handbag. It's just a check. If anyone can't see, it's like a gingham canvas bag. Nobody noticed. Nobody notices I've never, ever had my nails done. People don't care. And what

that does is frees you up to actually be the human you want to be, to be vibrant, to be able to move as much as possible, to focus on ideas, you know, have wonderful affairs, whatever it is that you want to do. And I say this because I just love more people to feel that they could experiment with that a little bit, not feel that they have to sort of do all these things because, honestly, people don't notice. People don't notice if you've had your eyebrows waxed, you know, or whatever it is. Well, I think the ownership of like we saw this on Succession recently.

There was an episode, and if you don't watch the show, it's all to do with this girl who brings this big Birkin bag, right? You know, her turning up with this handbag and it was all about putting yourself in the environment of what she thought the people there expected of her. and you've been a very successful business woman. You know, I Quit Sugar was a hugely successful business. You employed quite a lot of people in Sydney. And then off the back of that, you ended up selling that business and donating all of the money to charity. So can you talk us

through why? Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, it started from personal reasons. And again, by accident, you know, I got very sick at 34. I'd been hosting MasterChef Australia and I'd come off Cosmo gone straight into that again by accident like that's another story yeah it was exceedingly strange I did not know I was being put in as host but I was anyway I got very sick Hashimoto's disease which is an autoimmune disease affecting the thyroid and more and more women are getting it right it's not common by any stretch but it's really is a disease that happens predominantly to women and it happens to women who push themselves too hard can be stress-induced disease. Definitely. It's got a biological predisposition, but then it can be triggered by

a trauma essentially. So I moved to an army shed in the forest in Byron Bay. Like I was the OG cliche. Byron Bay was, you know, just started to take off as a place to go to. And for me, it was ironically a place I could afford to live. So I actually lost everything. I couldn't walk. My hair fell out. I got very, very, very sick. I was told I'd never have children. So I just took, it was two suitcases of belongings i moved up to this army shed in the forest i lived there on my own and i started experimenting with my health and once a week i wrote a column for another magazine about sort of this week i dot dot dot and it'd be this week i meditated with his holiness the whole you know dalai lama whatever which is true a true story and one week i didn't have a

topic or so it was this week i quit sugar and it was partly because i knew i needed to because i'd been reading about hashimoto's there really is no fix for it but the one thing that you know this new science was showing was quitting sugar which is an inflammatory precursor you quit sugar you get less inflammation your gut heals and your thyroid then can settle down so I gave it a go and I just felt better and so I just kept going going so I wrote about it and Twitter had just been invented we just come out of the cold war that's it that's it right the iron curtains just come down and Sarah's in her army shed taking photos on her Nokia phone I think it was a Motorola actually. Taking a break from all those flip phones that came in like black, silver or

pink. Everyone had them. That's it. And so I would be inventing, and it sounds hilarious now, but like vegan avocado chocolate mousse, right? So I was doing that shit 13 years ago in this army shed and posting these horrible pictures on Twitter. And it just started to get more and more of a following and people were really interested. And then I was like, oh, there's these things called eBooks. I'm going to work out what that's about. So I paid a hundred bucks to do a course online and the internet had been invented by this stage. And I worked out how to do an ebook and it became an Amazon bestseller overnight. I thought if I sell a hundred, it'll actually just pay for the experiment of doing it and getting the recipes out to people. And then funnily enough,

it sold out, a publisher picked it up. I'm giving some background here, which I don't know if you want it, but I went to sort of Sydney and a publisher went, oh, you know, there's this, you've done this Amazon book. Can we do the print version? So I was, I think one of the first authors to do it that way around ebook to print book so by this stage I'd taken off and my two suitcases had reduced I just didn't replace anything so I wore everything out like I'd wear out a t-shirt I'd just throw it out by this stage I had one backpack and I'd taken off overseas and I was in Copenhagen and this publisher went well we need a new cover for the book so the cover of the book which a lot of people would know it's me in shorts sort of in this lovely little alleyway

I know exactly the cover yeah so I was wearing a camisole that was tipped on to the cover of a UK Marie Claire and when I was in the UK I just found it on the street so I'm wearing a camisole back in those days they used to give you like little things on the front of magazines so I was wearing that I was wearing a pair of shorts that were just like falling apart no shoes because my shoes were in a really bad state and a friend of mine went I'll come to Copenhagen and photograph you so we went around on one of those bikes with a bucket on the front and she sat in the front and we rode around Copenhagen with food and camera equipment and did the whole shoot that way.

And I found this guy who was super cool and he said, I'll do your hair. It turns out he was one of the best hairdressers in Copenhagen. You have a lot of turns out moments. You have like turns out the guy at breakfast was the Dalai Lama. Yeah. I can tell you now that that has been my life. Like I have done things where I've gone,

I need to interview Maria Shriver who's Arnold Schwarzenegger's ex-wife and she's this you know big host and everything and I'm like I'm trying to find her and then I get really pissed off I'm like right just go and have a coffee so I got on my bike to go to I'm segwaying here to Porch and Parlor or Porch as it's called now in Bondi you guys would know it's a place in Bondi yeah it's a cafe I've known those guys for years and years and I went right I'm just not going to have a look with my emails or anything and I'd got a rejection from Maria Shriver's people going, no, she doesn't want to be interviewed.

So I go into this cafe and these people, staff that used to work for me came up and she'd broken up with her boyfriend so I was talking to her and the foster agent dude that, you know, I sort of foster Indigenous kids, he came to drop me off a prize, I won a boomerang or something. Anyway, I was sitting there and then I look up and I go. I look up and this woman walks in. I'm like oh my god that is Maria Shriver and it was Maria Shriver walked into the cafe in Australia

and you hit her up I hit her up I went over I said I've got to tell you this story and she went oh my god that's so cool and I said oh I'll just go home and I'll get you a copy of my book and I gave her a copy of my book we follow each other on Instagram and she supports me all the time now I feel like I'm a mini you I manifest Brie gets everyone from the local cafe that's how Hamish Blake ended up on the podcast I manifest so much stuff but I feel like it's exactly the same thing and I don't know if it's necessarily like I mean we all say speak to the universe tell them what you want it's not necessarily just that but it is the amount of energy you put in the shots you want to take the people you approach the confidence you have there's a lot of things that go into it

and I think a big part is just yeah I mean that's freaking crazy but it's definitely a big part of shooting your shot that's ridiculous that one is ridiculous yeah that is ridiculous but it's it's like people say coincidences well the whole of life is just intricate coincidences every single thing really the superpower that if you want to you know develop some superpower it's basically being vigilant and being online and alive and aware and noticing things and engaging and going forward and saying yes and going to your edge and it's that that's then brings all of these conflations and congruences together. But going back to the book, basically what ended up happening, the book came out, it sold out in two days. And then I actually manifested this. I went,

I want it to be on the Today Show in the US. And I just know it will be. Anyway, as it turns out, they invited me over and I ended up on the Today Show. I cooked three desserts in a five-minute segment and bringing it back to the handbag story, not wanting to be defined and not being fancy I rode my bike at six o'clock in the morning like one of those sort of hire bikes you know like a line bike and I rode a bike across New York to go to the studios CBS studios and I arrived and Carson Daly the host was walking into work and he went aren't you on the segment in like you know 45 minutes I'm like yeah and that became a New York Times bestseller so everything just rolled on and rolled on and rolled on. You've just basically got to be there ready to jump when

an opportunity comes, you know? Do you know how many copies it's sold up until today? I should know. I know it's in apparently 52 countries. I'm in the top 200 most influential authors in the world. That was a couple of years ago now, but it was two years in a row. I think it was 2018 and 2019, something like that. I think there's something to be said for just showing up as your authentic self and I know that that term gets thrown around a lot but that's what you did you exceeded all expectations you sold the company you gave it all to charity talk us through that you want to know why don't you uh no do you know what do you know what I really want to know and I was umming and ahhing asking you but I'm going to ask you if you don't answer you

don't have to everything I've read about you is the fact that you do live this minimalist life you do give a lot to charity you've given everything away but then there's a side that's you are traveling the world and you're living in Paris right now and how do you do that how do you actually live did you be like okay I'm gonna take 10% now stock it away invest in it so I can live and then donate the rest yep yep pretty much I don't believe in either or my approach is and like give it away and live the life that I want right and so you just I worked out how much I needed. When I Quit Sugar started to do well, I got an accountant and, you know, he sat down with me with a whiteboard and just said, like, what are your financial goals? And I said, I don't have

financial goals. He said, make something up. And I said, right, in five years, I want to have made enough money to be able to live off the base wage, CPI, so indexed each year until I'm 94, because I figured 94 would be a good age to live to. And he went, all right, let's do that. So So literally five years to the week, I hit that goal. And so that's when I decided, right, I'm going to shut everything down. I'll give the money away. I've made enough money. So I'd invested in a couple of apartments, things like that, just some sensible things and nothing glamorous, like just enough to set myself up solidly. So yeah, I've reached that goal. So now I'm really comfortable in the sense that I could stop working if I wanted to and live a very basic

life like I could afford rent and food and that kind of thing so now I do public speaking I have a podcast I do a bunch of things and I'm not making a huge amount of money from those things but it's enough for me to go and travel to Paris and that kind of stuff I mean I make money to be able to fly to the other side of the world and when I'm driving someone's car and I get a parking ticket because I don't own a car I haven't owned a car in about 10 years I don't freak out that's what I want money for I want to not have the stress of you know being in a country like I'm in this department and there's you'll probably hear you can hear the noise then you know waking up at what time is it quarter to nine so that's an early start for the Parisians on a Monday but

it means that I can up and leave and go and find somewhere where I'll be able to sleep because I have terrible terrible you know anxiety around all of that so I've earned enough money to do those things. I've worked out what I want money for. I've got enough for that. And if I earn more for something, if a new book does really well, I'll do the same thing. I'll give away the stuff I don't need. And it basically just keeps me on my toes. It keeps me from getting complacent and getting sucked into stuff I don't need. I think it's such a perfect example of, you know, they say like money can't buy you happiness. But often I've kind of said, yeah well I would be a lot happier if I didn't have to worry about paying rent you know like

I think money can provide you with a reduced amount of stress that yeah yeah and so I guess if you have all of your basis is covered then you can go and kind of travel the world and that's something that you do love to do you love to hike around the world we get like messages I would say almost daily from people saying I really would love to go and take on some solo travel I'd love to take on traveling the world by myself, but I'm anxious. I'm nervous about it. How do you do it so confidently? I'm scared a lot of the time, but you've got to ask at some point in your life, how do you want to live your life? It is a one wild and precious life that we get given. We get allotted a certain amount of weeks on the planet. How do you want to live? And at some point it's

just a choice. It is just a choice and it requires sacrifice. And unfortunately, our culture, has not encouraged a dialogue around sacrificing to get the thing that you want. We kind of think that it should be instant, or we should have natural talent, or we can buy it. And that's not how the world works. The world works in terms of giving something up for something better. And it's mostly about building up a muscle. So when you give up home comforts to go and travel the world, that builds up a muscle that then makes traveling the world fun, possible, rewarding, and the whole thing, right? You can't do it by buying off the shelf. You can't do it through privilege. You can't do it by just happenstance. The happenstance happens when you take the

jumper. And I've got this anecdote in my book, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, which is my book about anxiety. A therapist said to me once, a lot of you listening would probably know this feeling where you're like, I know I need to take the risk, whether it's leaving a boyfriend, leaving a job. I know I've got to do it, but I want to know that everything's lined up, right? Before I do it, you know? And my therapist said to me, she said, Sarah, the thing about life is that when you do your big jump, you basically grow angel wings and it'll fly you to your next level and it'll be a better level, right? You'll land in a much better place. But the thing is, everybody thinks you can go and buy the wings. There's no angel wing shop on the

planet. I mean, it was the most ridiculous example. No, I have looked. There's not. Yeah. or they're sold out yeah yeah that's it but and they won't get you very far they're pretty flimsy so you've got to jump and you've got to trust and you've got to actually develop a relationship with life and the flow the beautiful flow of life to be able to do that and so that's how I do it I'm really glad you just said that traveling the world makes you scared as shit and that you're actually scared all the time because a lot of people aren't honest about that and I'm someone that's I've done a lot of travel around the world by myself I lived in Italy alone and it is so fucking scary. It has given me the best experiences of my life and the best moments and the best

stories, but I was petrified the whole time. And I don't think a lot of people really talk about that. We see Instagram travelers, live your best life, live life, love. You'll be fine. Go do this. Eat, pray, love. It doesn't always work like that. What is the part that gives you the most anxiety when you're traveling on your own? Well, you're working in uncertainty the whole time and that's exhausting. So you're having to make decisions that back home, I just wrote, you know, what you're going to eat for breakfast, which way you're going to get to the office, all that kind of thing. And so everything requires a decision and decision-making part of the brain is the same part of the brain that controls anxiety. So if you overtax that part, you get anxious. If you're

anxious, you find it really hard to make decisions. So when you're traveling, you're in that vortex, you know, where you're constantly having to make decisions and it's exhausting and it will make you anxious, even just for that reason. So yeah, I suppose the loneliness can get really real as well. You're a long, long way away and you are alone in the world. I have terrible insomnia that comes from having very strong sense of hearing. So I can hear a tap dripping three suburbs away. It's ridiculous. And so if I've gone for three nights without sleep, I'm irascible. I can't cope. I'm emotional. That can become really hard. And then I get this sense that, oh my God, there is literally nowhere in the world I can go where I'm going to be safe and

get a night's sleep because you're in an Airbnb that you've just paid money for or at a friend's house that you're stuck in or whatever. And you're like, where do I go? You become resourceful and you have to give up on there being a right way to do things. Yes. Right. You've basically got to become really good at what I call fending. Like you've got to adjust and twist and turn. and after a while you realise that that is actually a really fun way to live. It's how we're meant to live. We are meant to be using all of our resources, our sight, our sound, our touch, our smell at all times to survive. And most of our lives, we don't even use one of those faculties because everything's so easy. Technology takes away all of that sport from us. So that

space of fear and being in the unknown, it's actually where we're meant to be. We are meant to be at our edge. We are meant to be uncomfortable. Brene Brown said to me once, and I dropped that in casually, we were in, I interviewed her and we were sitting in. Just a coffee shop down the road. I wanted to chat to her and she walked in. I'd also like to drop in casually that we've been trying

to get her on the podcast. So if you can put in a good word, it'd be great. Yeah, well, it was kind of one of those, it was a happenstance thing, but we were sort of sitting out the back of it anyway. She was also saying to me, because we worked out that we both have three strikes and we act raw, so if I get three signs that something's meant to happen. I go, oh shit, I'm going to have to do it. And she's the same. But she said that when she feels uncomfortable, she has this little mantra. As soon as she feels

uncomfortable, apparently she turns her wedding ring. And she said, as this little thing to remind her, she goes, right, stuff is starting to happen. Right. That's her little cue. She's like, I'm uncomfortable. That means shit's happening. Okay. Let's get focused here. And I'm the same. If I'm uncomfortable, I'm right. Something real's happening. What is it now? Okay. Often you sort think you're anxious about one thing actually it's not you're excited anxiety and excitement have the same neural pathway in the brain and so you can choose to interpret those nerves that fear as this is cool something exciting is happening i want to get into anxiety and nerves and all of that really soon but one thing you did say that i wanted to ask and i'm i hate that i'm going to say

this but i find it true when you said it's exhausting constantly having to make the decisions when you're traveling because you do have to do everything and you do have to be very malleable do you find the same thing happens to you being single a long time and the reason i say that is i pride myself on being an independent person but i'm the first person to say when i finally after a decade fell into a relationship the relief that i had someone else to fucking do something for me i was like or to make a decision i was like i don't know what i want to do this weekend you do it if the little things i didn't have to be the only person to make the decision anymore and all of a sudden I wasn't as exhausted you've been single 15 years do you find the same thing because

I don't think it has to take away from the fact that we're not an independent woman it doesn't make us needier but I definitely found that and I didn't know what to do with that information because I thought why am I so happy that someone's doing so much for me it's so valid no it's a very valid feeling I know exactly what you're talking about like I do have to make those decisions constantly for myself I can't defer there's a few things you can do though like if you've got a good network of friends and I write about this in the book about anxiety because it's actually a really good technique if you've got a friend who's got anxiety it's generally because they're making a lot of decisions or if you've got staff I also say this if you've got employees who are anxious

one of the best things you can do is make a decision for them so if you know if it's a staff member they're trying to decide whether to do this or that I don't know if that's the right you get them to explain it to you and then you go oh option A is the best I can see that you've researched that really well and off they go and and they can get on with their day and do a good job because that's been taken away from them I've got friends who know that when I'm anxious they ring me and go right we're going to the movies meet us on the corner at 6 30 we're seeing this and then we're going to have Indian afterwards or whatever so I've got friends who know that about me like you also become a control freak when you're single and you're really good at being

single. You're just really good at organizing shit. And you're the person that makes stuff happen because that's what you've got to do. You've also then got to learn the skill of taking a backseat and going with the flow. Somebody else organizes something. And I find that hard after 15 years, but for the same reasons, you know, that you just alluded to there, I need to do it to give myself a break. And, you know, just doing a full circle back to French men. I love circling back to the Frenchman circle back as much as you want yeah the dates I've been on I really like the fact that they go and choose where we're going they'll ask me if I want red or white wine and then they'll ask me you know like and I just go you choose no I'll eat anything yep good you can find ways but

it is a really valid point on your own you are making twice the decisions you really are and you don't get that collaborative kind of wrestle that you get in a relationship or a friendship where you sort of go, oh, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. I totally get it. And then I forgive myself for it when I get myself into a, like a clusterfucky kind of space in my head where I'm trying to work out now, do I do that? Do I stay there? You know, I've just got to allow it, go, Sarah, you're doing this on your own. It's hard. It's cool. Speaking of anxiety, it is something that you've said you, you know, battle with a lot and you've written books on it. You've just been talking about the fact that you travel the world by yourself. You're living this

single life you're saying that anxiety is kind of increased by uncertain circumstances have you not created like the perfect storm totally like have you created your own storm in a teacup because you're like I want to live this really free life this nomadic lifestyle but associated with that are so many unknowns have you kind of thought what the hell am I doing yeah could you live less anxiously if you lived in the one house you know up the street to where you grew up I spent many years wondering about that and I go back to that thing I said before I live my life not a oh this but that it's a this and that so yes I'm anxious and I am somebody that needs to go to my edge it often goes together this is something again that because we've medicalized anxiety and we've

actually anxiety only entered the DSM which is the big medical kind of textbooks from which Everything's Diagnosed in the Western World. And it only entered that book in 1980. Before then, anxiety was just considered something that you do have, right? But it wasn't a medical disorder as such. I've had to learn from years of this. And I should just mention, I was diagnosed with bipolar when I was 21. I was diagnosed with OCD sort of in my late teens. This is when all these things were called different things. It was called manic depression back then. So I've had to really grapple with all of these things and find my own ways, my own philosophies, which is why I wrote that book, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, which took seven years to write. I had to find

a way that went beyond the medical model or complemented it. That book is full of these kinds of reflections. So the questions you're asking are definitely things that I've thought about. But it's also been part of history that it was the anxious chimps that would actually go out and leave the group and discover new things, right? It was the bipolar person that went, I think there's something over that hill, and I'd go over the hill and they'd come back and go, guys, they've invented this thing called the wheel. We should get onto it.

So 70% of poets, 70% of scientists are bipolar, the ones who've won Nobel Peace Prizes and the big, big prizes. Einstein had bipolar. Yeah, Einstein, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath. they were bipolar and that's not just some kind of weird coincidence you know so our culture goes you've got one of these conditions medicate try to become normal take it easy withdraw chill I can't even triggered right back then it was like nut go out there create forge ahead it will be hard

Virginia Woolf has this great quote that just basically talks about when you choose that life yes it'll be perilous but it'll be interesting and that's what I decided I decided I wanted an interesting life and I'll suck up the hard times I'll suck up those lonely moments when you're on your own making decisions and when you know that when you know that it's all okay when you're soul nerd and you learn that this is how humans have operated for years and years you can find some comfort in that and keep on the path I mean you book first we make the beast beautiful which was another bestseller and Mark Manson actually said it's the best book on living with anxiety that I've ever read. Now, Mark Manson, you all know he's been on the podcast before, but he wrote

The Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck. Yeah, great guy. We love him. What made you want to rewrite the narrative around anxiety? Now, I know you just answered why you still travel with it, but what did you want to teach other people about it? Because I feel like you're trying to get other people to have a different outlook on anxiety and bipolar. Yeah. It's a little bit part of bipolar condition that you actually really have this intense sense of what is hurting humanity like I describe it as I can smell it I can smell where the ache is at where people's yearning is at it's I think why so many poets are bipolar there's this ability to go to a level of connection and be able to see where the zeitgeist is at so I was just feeling that a lot of people were in pain

and really, really ill at ease and feeling lonely. And so I actually, I do feel that a lot of the pain dissipates and becomes more manageable when you feel less alone, you know. That's essentially why I wrote it. I write my books because I'm feeling lonely and I write the books to have the connection. I write books so that I can go and do talks and podcasts like this, you know, because it's that frisson that I'm seeking in my life.

so for selfish reasons I do it for that you know I write the books that start the conversations that I want to have basically and I always write in such a way where I don't tell people what to do I go look I will go and do the research and I'll come back and I'll try to report it in a way that is easy for people because everyone's busy I did that with anxiety as well I was like this medical model business and the whole fact that the medication was invented the same year that it became a disease there's something going on there so I'm not going to go it's a conspiracy because that's a waste of energy. Instead, I go, okay, let's just see all the bits. We've got to have more voices, more kind of perspectives. It's not about going, that's wrong. And this is right.

Not at all. It's about, you know, all the gray areas and nuances. So that's what I wanted to do. And I knew that there was a beautiful philosophical and spiritual conversation that had been happening for centuries around anxiety that posited it as a beautiful thing. So first we make the beast beautiful is a Chinese proverb. It basically says to basically be able to pass through something that's difficult, we've got to make the beast beautiful. We've got to see the wonderfulness of anxiety, the gift, the superpower, and then we can actually find a way to modulate it and live a, not just survive with it, but thrive with it. Sarah, you speak about the connection that you found through writing this material and how that kind of counteracted some of the loneliness that

you've felt I'm really interested in your romantic life because you are such an engaging person and I look at you not that it's important you're hot as fuck like I look at you and I'm like surely these men are like I know you've said 21 of them didn't show up you've been single for 15 years is that because you haven't felt like you've found someone that you connect with on like a mental level? That's a beautiful question. I suppose it would have to be that. I mean, we make jokes about my bar being super low and all of that kind of thing. But look, the bottom line is as you get older, you want your life to get better, right? Like otherwise, why would you bother? So, and our lives do get better. Our lives get better. And sheer years on the planet is

sometimes the cure to many things. So my life has got better and better and I want to be met, right? By somebody. I want to be, I want to meet someone and they're good at some things that are better than me but you know one way or another we're seeing life at the same level so if my life gets better that level gets higher and higher so it does actually mean there's less and less people who can match match with me you know yeah so I suppose that my standards have got higher as I've got older they're probably reasonably high but they're not what I think maybe some people would expect like I don't look for looks I don't look for money I don't like that's the other thing about getting older you don't care about any of that kind of thing you know you get more specific

but it's actually more open and more real I'm looking for someone who's got real vibrancy and has got a real zest for life and they're really good at their thing I want to be able to admire them I think women's the basis for female love and connection is they've got to admire a man so yeah I suppose that's probably it and I probably never been prepared to compromise in those wrong ways yeah I don't think you should though I completely agree that what you want and what you look for in a person changes as you get older because it becomes more about how somebody makes you feel and what they add to your life and I don't mean a monetary ad but your soul how they fill your cup do you think that there's a level of people that you've dated because you are I mean

you're extremely successful we often speak about the fact that a lot of men do find it quite intimidating when a woman is more successful is more confident can hold her own earns more and also as keisha mentioned before you're hot as fuck do you think that there are there's a level of men that are intimidated and maybe that is why you haven't found your penguin yeah penguin or unicorn yeah mythical creature i think that's certainly it and look men do say to me you're too intimidating. And I say, am I too intimidating or am I just intimidating? And you're not prepared to rise because it's a really boring story. Like I'm bored by that story. I'm being really honest here. I don't mean to sound flippant or arrogant, but I'm really bored of that storyline. Like,

you know, men used to kind of, I don't know, hack their way through brambles and climb towers, right? That must've been intimidating. It's like, rise, lift. If you want to, you know, if you're kind of hovering around me and hovering in my stories like just kind of find a way I think men are also again we're generalizing but I think men are very lost they don't know what their role is and I think it's a really hard adjustment we've had decades and even generations multi-generations of women fighting to redefine the stereotypes or at least free up the stereotypes men haven't had that movement and they haven't got good leaders i mean andrew tate and jordan peterson is it you know and so they're not seeing how they can actually be the good men that can rise and just

be themselves i mean every woman would say no we don't expect them to do this but no no they've got it all wrong we don't we just want them to be just cool just be cool in yourself have gumption have vibrancy have fire in your belly like that's it that's all it takes to be a good human i feel like I was in a similar place really recently Britt and I talk about it all the time of how I was dating kind of with a purpose of the you know I wasn't looking to fill a gap I wasn't looking to fill a void I didn't need them to do anything to fill my life like I had a really good job I love my work life I love my friendships and I don't know if that actually made it a little bit harder to date because I wasn't looking for someone to kind of just fill the time like totally I mean I

think we get to that point when you're younger and I know it's an I'm not saying it's everyone at different ages but it's something that I have realized with age and I know you'd have too Keish but it's when you're younger you're more open to dating anybody for any reason and you're more likely to want someone just to fill a hole and to be company but as you get older and this is what we both started to do is date for a purpose and the purpose is you have high expectations of your partner and what they bring to the relationship and you want them to add something I didn't want to date anyone anymore for the sake of it you had to really be bringing something to the table and meeting me at a certain level and I think the idea of dating with a purpose is amazing I think

when you get to a point where you don't have to just fill a hole with someone that doesn't actually add anything it's a really cool place to be yeah I was looking for someone not just bringing their plate to the table you know like not you wanted a full of like a roast I was just like I wanted something I actually like I remember saying to you I want someone who inspires me and not inspires me in the weird like muse kind of way I wanted someone to inspire me to like do better in the other aspects of my life as well and kind of add to my life in that way there's a fine line though isn't there because you don't want to rely on it but I think there's this a lovely sort of sweet spot that you need to find where you're inspired regardless you can be inspired by sunsets whatever

but to have someone in your life, I want to look at them across the room. And I remember I had a boyfriend from when I was 21 to 28 and he was awesome. And I would watch him. He owned a restaurant that I worked in. He was quite a bit older than me. And he would just walk around the room and make everyone feel good. He could walk into a room and make everyone. I just looked at him one night and I went, oh my God, you're fucking awesome. Now this guy, he had a mullet and a rat's tail he was five inches shorter than me and people would look at us and go what how how do the two of you work together yeah but it was that you know where you just go oh my god you're fucking awesome I'm happy for you to be on the other side of the room I'm looking at you and

I'm just feeling like what a joy what a privilege just to know you you know that's it I did want to ask you something about not having children is not having children for you Sarah a childless by choice or was it a situation that you found yourself in or did life just not seem to go that way it was a combination of all three to be honest I think it is for almost every woman really there's not that many people that say I definitely don't want children that's the end of it like there's always going to be that niggle even if it's societal pressure I was told I couldn't have kids when I was 34 it was part of that Hashimoto's diagnosis and it turns out it was wrong so I then approached having relationships in a particular way which I think may have contributed to me

been single, which was like, well, a man's not going to want me, right? Because I can't have kids. Yeah. Which is a crazy thought now, which I'm sure you know. Yeah. Well, kind of turned out to be true. I think that's something that a lot of women deal with, particularly when you're like in your later thirties and you're kind of approaching that quote unquote biological clock. It's like, oh shit, my currency's declining. Over various years, kind of stuck two fingers up to that and went, I am going to own this life. So if I don't have children, I'm going to live like a motherfucker like I'm going to be single woman with no kids I'm going to be the poster child for it I'm going to make it look really fun that's basically what I did I went I am just

going to max I'm going to do all the things that women who are you know got children can't do not to stick it up to them by any but just to kind of stick it up to that expectation you know so there was there was certainly that but then it turns out at 42 I was seeing this guy and I got pregnant and that little one she I got mercury poisoning and she died and then I had four more pregnancies all of which happened the first time so by the time I had my last pregnancy I was 46 and it was all by natural causes like literally an ex-boyfriend like an ex-fling from 10 years earlier went oh I'll get you pregnant I don't want to have anything to do with the kid blah blah and And we had sex once and I got pregnant.

I went to Greece and bought sperm from a 21-year-old poet in Denmark and got it mailed. Of course you did. And got it sent to me. You've got to find a way. I fucking love that. You've got to find a way. Because by this stage I'd got too old to get in.

In Australia, if you're over, I think it's 42, I think it was, you can't use a sperm donor in Australia as a single woman. You can as a married woman. It's so terrible. Do they have a justification for that, like a medical justification? Well, I think it's a cost to the healthcare system. You're a single woman and there's risks involved and so on and so forth. Oh, that makes me so mad.

42-year-old women that have worked for their whole adult life are financially a lot more stable than... And probably committed. Okay, let's not get too angry. Let's go back to the Greek poem. I'm back to the Greek poem. And I decided not to get angry and go to Greece and get the situation sorted.

and so it was literally a turkey baster you know thing how did you find him did you just put like an ad out in the paper like looking for poet sperm well there's these websites right there's these websites where you can go in and you just scour it's like a dating app you know and this guy was really sweet his mother's best friend couldn't have children or couldn't find a partner and she used a sperm donor and so he just went when i grow up you know that's what i want to do and he wrote his little thing he said i don't have much money because i'm studying and i'm poet And so one thing I can do is give away my sperm. So anyway, I got pregnant that way straight away.

And it was a 0.01% chance at my age and with that technique. So I've been very, very lucky in that sense. But that little one, she tied herself in a knot at three months. And I write about this story in my latest book, This One Wild and Precious Life, because that motherhood story is a thread that travels through the book, along with the hiking stories, along with saving the planet, which is no. I had to find ways to make that climate story kind of sexy and approachable and real for people anyway so in the end and I'm open about this I finally got pregnant to this ex having sex once

I was 46 and I got very very sick and I was fostering kids by this stage I had you know a little foster girl with me and I was super sick my bipolar flared up my Hashimoto's flared up I was not sleeping. I couldn't function. I was going mad. And I went, oh my God, I'm going to be having to do this on my own. And I realized I would not be able to do the other work that I was doing. So my anxiety book was doing well. And I realized some people, my Dharma, my reason for being here was actually to do broader things, to go out into the world. And I knew I couldn't do it. and I wound up terminating the pregnancy. A very hard decision.

It's hard to sort of explain it, but I write about it and the reasoning and all the stuff that went on in sort of the final second last chapter of the book if anyone wants to flip to that bit, if they've ever been in that position and want to sort of find out how somebody else dealt with it. Yeah, I'm sure you've helped many people by writing about that and I'm sorry to hear. I mean it sounds like a very tumultuous journey.

I want to do something we've never done in the history of Life Uncut in 400 episodes. we have never finished an episode with an accidentally unfiltered gosh we forgot an embarrassing story we start every single episode with an embarrassing story but i have never met somebody that speaks as intelligently so many embarrassing stories you're so articulate you speak so well and you have so much to talk about that we we got into this chat before it started but i'm not letting you get off scot-free because why for some reason i feel like you have so many good stories give us an embarrassing story please oh gosh I actually I do have many

it sort of defines my life Liana who works with me she went oh my god Sarah which one are you going to choose because she just my whole life is just a tripping over myself which week which week do you want to choose it from yeah that's it I've got one from ages ago and it really speaks to what we were talking about before about different body images for different eras so when i was 16 i got literally stopped in a shopping mall and asked to like with a polaroid camera like a modeling competition and so i got called back i've got a little letter i've still got my letter so you remember when grace brothers was around it was called we used to call it gb's gb's was the teenage sort of section so i was miss gb's competition and quite a few models who went

on to become dolly cover girls and stuff came through this competition so anyway i got selected and so there was a big day at the shopping mall and I lived in the country and I didn't own a dress so I had to borrow Danielle Fern's dress from school and she was a bit bigger than me so I sat there like sewing in the seams I had a pair of sports girl brogues that had split the soles and my dad araldited them and put them on the gas heater overnight and I had slouched socks and all the other girls were wearing black tube dresses with their hair flicked on one side and they It looked like that Simply Irresistible film clip. I don't know if you know that.

Yeah. Anyway, I was just going with Bohemian chic well ahead of my time. Anyway, I was super skinny. And back then it was the end of the 80s and it was all about, like I mentioned before, full of figures, boobs, like Kardashian era type stuff. And it was only a few years later that the heroine chic look came in and it was to do with the recession. So it was still opulent times, except in my life because we lived on a subsistence living

farm. And so my dad and my brothers drove me in and I did this thing. And what I used to do at school was put little bits of toilet paper, like I'd fold it up and I'd put it in the side of my underpants to make me look like I had hips. And I'd do that but wear jeans, right? So I'd put it into the pockets of my jeans and then I'd wash them and dry it in the sun so I had paper mache hips.

Stop it. you did a bbl out of paper mache before it was a thing yeah that's it so i'm wearing a dress though with them tucked into my underpants and i'd safety pinned them to sort of like these chunky hip things and i'm walking down the catwalk and literally i they show us how to do a little spin at the end and i do my little spin and i walk out and toilet paper drops out right at the end of the catwalk anyway of course people are wondering where did that come from and my dad sees it and he's at the back and he yells out you little beauty and I'm just like I just had to I just had to scamper back behind the curtain and just went into fetal position I'm so here for this

yeah so that was that was quite embarrassing because that was when I used to get embarrassed no well most people put it down their top right most people like I'm gonna give myself boobs I've never, ever heard of a woman that has paper machined hips. Sarah, you're an absolute dreamboat. Thank you so much for joining us and taking some time out of your very busy dating schedule in Paris to come on the podcast today. Where can everyone find you? That was super fun. Not in Paris, but like online and, you know, don't give out your address. I've got a podcast called Wild with Sarah Wilson and I interview people who've got wild ideas. And then I've got a sub stack. Oh, you can go to sarahwilson.com. It'll all be there,

but I've got a Substack. If you just Google Sarah Wilson Substack, that's where I do most of my interaction, my writing three times a week. Amazing. I really enjoy your newsletter. So for anyone, everyone who listens to Life Uncut, whenever I jump on, we just seem to talk to one of our guests that I've read their newsletter and I must sound like I'm always... You are reading a lot of newsletters, Keisha. I really enjoy it. It's very nuanced conversation. It's truly like, it's very different to the majority of blog posts that I read. It often makes me go, Thank you. Yeah, that's a really thought-provoking thing.

Lovely chatting with you. All right, you guys know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our lowlight of each and every week. Keisha, you need to be in on this one because you have been in on the whole episode. What has been your suck for the week? I got bitten by a tick.

I think they bury into you and make a home. So I think you say my body became a vessel for a tick. It burrowed into your soul. I had a parasite. I think it was because I took Delilah to some different places in different parts over the weekend. Where have you been? I thought you only got Tixie if you'd been foraging around in the bush.

No, you can get Tixie around Bondi in the bushes, yeah. We go into the bush with Delilah. We're adventurous. Why are you hanging out in the bushes? We play hide and seek in the bush. We hide from Delilah and we go in the bush. Okay. She's a dog.

Actually very wholesome, Laura. It's wholesome. Okay, I'll not have you mocking our games with Delilah. No, do you know what it is? It's because Delilah runs off into the bush and you have to go in and get her. No, it's proper hide and seek. You have to find a different hide and seek

and her favourite thing is to try and find you. Cute. Laura's looking at us with such disdain. She's like, you guys are fucking weird, which is true. But, yeah, no, I got a ticket. It was in a really weird spot because I've been wearing sleeves because it's been cold, but it was on my shoulder, and my new boyfriend found it, and he wasn't wearing his glasses

when he tried to pull it out. So he kind of pulled out half of it, which I know you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to, like, put the Vaseline on it. And then he got the other half out a bit later, and now I've got this massive lump on my arm, and I don't know how long it's going to hang around for. and I'm worried that I've been poisoned by this tick. Also, the suck was that I was petrified that Delilah was going to get a tick

while you were away because there's like an added level of stress if it happens on my watch. Oh, yeah, kill my dog and you're out. Well, also, if you've got a tick, there's a good chance she could get a tick. Yeah, so I was checking her over. She would be in a better place for a tick to go than on a human's arm. Yeah, she messaged me. She's like, I think I got a tick when I was out with Delilah.

I was like, check the dog immediately. And I was like, oh, but also I hope you're okay. Yes, it's true. But Delilah's had her anti-tick stuff, so I think she's all good. i did check her over so that was my suck for the week which is sweet super gross but i am meeting the boyfriend's parents so big step in my relationship that's not gross it's cute although i am a little nervous and i feel like it's been a while since i've been nervous to meet someone because i feel like that's kind of part of our job but i'm a bit i'm a bit nervous just be and

if you're nervous because you like him all right what is your suck my suck is big call big call don't have one i had a really brilliant week i cannot fault my week at the moment because i'm very happy benny's here and i just feel like you also are gonna vomit in your mouth my life is complete i just made myself sick i'm really happy that he's here and we had a great weekend i actually just don't have a suck my sweet was hamilton island like we've talked about it don't have to talk about again but i just had an amazing weekend i think it's fair i think if you'd gone to hamilton island and then you were like my suck is that my coffee was cold i would have to smack you in the head so i'm glad that you came with this with a little bit of good perspective also glad

that ben is here and you're very happy all right my suck for the week is that matt went for a 21 kilometer run yesterday he ran four minute and 30 splits amazing like he absolutely smashed it but then he ran so hard that he came home and then had to go to bed for the entire day because exhaustion he ran so far and he ran so fast but this wasn't like it wasn't a organized run like he wasn't on a half marathon he just got up it is a half marathon distance though i saw his strava post very impressive oh yeah oh yeah but he woke up on saturday morning and went hey babe do you mind if i go for a run came home four hours later and couldn't get out of bed for the rest of the day and i was like i didn't subscribe to this when you said can i go for a run on the day that we

mutually had the kids I was like yeah sure think in an hour I wasn't thinking the entire day even he was like to be fair that was pretty bad sorry and so you're telling me he did that and you still gave him a blowjob the day before I gave him a blowjob and then he punished me with going for a four-hour run no you know what though very impressive time Matt if you're listening look Keisha I'm impressed that's irrelevant that's not that we're missing the point he wasn't gone for four hours he was gone for an hour and 39 minutes I saw his timestamp yeah which makes me question why he was gone for so long we were the other three hours yeah he's really into his running at the moment and i'm super proud of him because he's getting really really good but he pushes

himself so hard that he literally spent the rest of the afternoon in bed which you know look you can't do if that's the worst thing he's gonna do i would much rather matt run so hard that he has to go to bed then go and spend all day at the pub and not come home so why don't next weekend you go to the gym and then come home and say babe i just pushed myself so hard i'm exhausted i've got to Sleep for the rest of the day and then just see what happens. To be fair, I mean, that is exactly what I did to him for seven and a half weeks with Dancing With The Stars. I disagree.

I do not think those two are the same thing. Pretty similar. Anyway, look, Matt's not my suck. He's brilliant. But his running of 21 kilometres is my suck. And then my sweet for the week is my sweet for the week was mandarin picking in the backyard with the girls. It was so wholesome.

It was so cute. They had the frigging best time. And, like, this sounds so dumb, but we have this huge mandarin tree in our yard. last year the yield was not good they were so sour and you couldn't fucking eat them we didn't even know what they were and then this because it was like the rain that never stopped and this year it's like perfect climate and the mandarins are good and we have a million mandarins in our yard you know what i thought when i saw your post i actually was going to google it i was like is

there like a mandarin cake or something you can make because you know oranges there's so much you can do with but i feel like mandarins i think you can do jam you could make something out of because you've got hundreds. Yeah, but I'm not going to. Laura, make us some jam. Make the jam. If you guys want me to bring you mandarins and you make yourselves jam, I am all for that.

But anyway, guys, that is it from us. If you loved the episode, jump on, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also join us on the socials. It's Life Uncut Podcast on Instagram, TikTok. And then also you can join our discussion group, which is Life Uncut Discussion Group on Facebook. Don't forget, tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love love.

We'll be right back.