Life Uncut - The real life Martha from Baby Reindeer and that Piers Morgan interview

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Hey Lifers,Today didn't quite go to plan! Laura's car broke down on the way to work so Producer Keeshia is filling in for her.Britt got ... locked in a sauna. She quite literally was stuck in there waiting for Wim Hof to finish his meditative ice bath!How do you feel about being in the background of someone's video at the gym? Keeshia found herself in this predicament and felt really uncomfortable.  Then we have a chat about Piers Morgan's interview with the woman who is being labelled as the 'real Martha from Baby Reindeer'.We question: Whether interviews like this are exploitative and cross ethical boundaries Whether she has the right to defend herself Who is 'more' in the wrong; Netflix, Richard Gadd, Piers Morgan or the alleged stalker? Who owns a story? Whether it changes your opinion of the show You can watch the entire interview hereYou can listen to our episode with Michael Theo from love on the spectrum here You can watch us on Youtube If you have an question please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee 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 Gadigal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Keisha filling in for Laura this morning. Yeah, so we had a bit of a chaotic morning, a hurricane of a morning. So Laura won't be on the podcast today. She didn't quite make it in and producer Keisha is filling in for her.

Texts have been shooting around left, right and centre. Keisha, what's happened? You know how we always talk about like how we thrive in chaos and all of us are really chaotic. So this morning, I just want to first read you guys the message that Laura sent me this morning. So Laura picks me up every day for work. It's the fucking best. Because you're on the way. Yeah, I'm somewhat on the way, but also it saves me a lot of time. So she's usually on time to the

minute, right? She sent, traffic is bad hun, just coming through near Bondi Junction shops. And I said, no worries. I've got coffees in hand. I'm ready in our spot. She wrote, it's the bloody rain. Sorry. And she was sending this through her like car Siri, right? This next message from me says, honestly, please don't apologize. You're my boss and you pick me up for work. There is never a day that I don't acknowledge that that is really fucking kind of you. And it saves me a lot of time on public transport. So I get into the car. It was within six minutes of us being in the car together. We're kind of doing the debrief of how the weekend was, you know, Mother's Day. I spent it with my family. Laura spent it with her family. And we start going up a hill, like just slightly

up a hill at the entrance of one of the busiest tunnels in Sydney. It's the Cross City Tunnel for anyone who's familiar with it. And it's like peak hour. We're talking about 8am on the dot, on a Monday morning in the main tunnel, Cross City Tunnel. Laura kind of just goes, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And I looked at her in a hand. You know when you kind of like lift your hands off of the steering wheel and I was like, what's happening?

She said, my car just turned off and it's flashing up with like, you know, the alarms, like the whole like something's wrong, something's wrong. She's like, my engine has just stopped working. Oh, my God. So we're in one of the two lanes. We're in the right-hand lane going into the Cross City Tunnel and her car has just turned off.

Does it have an alarm itself, like an automatic hazard alarm, or do you still have to put the hazards on? I put the hazards on because I think Laura was kind of trying to figure out what the hell was going on. No hands on the wheel. And there's people behind us beeping. Anyway, so we've actually come to a complete stop and we're in this process of like what do we do?

Do we try and like turn it off and go again? But if we get into the tunnel, that's really dangerous to be broken down because there's so many, it's an 80s zone. like there was so many things going on anyway so Laura's like no we're just going to stop here we're going to call the NRMA and we're probably going to need to get towed all of these cars around us are like beeping us as though we just thought it was a really nice place to park the car and chill pisses me off because what do you think has happened do you think that the people in the car are like yeah you know what I'm gonna fuck this tunnel up it's peak hour on a Monday

morning I'm just gonna stop my car like the car has broken down so what the person already feels like a piece of shit what is beeping like continuous beeping going to do in that situation it was so chaotic and you know that feeling where you're like i don't know like we couldn't get out of the car because there was no walkway on the side like it was just a hazard right we had the hazards on i need to like if we were sitting there just in the middle of the road stopped without hazards on i would understand that people would be like what are you doing anyway this lovely lady in the tow truck for the tms came and got the car her name was vicky we got in the car, got in like the tow truck car and we got dragged to the fish markets.

And so we got out at the fish markets. Why did you hit the fish markets? Just get some brim for dinner before you get towed home? It really suited the situation because it smelt really fishy and it was just a fishy Monday morning. So Laura is currently, she's like, I'm going to take you to the safest place I know. The fish market on a Monday morning. There's no one there. So Laura's trying to sort out the mechanic side of the car right now. I got an Uber to work it was just utter chaos but we're here well you made it and I'm glad because we are going to put the episode out tomorrow because otherwise we wouldn't have had an episode for you guys do you know what's so funny that exact thing I cannot script it that happened to

me many years ago in the same place just before the tunnel my car just stopped as I was driving just stopped in the middle of the road and I'll never forget that moment and you reminded me when you said Laura just didn't her hands were going and she didn't really comprehend I like put my houses on called the NRMA and then I was like obviously the next logical thing to do is call my dad my dad lives five hours away I called my dad it doesn't matter how old you get doesn't matter how old you are I called my dad he's like hey possum what's up and I was like dad just quickly my car's broken down and he's like okay and I was like in the tunnel like this is really bad he's like okay well have you called the NRMA and I was like yep he's like are your

hasn't done i was like yep he's like are you in the car i said yep he's like i'm not quite sure what you want me to do he just wanted you to do the checklist the confirmation no he said i don't know what he's like okay so what are you calling me for and i was like i don't know you're my dad when i'm in a crisis i call my dad he's like okay possible let me know how it's like nothing he could do but it's that automatic like something's wrong i'm going to call my the person that you know has always been there it's when you need an adult to your adult 100 like even though you're supposed to be an adult you need someone who's better at adulting and more experienced at adulting and I think that it's kind it's kind of fitting because Laura was actually very cool calm

and collected I think I was the one who was a little bit more like oh I think because her car's broken down many times she's like this is a blip on the radar now she knows she knows the protocol it's probably time she gets a new one yeah well speaking of adult here adults happy mother's day to every single mum and our hearts are feeling for people who have different situations of their either motherhood stories or perhaps this was your first year or one of the years that you're missing your mum on Mother's Day and I hope that you were able to spend the weekend with the people that you love the most. Were you able to do anything? Your parents are quite far away. Well I am a dog mum so it was Delilah and myself. Did Delilah bring you breakfast in bed? She

attempted to. She ate it on the way so I didn't get it. My family's yeah five six hours away so I couldn't get up there this weekend so I did a lot of FaceTiming them but otherwise it was just me in the Squidlet. What did you get up to? I actually went up to Newcastle. That's where all of my family are. And I had the most family filled weekend. It's not lost on me that I am probably the only 30 year old I know that still has both of my grandmothers and their friends. They've been friends for like 60 years. It's pretty amazing. So I got to see both of them, but one of them has had kind of like deteriorating health for a while. And I think I just had that moment of like I just felt such deep guilt where I was like I live two and a half hours away why

don't I see them more it truly and it made me feel so so I know that we like I know life is busy life is busy and we all try to fit as much as we possibly can in I talk to my grandma on the phone really often and she is the most healthy nearly 90 year old that I've ever met like she's so with it absolutely knows what's going on and I love chatting with her sometimes I found that when I'm talking with my nan I can feel that she gets a little bit upset because she'll forget certain things like she forgot that I was in a relationship and that kind of thing but it was really fun to tell it all over again you're like nan it took me like eight years to get in this relationship don't just forget it yeah so I just had a family-filled weekend and I'm fucking exhausted a shout out to

all the mums because I was woken up by my nephews who were four and two I think it was 5 30 the first morning I was staying there six o'clock the next and I was like wow this is one of those moments where I've been thinking like maybe I'm nearly ready for this and then you're like oh I'm not no I was like okay there will be sacrifices that I will need to make and sleep is one of them but it's like this internal battle I did have like a very wholesome weekend just with Delilah but I nearly died this weekend I had a near-death experience now I broke down at the front of the tunnel when you were worried that cars were going to ram up the ass no it's worse this would be a worst way to go i got locked in a sauna i got locked in a sauna pardon yeah and it was britney

this is why i don't this is why i'm a little adverse to saunas no it wasn't the sauna's fault okay hear me out so i am in my sauna era you guys know that i have a sauna across the road from my house it's the most convenient thing i have ever seen so i'll sometimes be like on the lounge i'll be like i'm gonna have a sauna and i'm there in one minute it's amazing anyway they have ice baths as well. So I ducked over to the sauna because it was a really rainy weekend and I was in there alone. It was not a peak hour. There was no one else there. And because there's like two big saunas, four ice baths, it's amazing. So I'm in the sauna and then this other person comes to join me. This guy. No, it's great. It's a huge sauna. I don't care. But what happens is people max out

their sauna time. Then they go into the ice bath for as long as they can. And I've been trying to work up my sauna time and it was so hot and I was at my absolute limit like I was getting to about 20-21 minutes which at this heat is a lot what temperature is it do you know I don't know okay just hot as like hot as fuck yeah fucking lava temperature anyway it gets to the point you know that you have a limit and then you've got to get out straight away because you're like wow I don't feel good I feel sick I feel dizzy so the guy had gotten out and gotten into the ice bath a minute before I wanted to get out and what he had done is the ice bath's right in front of the sauna he got into the ice bath took the lid off and sort of like put it down the side hopped in put his

headphones in and started to meditate out in the ice bath and then I tried to get out and the lid to the sauna had wedged and locked me into the sauna and I was like shaking the door and I was like oh my god I'm stuck in the sauna and I started to beat on the window at him and he had his headphones blasting and he was meditating so he couldn't hear me and I was smashing the door as hard as I could because I was like I'm so fucking hot he does nothing and I was like okay it's cool ice bars people max out two three minutes right I was like my lip is quivering this is actually my worst nightmare I know I cannot think of that or being buried alive equal being locked in a sauna like equal I think buried alive is worse because it'd be harder to dig out but I felt like I was

in this moment where i was like i could probably run as fast as i can and throw my body at that and smash through the glass did you have anything in there that could break the no emergency glass break in saunas why is there not no good thought that's a brilliant idea anyway so i was like people max out at a couple of minutes in the ice bath it's fine so i was like i'm just gonna wait a couple minutes anyway old mate fucking ice man hoffman he's like i'm gonna go for like 15 minutes yes that's what he was he was like oh sorry i was going for the ultimate he's like i'm really training for the ice bath i was like well i'm about to die so 15 minutes smashing he opens his eyes and i don't know what he saw he must have looked in and i'm like melting down the screen

i was like help me so he gets up and he's like oh my god sorry what happened and i was like what happened you locked me in here what do you mean what happened yeah so um yeah slight exaggeration but i'm pretty sure i was close to death that was my sort of that was my sauna experience he needs a punishment he needs to be banned he was pretty cute no sorry sorry he's putting other people's lives at risk yeah in the sauna do you know I actually had a situation happen at the gym last weekend that now that we're talking about saunas ice baths gym situation I kind of want to ask you how you feel about it the gym so I was so so my boyfriend and I went to the gym together which you know we sometimes go and he'll go do his own thing we are very separate in the gym like I'll

go do my thing he'll go do his you're not that couple that like you know how one stands up and the other one puts their legs around the waist and they do sit ups on the crotch I'd literally rather die in this one I'd actually rather be buried alive than be that couple so I got a text from him and often I'll put my phone on do not disturb because when I'm working out I've got headphones in and I'll have a podcast playing and I don't like it how the headphones read out notifications and I don't know how to turn it off I know you can but I don't know how to so I've just like I just put it on do not disturb play on yeah he eventually comes over to me and he's like have you got my texts and I was like oh no why and so he's like just read them and you'll see so don't

just tell me well there was a reason he couldn't so I opened up my phone and from 15 minutes before he'd messaged me saying hey can you see that person behind you filming just letting you know like you're well and truly in it the camera lens like the view of the camera anyway I kind of looked around and there was this girl and she seemed to be filming her partner doing all different like I was just so unaware of it because I just like to keep to myself at the gym I don't like to get in anyone's way like anyway I was looking at her and well and truly I was like in the background of so much of this content imagine you're just like picking your nose picking out wedgies well to be honest I got really like almost irrationally angry about it right I don't know why

I felt so like for someone who's so much of it's not like I'm a private person like I talk about my literal sex life on a podcast that goes out to 100,000 people you know like it's not as though I'm someone who really values my privacy and doesn't want my image online or like but you've made that choice to do it you know which is different like you come on here in a safe environment you're you know you're ready you know you what you're gonna say you're in control so it's different I just really hated it and I almost got me to the point where I was like okay if she does it again am I going to go and say something to her oh my god firstly like what do I have the right to say in that situation I was like I don't want you filming me while I'm

working out especially when I didn't know about it I don't care people filming themselves at the gym if that's what you want to do cool but I didn't like the fact that everyone around had no choice in the matter I thought about it and I was like if she does it again I think I'll just say hey can you please make sure that like I'm not in the background of this because like I don't want to be but then she didn't get her phone out again and so I was like great you always wanted I'm like I kind of wanted you to say that at least you were more aware of it and maybe next time she would come in and ask. I'm in two minds about it. I totally understand that we live in a day and age where we live online and a lot of our businesses are online especially people in the

fitness industry. I don't mind people filming content for whatever reason but you probably need to be a little bit more self-aware in that environment and not just have everyone in it especially if like someone's you know someone's behind you bending over doing deadlifts whatever it is like it's irrelevant I was huffing like a pig yeah that's the real reason she's like have you seen the sweat on me no but I think I look at it in the way that you go to the beach on the weekend people are allowed to film there the number of videos that you are in in this world and you have no idea about just being in the background of people's down at Bondi down we're going for a walk a tourist destination wherever like people you're always in videos and think of

how many times you pan around on a walk and how many people are in your videos inadvertently so imagine if someone walked up to you at the beach when you were filming the view and was like excuse me delete that I'm in it get it I get that the environment is different and maybe they need to be a bit more self-aware but also I'm like it's it's sort of where we live now I yeah but like what alternative does like I mean do you just have to do I just have to accept it or do I just have to start working at home I mean these options feel kind of shit I don't think you need to go home because of this there are plenty of gyms that ban people from filming because they had too many influencers coming in and just like the influencers fucked it for everyone else well I think they were

taking not just that they were filming but when you're filming an exercise it takes you longer to do the exercise right so everyone's like get the fuck off the bicep machine like I want to work out everyone's like you're taking too long so maybe that's where it's going to go maybe people just going to blanket ban people but then that's sad because there are plenty of people that rely on that for their fitness businesses I did go and see this weekend Stephen K Amos so Stephen who I went into the I'm a celebrity get me out of here jungle with Stephen who's going to be on the podcast very soon he's the comedian from the UK if you didn't watch the show and if you didn't watch the show why a joke but he did a stand-up show this past weekend and I went to support him

as a friend and like a jungle buddy and look I know that he's a comedian by trade so I was like he'll probably be funny but having said that there are plenty of comedians that are not funny like there there are there are you name them list them for us well I don't remember because they were that unfunny but there are and what I mean by that is maybe they're not your sense of humor I didn't know what to think about Stephen because I'd never seen any of his content but I knew I liked him as a human anyway I went with Ellie and Tristan from the show it has to be one of my favorite stand-up shows that I have ever seen and I'm not just saying that because I know him I laughed from the moment he came on until the very end he was brilliant Jono who works with

us now he was also there did you also love it yeah we got double thumbs up he's yeah he's shy so yeah I'm just recommending it because I do know he has some other shows here in Australia I think he's still got a few left so if you get the chance to go he's well worth it and if you are one of our UK listeners because I know we've got a bunch of you as well he's always playing around the UK as well so that's my my recommendation he was so fucking funny speaking of comedians that I personally didn't find all that funny. Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer. Wow, it has been a journey with Baby Reindeer. A couple of weeks ago while you were in the jungle, Laura and I spoke about Baby Reindeer on the podcast and I had to put my hand up and say, look, I think I may be in the

minority here. I only watched half of the show. I really did not enjoy it. So you didn't finish it? No, I got up to, I think it was the fourth episode. It was the episode that things got very dark. I don't like watching content that makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. Like it's just, it's just how I am. I'm not one of these people who listens to true crime. It's just not my vibe. So I turned it off and I spoke about it on the podcast. I even posted it in the Facebook group. And essentially the synopsis of the responses I got were two things. One was that I was uncultured swine and that I didn't get it. And two, and this is what I thought was really interesting the main thing that people said to me was did you realize it was his own story it's a

true story of his own experience and I thought it was so incredible of him to be so honest so open and so vulnerable sharing his story that publicly and did you know that I saw at the start that it was based on a true story oh sorry I saw that it was a true story that was the difference in what I was expecting I didn't know it was his story so it did add a bit of a layer of complexity when I was like oh wow okay I didn't understand that I thought he was playing someone else's story yeah he completely it's all him so I felt similarly I know Laura recommended the show on here and I also know it is the most viewed Netflix show in the world so Laura's not the only person recommending it groundbreaking Laura it's still number one still sitting at number one on Netflix I mean

you didn't watch the rest of it Keish so like I pushed through it and it does explain it a bit but I was so deep in why are you letting this happen like why are you encouraging this why are you engaging why aren't you walking away like she keeps coming back because you are leaving these doors open and that really made me angry but when I watched the last half he got into more of the complexity about the feelings and the relationships that you end up almost forming with somebody that you know is not right but it's a relationship that only the two of you have and can understand and he explained that a lot more and so overall I got heavily sucked into the series. Yeah from everything that everyone kind of described afterwards I think it showed the complex

range of emotions that can happen in any type of abuse cycle you know especially compassion for understanding that the person who could be the perpetrator of abuse may have experienced it themselves or may have other complicating factors that have led them to becoming the person that they are. So for anyone who hasn't seen the show or maybe hasn't seen all of it like me This is a synopsis of it. I'm reading this for you so that I get the details right. It says, Comedian and an actor Richard Gad conceptualized Baby Reindeer

after a woman sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of weird GIFs, including a toy reindeer, over the course of four years. It began as a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and it got picked up by Netflix. basically netflix and richard gad have said that they wanted to tell the story because it is his

story to tell but they also wanted to protect the stalker's identity and the other people in it anyone that was accused of anything so they said while the show describes itself as a true story in the opening it says in the credits this program is based on real events however certain characters names incidents locations and dialogue have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes but the show's creator said his intention wasn't for viewers to try and investigate more of the story's origins but that is what ended up happening we've gone to such great lengths to disguise her to the point that i don't think she would even recognize herself what's been borrowed is an emotional truth not a fact by fact profile of someone these are pretty big claims to have in the opener when

everyone everyone sees it to say that this is a true story but then in the credits at the end to have like almost a byline disclaimer that like, whilst a lot of this is true, some of it's, you know, it's exaggerated. But what was so interesting about that is that I think it being a true story was one of the main things that everyone grasped. It was one of the things that they used to market the show. And it was something that people kind of said, you kind of can't criticize it when someone's saying this is what really happened to me. And this is my true story. They just said in that statement that the characters have been changed so much that they might not even recognize themselves. And sorry, but I'm going to say that that's not correct because the real Martha,

and I'm putting that in quotation marks, has come out over the weekend and she has done an interview with Piers Morgan, kind of telling her side of the story. And it was brought up a lot in the interview. The characters are so similar in appearance. The actual actress who played Martha in the show is British, but she put on a Scottish accent so that she could be more like the real life character. This interview, it went, it's on YouTube. It goes for nearly an hour. And Piers Morgan, who is usually known for being a really, really controversial figure. I actually think he did a relatively good job at this. I think he asked the questions that everyone wanted to know. And so my criticism of this interview is a little bit more about the actual interview existing in

itself. And I have a lot of ethical and moral questions about it. And still to this point, I'm not even sure where I completely land on it. The interview of the aftermath of the real life Martha is going as bonkers and as viral as the actual TV show. It's at 9.6 million views that YouTube already, 9.6 million views. Fuck, that is a lot. So the first half of the interview, the first 30 minutes, I was really surprised because I was like, oh my gosh, this woman is really normal. She's really intelligent. She's articulate. She is completely just rebutting everything, defending herself. I was really surprised because in my head, I guess you have an idea of what someone's going to be. We've watched the show, we've developed the idea and

I wasn't getting that at all. And then the second half of the interview rolled around and I completely switched my tune. I was like, oh my God, she's not well. She's unhinged. It's definitely her because she started to contradict herself a lot of her body language I'm not a body language expert at all but I could look at her and say oh my god she's she's floundering I feel like she's lying a lot of flittering eyes when she couldn't answer a question and looking away when she was answering and what were some of the contradictions so some of the contradictions were she would say things like oh I mean we were friends of course I messaged him like we were friends and then later on she'd be like I don't even know the guy then she'd say she absolutely never contacted him

didn't send emails or whatever and then she said oh no I sent a few later on she sent a few just a lot of different things where she almost forgot maybe she said something if that makes sense yeah there were just some really strange things like but she says it in a way that's so convicting and normal so she'd say she's got she's like oh well I don't remember where I sent messages from I've got four phones and he was like why do you have four phones and she's like well that's normal I just like to keep people separate and Piers was like well that's not that normal like no one has four phones and she's like yeah I know loads of people with four phones it's like so you can just you know keep different whatever then she would say things like I sent him only a handful max

of letters because she sent him hundreds and hundreds of handwritten letters like this apparent stalker and so she would say I sent him a couple of letters maybe it was 10 max and he's like oh so you definitely did send him a handwritten letter she's like yes but it was always just supportive and saying I'm sorry about your sexual assault or whatever else congratulations on the show. And he's like, amazing. So if Richard actually has 300 letters from you, they could do a handwriting analysis to confirm that all 300 letters are from you. And then she said, well, he would have forged them all. So it just started to unravel. And I think that's when the world has started to say, okay, this is her. I mean, allegedly this whole thing for me is

allegedly, allegedly don't sue me, but everyone's like, okay, it's looking like that this woman is the real life stalker and this is where all the discussion has come from now in the world should piers morgan have been able to do that interview should we have given this woman the platform in the space to talk about what happened because on one hand this is absolutely also her story to tell and she's even even if it's not her story to tell she's been brought into this hellhole so if she isn't the stalker the whole world thinks that she is so she should have a right of rebuttal and defense. But if she is the stalker, should we be giving her the platform if she's mentally not sane? And this is where the conflict of interest is coming from everyone. There's half the world

is like, this should have never happened. She's not well. And the other half is why are we not punishing her if this is true? I feel so many different ways about this. And I think for me, they're all existing at the exact same time. Part of me is thinking she has every right to defend herself because like, you know, Netflix has said, oh, we tried to conceal their identity. They wouldn't even recognize themselves that's factually not true you can see the actress and the real life Fiona Harvey it's almost uncanny and they also tracked her down within two days yeah it wasn't that hard it wasn't hard so that to me I go she has the right to defend herself whether this ever faced the courts or not is still a little bit unclear because in the show she pled guilty she

was convicted for stalking but in this interview she said that she's never had a criminal record that that never happened that she never went to court and a lot of people are saying well okay where's the court records i did read something here i wanted to get this information for everyone because i was curious about it myself this is an article from the guardian this is more difficult to fact check in the uk than it is in the us in the uk criminal records are publicly available and the criminal records office has records of every arrest charge caution and conviction however the human rights act states that criminal records are not publicly viewable and less released by the courts. So it looks like there's a little bit of complexity there.

And I even think, let's say that she is guilty of this. Let's say that she was found guilty in the court. Is the court of public opinion worse? You know, like she's done the crime, she's done the time or whatever the punishment may be that she ended up having to go through. Do we then have the right to kind of go, well, she has to face more punishment because now we're going to tell that I just, it's great. It doesn't exist black and white for me. And I feel as though it's like, well, do we believe in a society where justice means retribution or does it mean that we give these people the ability to learn and grow from their mistakes and pay for their punishment and move on? If someone had have come to me and said, you have the opportunity to interview the

real life Fiona Harvey, do you guys want to do it on the podcast? I would say yes. I don't like I don't know like honestly I really would see saw because I would know how much it would do for us as a business like you know I know that that would be so watched and wanted by the world but I also know that these things just are so complex when you're talking about someone who may or may not be mentally unwell also what's the scale of that like is anyone who's mentally unwell not allowed to have you know ability to tell their own story and defend themselves fuck I'm mentally unwell like I get on a podcast all the time where's the line yeah but I think the difference is right think of it this way Fiona real life Martha has said this is not me like I

am not the stalker that's what she's saying I want to defend myself she wanted to speak out and tell her side of the story so who are we if she's innocent and this wasn't her of course she should have a platform to argue that a hundred percent she should be able to defend herself and explain her side of the story. Like there's always three sides to a story. Richard has had his platform and it has gone bonkers and I think he had no idea that it was going to be so big. I don't think anyone had any idea it was going to be the most streamed thing

Netflix has ever seen. What's happened is it almost looks like it's unravelling for her in that instance. So it looks like Piers Morgan, of course, has capitalised on a business and said, yes, I'm going to get so many downloads from this, this is going to be great for me. But he's also saying, well, she's saying it's not her, we should give her a space imagine if someone imagine if hypothetically it's not her and she

has been brought into this chaotic tumultuous world that is absolutely ruining her personally and her business her career as a lawyer because she's still working as a lawyer her relationship she's in a relationship she said who are we then to say nah just in case it is you we're not going to let you tell your side of the story we can't say to someone that you're not allowed to come and argue the point when the whole world is convicting you of something if that's not you I actually feel differently to that because I think about people like Bruce Lerman with the interview that he did with Channel 7. I think about Ben Robert Smith. And I think about these people who have been found guilty in a court of law. But that's different because this is

a character on TV where the world has just pinpointed a human and said, oh, that's them and condemned them without knowing. So I think it's different. So I think she was entitled to tell her side of the story because it could have gone one of two ways. The world could have been like holy moly far out that's not you we needed to cut you some slack or could it make it worse for her you know I think it has yeah now the world's going now you've put your name to it you've put your face to it we all know what you actually look like like I just I don't know this whole thing to me feels so murky and I'm curious as to whether it has changed people's perception of the show or even of Richard Gadd you know do you think this takes away some of the recognition

that he got for such an honest and vulnerable portrayal of his story of abuse well there are a lot of people and this is what I when I mean by I say when I I formed my opinion after I watched it and then I did a lot of googling online to what the general public's opinions were firstly a lot of the media outlets they hate Piers Morgan anyway so they're dragging him they're just saying he shouldn't have done it it was a car crash it was terrible I didn't actually feel that at all whether he should have done it or not is like you know the ethical question surrounding whether you should be having given a platform to these kind of people is another question I didn't think it was as bad as the media are making out but a lot of people it's often not yeah it's really torn

with public opinion because there are a lot of people that are saying Richard Gad shouldn't have had the platform to tell a story that could point to the real people even though it's his story so a lot of people are now switching their tune on him there are a lot of people that have intensified their hate for the real life Martha like so whether she did it or not she's now receiving 10 times more hate death threats a lot of people are hassling her media and public and then there are a lot of people that are in Martha's defense saying why are we condemning her a if it was real why did she go to prison when she was obviously mentally unwell and b why are we now publicly condemning her she's mentally unwell I have a problem with that and the reason

I have a problem with that is because I think if you changed the sexes here, if this was a female and there was a male that was stalking her, sending her 40,000 messages, turning up and sitting outside her house, sexually assaulting her at nighttime in a dark alley, if this was the other way, we wouldn't be saying, why is he going to prison? He needs mental help. We wouldn't be saying that. We would say, put him in prison. So I'm having a bit of a hard time that if this is real and she did sexually assault him and she did stalk him and turn up at his house. And why is it different? Because she's female. I actually learned about this through someone who was going to be on the podcast very shortly named Nicole Madigan. She wrote a book called Obsession. She

was stalked by a woman in Australia. And towards the last part of her book, she talks about the gender breakdown of stalkers, what's most common, what's uncommon. And she wrote this part that really stood out to me. And she said a main reason that when women stalk men, it is underreported. it has a lot to do with the idea of physical intimidation. So we have this kind of gender stereotype that if it's a female stalker and a male victim, they're not going to be able to hurt them as much because the physical dynamic is almost in reverse of what we typically see. Whereas if it was a man who was the perpetrator and it was a woman who was the victim, we all naturally go, well, that's such a threat to her physical safety as well as her mental

well-being. And the show did very accurately depict the complexity of this situation. And it just makes me feel quite uncomfortable that this complexity is now extending into the real world. It's really extending into all of our lives. There was a quote in the Guardian article that I mentioned before, and they said, by promising viewers a true story and by doing such a shoddy job of masking Harvey's identity, baby reindeer might have invited us to speculate on what really happened but this has made us complicit well it opens up a whole new question right who owns the story yeah benjamin king is netflix uk senior public policy director and he came out the day before the interview he was talking this is in uk parliament and he said

ultimately it's obviously very difficult to control what viewers do particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media i personally wouldn't be comfortable with a world in which we decided was better that Richard was silenced and not allowed to tell the story and that really is thought-provoking because when I was reading some of these articles online I was like wow you know it I get it maybe he shouldn't have told his story like that knowing that it could have resulted in this public vitriol of a either unwell woman or a potentially innocent woman but then how can we as a society say to somebody who was sexually assaulted and stalked and traumatized, how can we then go and say to that person, you shouldn't be able to tell your

story? Because it's both people's stories, both parties' stories. And it's just unfortunate in a way, fortunate and unfortunate, that the show Baby Reindeer blew up to the level that it did, because it raises so much awareness for A, stalking, B, the fact that stalking can be either sexes. And like you said, Keish, it did it very well. It showed a very accurate representation of what stalking can look like and the complexities of the relationship. I don't know what the right answer is who are we to say he can't tell the story but then the public shouldn't be going and condemning this woman anyway but we can't control that and that's what Netflix have said right they're like unfortunately we can produce something to the level that we think is appropriate that we

think we've done a great job we think we have tried to mask someone's identity but we can't control the public from there on out and then that falls back on us as the consumer 100% are we complicit in watching yes that's okay are we complicit in the public hate of and condemning of a person also yes if they can produce something to that level and do it in a point like i would never know who she is because i didn't go on a rampage to go and try and stalk and find out who she is then i didn't find out who she is and then go and put public hate on her profile that's on us as the consumer do you remember grace tame one of the amazing australians of the year she did so much work to do with overturning the laws that prohibited sexual assault victims from naming

and telling their stories yeah I think I don't know exactly what the legislation was and it was state-based so it was quite complex but it was not long ago that the survivors of sexual assault were not allowed to name themselves or tell their stories if there were certain conditions that happened during their sexual assault yeah and that just seems absurd it seems like a second abuse of power towards people who experience sexual assault because not only do you have to go through it but then you're also responsible for keeping it quiet and keeping that story hidden women don't even want to ever report that something has happened because nothing's going to happen to the fact that grace tame wasn't even allowed to tell her side of the story and she was just a

representation of so many women that were in that position yeah and it makes me think about richard gad and now i'm thinking well he was the victim of sexual assault and he has every right to shout that from the rooftops exactly oh it's so complex isn't it yeah and it just comes back to the question, who owns the story? That is why I think it was important that she was given a platform to tell her side of the story. Whether people agree with that or not, that's just my personal opinion. But I think Richard had his platform to tell his story and he deserves to tell it. Like anyone that has been through that should be able to scream that from the rooftops. And he could have named and shamed the people in it if he wanted to. I don't believe there are any

clauses that stop him from naming people that, especially if she was convicted, but he chose not to he still chose to try to protect those people didn't quite work out piers morgan's asked her if he could do a lie detector test he's like would you do a lie detector test she's like yeah absolutely i'm not lying and he's like okay so if we brought one in you would do it now and she was like no i'd have to think about it i'd have to think about it see this makes me uncomfortable i think the only way that this needs to go forward and maybe in these situations is that this needs to be put before a court where it is judged appropriately yeah not by the public yeah not by the public because i think the court of public opinion is potentially a lot more biased we

obviously all have our own biases that we put into these stories i mean we've seen this happen richard gag came out on his instagram and said uh essentially there's an another person who perpetrates sexual assault on him in the show and it's not as clear who that is but people apparently were going after, they thought they'd figured out who it was and they were absolutely targeting him. And Richard Gadd had to come out and say, hey guys, that's not who it was. Please stop sending death threats. Please stop infiltrating this man's life. And he had to step down from his job. So yeah, someone's life has been ruined because of the public court of law. But would we feel differently if it was the right person? Would we feel differently if the person

who actually did that, the public went after them and then they had to step down from their job? because I go you kind of deserve that if that's what you've done to someone however many years ago that's what should have happened through the court you should have been held accountable and I guess it just gets so murky when we balance this whole like what's been proven in court what has actually happened to someone what's the punishment for the person who's done it so many people who perpetrate sexual assault and abuse like stalking don't ever have to face up to the consequences so do we just take the consequences into our own hands and no the answer should be no I think I don't think that we should be attacking people online for in especially in this situation

we can still watch this Piers Morgan interview and say we think it's her but we don't know it's her no one knows it hasn't been proven that it's her I think it'll be interesting because she said that she was going to sue Netflix for defamation which probably is the only way that we're going to get clarity over this scenario and the story of what happened and well I think the thing is right and this is where she might have a leg to stand on this is why it's going to be so interesting to watch because if and look believe it or not i'm not a lawyer but if uh if they have said that this is a true story and she has had this level of defamation if say they said she sent 41 000 emails and she turned up at his house every single day at whatever else but if she only

sent 30 000 emails and she never actually turned up at his house if it gets down to the nitty-gritty details and Netflix made the mistake of not promoting enough that it was based around a true story, then she probably does have a leg to stand on. So it's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this play out in the public before. Okay, it's time for Accidentally Unfiltered, your most embarrassing story. I have one. It's not overly embarrassing. I think it's more funny, but I'm trying to put myself in this position. Actually, I'd probably be stoked if I was in this position. When I was 40 odd weeks pregnant with my third baby, my husband and I were having sex to bring on labor. When we finished,

a massive pool of water came from me, like soaked through all the bedding to the mattress. I was like, shit, the waters are broke. Woo, let's go. Anyway, we got to the hospital and they obviously test the liquid to check what it is and if it's your waters. They started questioning me about the circumstances and i told them that we were having sex to bring on the labor the midwife then comes back with the results and tells me my waters have not broke in fact the liquid was come i had squirted so intensely she squirted so hard she thought her waters broke man tell us your secrets How do you squirt? I don't want to be squirting the volume of like.

I don't want to be drowning, Ben. I want Ben to be like having to put goggles on because the squirt is so much. She squirted so much she thought her water's broke. That is the funniest thing. Why did the person who tested that tell you that? Why didn't they just say we actually think it might have just been a bit of urine. Like there would have been pressure everywhere. That is important to know.

And also what a hype up moment. You can imagine the husband going to work next day. Hungy. Yeah, boys. Made us squirt so hard we thought the baby was coming. Gross. Okay, this one's also sex related. It's a quick little short one.

My husband and I have a seven-month-old baby, so sexy timing in our house isn't a regular occurrence. Tonight we put the baby to bed and we were getting jiggy with it on the couch in the lounge. Good for you. All of a sudden we hear this loud click. Silence. Wiggle, wiggle.

Like doing a dance-off. A mouse got caught in the mousetrap and there was just a mouse dying off to the side where we were trapped. Oh my God, that makes me feel sick. What a way to kill the mood. Don't do mousetraps, they're so cruel, aren't they? Nah, sorry, rodents are not a vibe. Rodents are not a vibe when you have sex, that's for sure. They're just not a vibe at all.

What do you do if you're in the crucial moment, you're climaxing? Do you keep going or do you have to stop and move the rat? It's a million dollar question. I don't know if I could keep going I think I'd have to stop I'd have to stop although it's already caught like it's not gonna get away I guess that is true actually it's just a lake why don't we have both I don't know I think it hits different when there's a dead animal in the room with you yeah they don't smell for a while they don't smell for a while I've actually been in the situation once where uh speaking earlier about how you had to call your dad there was a

dead rat outside of my house and uh i didn't live with my mom at the time but i just didn't have it in me to move the dead rat and so i was not in a relationship and i needed to call my mom and get her to come and pick up the dead rat and put it in the bin you called your mom don't yeah she's a trooper happy mother's day mom delilah like a year or two ago remember when delilah escaped and brought home yeah it was already dead but she picked it up a dead possum it was pretty big too And she was like, she was so proud. She was like, look what I got, mom. Put it in my back door.

I also didn't have anyone to move it, but I didn't call my mom. I had to pick it up myself. It was a giant. I do remember you sent me videos. Traumatized. Yeah, because you tried to get me to do it and I refused and I told you the rat story then. I was like, if I couldn't move a rat, I cannot move the bigger,

cuter costume of a rat, which is awesome. All right, let's do our suck in our suite, highlights and lowlights. my suck of the week my sister sherry has been she's my best friend you guys a lot of you guys on the podcast know her she's been living overseas in scotland for a long time you know that because she hangs out with ben more than i hang out with ben so she was coming home for good to move home in june she's been living over there for like two years now and they've just decided to stay on what for another year yeah so she's staying on which i think is amazing because i'm like before you settle down and have kids and you've got your mortgages and you know travel as much

as you can live overseas I think it's amazing but I just was really excited for her to be an hours flight away instead of 25 hours flight away so I get it but that's my suck of the week it's like oh it's another year without my bestie you thought the light was at the end of the tunnel literally moving further away yeah I'm surprised by that because I see her stories all the time about how like awful the weather is over in the UK and obviously our weather here is better well I think it's because his family's over there obviously and also like every two weeks you can just go to Paris on an hour flight for cheap like when it gets cold and miserable they go to Greece because it's like us it's like me going to Port Macquarie or the Gold Coast it's the equivalent

but they get to go all over Europe so I totally get it but definitely my suck and my sweet of the week is I just saw this last night you guys might remember many years ago we interviewed Michael from Love on the Spectrum or you might not have heard that interview but maybe you've watched love on the spectrum and you know who Michael is. He was a breakout star. He was just the most beautiful person on there. He was on two seasons and the world just fell in love with him. And we did too. So we had him on the podcast. I'm going to actually get Keisha to put that interview link in to these show notes. If you haven't listened to it, he's just a dream. I remember when we did the interview and talking to him, he always wanted to be an actor and he would always do his voice

overs for us. He does so many characters and it was really great. And fast forward a few years, I saw last night he is like a main character in this new TV series that is based around an autistic man, like an autistic son. So he's obviously playing that role. And I watched the trailer. It's about to be released on ABC. And I was just so emotional. I get emotional now because I'm like I'm so proud of him.

Yeah, chasing his dreams. For just not giving a fuck, chasing his dreams nonstop. And I watched the trailer for this show. It looks brilliant. It's like a new comedy kind of drama and he is amazing in it. I messaged him last night and I'm just – it was my sweet by far of the week, seeing someone, especially someone like Michael, just not give up and tick his box.

I was like, I'm just frothing it for him. Oh, that's good. I can actually see that you're like really emotional about it. I could cry now. I don't know why. I just – I love to see it. Yeah. My suck for the week, actually, guys, breaking news,

I am finally allowed to talk about what my boyfriend does as a job. Oh, why? because he's decided to keep you so for anyone who has been listening to the podcast for a long time he still doesn't want me to use his name we call him Toblerone it's a bit of a personal joke it doesn't make any sense to me it never has but I've just been told that that's what he's okay with and we kind of have to accept it Toblerone he also told me that I was never allowed to talk about his job and that I was like why is that the case and kind of the feedback I got eat on the side of like it's because what you do for a job could impact me in a negative way

well I think it's because so I will tell everyone now my boyfriend's a doctor and he has just gotten a job at the start of this year at a big hospital here in Sydney and to get onto this specialty program it's super super competitive and basically it's not based off of things that you would expect it to be it's really like it's a personal thing and essentially he didn't want to give anyone anything that could work against him until he was like solidified in this position yeah so talking about like butt play and stuff probably wasn't going to go well in his interview i mean sorry if you're a gastroenterologist that would get you the job oh so you like things up the butt got it great okay we're talking about this publicly so i ended up meeting a lot of uh his work friends

a couple and like his bosses all of his bosses at the footy a couple of weeks ago and they were really lovely and we got on really well so I think that he's kind of like softened he's like okay I'm in now they all know you and they know what you do so if they wanted to find information they could now but related to my suck is that he is on seven nights of night shift so they work at ranges depending on the weekend or the weekday but it can be from like 8 30 at night until nine o'clock in the morning and it's seven days in a row yeah and for anyone who's with someone who works shift work. This is so selfish of me, but I'm like, it really affects your life in a couple of ways. One is because you barely see the person that you live with, but two is that when you're in your own

house, you've got to be really cognizant of it. Like our wardrobe is in the room that he sleeps in when he's on night shift. So I have to plan everything that I want from that room and from that wardrobe ahead of time and pop it in the spare room because we'll sleep separately for this whole week. And like, when I'm at home, I've got to be super quiet. I bet Toblerone is like, wow, Keish, I hope you're okay. I get it. I used to do eight on six off night shifts. So eight in a row, you would do the entire night and you'd finish at 8am. Yeah, I get it. But I also feel more sorry for him than you. I also feel more sorry for him than what I do for me. But yeah, this week is going to be like, it's going to be a weird one. So thinking of anyone who either has

a partner or themselves does like shift work because you're amazing I don't know I honestly don't think I would be able to do it because firstly I'm obsessed with sleep but my sweet for the week I think would be that I really had this beautiful moment with my nan last night her and I before she had more health complications everyone said we were two peas in a pod we're exactly 60 years apart and our personalities were so similar like she just cracks me up like no one else on this planet and it's been really sad the last couple of years kind of just seeing her lose a little bit of herself and it's not that like her memory's not bad I think she thinks it's worse than it is but it's just been really sad for me to be like oh the you that's you wouldn't

have reacted to that situation in the way that you just did and you can see she just doesn't have as much joy in her life because she's in pain and she's got a variety of health complications but we had this moment yesterday where she was like I just miss you so much call me more I want the chat and I was like wow tell her to listen to the podcast I absolutely will not no that might be exactly what she she might love that she would not love it for reasons similar to what my boyfriend thought his workmates would think but yeah no it was such a beautiful moment for me it was something that I think I'll like remember forever and I feel teary thinking about it because like I do definitely need to make more of an effort but it was that beautiful reminder that

I needed to connect with my with my beautiful name and that is it from us hey guys guess what we got to 2,000 subscribers on YouTube so thank you to the 2,000 of you if we had more money we'd do sound effects no guys we love that you guys are subscribing and watching please if you haven't watched yet the episodes are so great to watch it's just a different way of consuming the podcast. And I think it's cool that you get to see it and hear it. So please just find us on YouTube and follow. There are so many cool episodes on there. So many interviews. It's a lot of fun. Speaking of subscribing, if you are a listener right now, stop what you're doing and hear me out. Unless it's driving, please continue to continue driving.

If you're operating a heavy machinery. No, but if you listen to the podcast and you enjoy the podcast, but you haven't actually hit the follow or the subscribe button on whatever you're Apple or Spotify, please do that. All it does, it's not a cost thing. It's all of our episodes are free, but it just means it'll automatically download and populate into your feed. So you never have to find us. It's always on time, but it does a lot for us in the backend as well. It does a lot for us to know who is listening and where you guys are, the demographic. It helps the podcast to grow. So we can't stress that enough. If you listen, please just hit the subscribe button. Yeah. I don't want to bore you with the data, but the data is awesome for us. And it

also means that we can see more of like how long you've been listening to things so that we know what content was super engaging so that we can try and bring more of that for you so yeah like i said not gonna bore you with the stats it helps make a better podcast for sure yeah so it can make us know what to give you more of yeah what i'm trying to say in a roundabout way but you know the drill tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friend oh sorry i got used to saying it while oh my god keisha do we want to say it together okay we'll say ready oh my god i feel I just feel like someone was cheating on me. Two, one.

Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends and share the love because we love love.