Media Storm - Helena and Mathilda's Little Revolutions

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

This week, the roles are reversed as your Media Storm hosts become the interviewees! Helena Wadia & Mathilda Mallinson sit down in conversation with journalist Masuma Ahuja on Little Revolutions, a podcast by Freeda. Little Revolutions is a series of conversations about the double standards, societal problems, and systemic injustices that feel bigger than any one of us. Every week, guests share relatable little revolutions they’re making in their own lives and the ways in which we can all be changemakers. Helena & Mathilda discuss setting up Media Storm, what they would say to their younger selves, and give you juicy stories from working inside the mainstream media. Follow us! Freeda @freeda_en Masuma Ahuja @masumaahuja Mathilda Mallinson @mathildamall Helena Wadia @helenawadia Media Storm @mediastormpod We've launched a Patreon. If you want to support us for a small monthly fee, head to patreon.com/MediaStormPodcast Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Halloween is on Disney Plus So you can feel a little fear What's this? Or a little more fear I see dead people Or a lot of fear Or you can get completely terrified Who's that?

Choose wisely With Halloween on Disney Plus Welcome to Media Storm, everybody. Today we have a special episode that we are recording from the Freeders Studios. Helena, tell us why we're here. We're here because we have just recorded an episode of Lisbon Revolutions with their wonderful host. But in Little Revolution style, we're not going to introduce the host. We're going to allow her to introduce herself.

And as you put it, how would you define yourself? Oh, I don't like the table's being turned on me. My name is Missa Mahujah. I'm a journalist. I have lived in lots of countries. I'm a multi-country person. I'm a curious person, a person who likes a good story. Beautiful. And why were Little Revolutions the story that you decided you wanted to focus on? Because I'm a big believer in the stories we tell shape culture and shape our understanding of the world.

everywhere I look, the problems that we want to tackle in the stories we tell and like our collective understanding feels so much bigger than any one of us. And we all have power. We're all capable of doing small things, if not doing big things. And very often I don't know where to start. So I did what any journalist does and I decided to report out the problem and talk to lots of people to understand how they were doing it. Would it be fair to characterize yourself as optimistic. To me, this seems like a very optimistic thing to do. I think it's realistic if you want to continue to exist in the world, right? If we believe there isn't any hope for things to change, then what's the purpose of living? So I think it's realistic. But I guess that's

optimistic. Yeah, I'm a big belief that optimism is realistic. Can you tell us about some of the people who have been on Little Revolution, some of your favorite stories, your favorite guests. I mean, apart from us, obviously. I could talk so much about how great you guys are. We've had a lot of really different types of people on here because everyone's experience is different. Some of the conversations that have stayed with me the most,

one of them was with Mandu Reed, who is the leader of the Women's Equality Party, and she and I talked a lot about the backlash that comes before a big change off. and how in this moment it's so easy to feel despondent, but actually that's a tool. That's a tool to help us stop trying and help us stop being optimistic. But if there is backlash, it means someone is listening. And if there is backlash, it means that we have power.

And the backlash is assigned to keep going because before any big change, there's always backlash. And she talked about the end of apartheid, which she saw in her lifetime. We talked about how wild it would be for a woman before she had the right to vote to imagine a world where she would be equal, where a woman would be leading countries, and how we have to keep imagining. So it's a sort of two steps forward, one steps back? The arc of history bends toward justice kind of thing, right? Like in the large sweep. And if you look in the large sweep, we're moving forward, but also, yes. And do you see what you're doing with Little Revolutions as a little bit of a revolution in

itself? I think a lot of what we're trying to do at Frida at large, and this is Little Revolutions is one part of it, is trying to shift things. And I guess that is a little revolution in some sense. We're being very thoughtful where I've been in the industry for about 15 years now and understand the mechanics of how it works and trying to be very intentional about how we move things forward, how we push the conversation forward, and how we bring people along the journey with us. So I guess it is a revolution, yeah. Can you tell us a bit more about

Frida and what kind of work is done here besides Little Revolution? Yeah, so we are a social publisher, publish on Instagram, TikTok, I'm going to say lots of things now that aren't correct probably, YouTube, Facebook, and sometimes LinkedIn, and also our podcasts. And we started very much with, it started in Italy and then went to Spain and then came to the UK with English language and started with the premise of our mission being at the heart of what we do. So we never pretended to be unbiased or balanced. We have a bias. We have a perspective.

Everyone does. Anyone who says otherwise is not a human. And for us at the heart of it was we want to tell stories to shift things forward to change the world. So telling stories, human stories that inspire young women to believe a free and equal world is possible is our mission statement and that we we bring it into existence by living it together. So we're all in it together. The communities of the heart of it.

And the easiest way to convince someone of something or get them to see something differently, kind of like what you do at MediaStorm is to let people tell you their stories of their lived experiences because you can never argue with someone's life. You can argue with their opinion, but you can't argue with their life. Definitely. Yeah. As living, you mentioned you lived in multiple different countries, has living in multiple different countries shaped the way that you do interviews, that you think about community?

I guess so. It's a weird one where I'm like, I've never had any other experience. So for me, it's the only way I know the world. But I think the reason I became a journalist was because I felt like a translator between cultures where I just wanted people to understand each other. And I felt like I often got more of the difference in media than the similarity. and I wanted to bring those together. And that's generally what I try to find in every story I tell as well. And before we move on to the next part of the show, where we'll be playing some of our interview on Little Revolutions,

would you just tell everyone where they can follow you, where they can follow Frida and anything else that you have to plug? They can follow Frida at Frida underscore En on all the social platforms that I listed. You can follow me by looking up my full name and find little revolutions wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. On today's episode, I chat with Helena Wadia and Matilda Malinson, the hosts of the podcast Media Storm. All three of us are journalists who have worked in big newsrooms and have been. left them to try and create something better, something that reflects the communities we serve, the world we grow up in, and people's lives. In this conversation, we dig into why it matters how stories are told and who the storytellers are, and the ways in which the stories we tell can shape our understanding of the world and make something better. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So nice. So to get us started, we don't like to define people.

we let people define themselves and introduce themselves how they would like to be known. So how would you both like to introduce yourselves? Shall I go first? You go first. Okay. I am Helena, Audia. I have recently turned 30 years old. I'm saying recent. It's July.

I'm saying it's recent. I am a journalist because I believe the news should be and could be and sometimes is a force for good. I'm co-host of Media Storm Podcasts with my lovely co-host over here, Matilda, which is amazing because I love hearing people's stories and listening to people's stories and helping them tell their stories. I am a fierce feminist and feel very deeply and passionately about social justice and very sensitively about it as well. And I am a big indie music fan. Love going to live music. That's my life force. That's what makes me feel alive. That's me. Thank you. I love also that you included

more than just your work in there because you're a human. It's so hard like just trying, when people say, you know, it's always what do you do? And I'm trying not to let just what we do define us, you know. And that was so stressful when you were early, 20s figuring out what you wanted to do, sometimes doing things that weren't quite right for you or as many people have to do jobs that aren't quite right for them. Yeah, when the, when the upfront question is, what do you do? It's not necessarily the way you want to define yourself. Also, we do more than like, hello now, listens to indie music, right? Like, we do more than the work we do. But Matilda, how do you want to define and introduce yourself? So I'm Matilda, Matilda Malanson. I'm

yet to turn 30. Sorry. also a journalist but didn't grow up necessarily wanting to be a journalist that was something I came into because I wanted to be useful um also because I find it fun and fun is important to me I haven't really thought about how I was going to define myself in advance I am very impulsive sometimes too much so um but it works really well in a partnership like Helena's and mine and I love to travel mostly because I love to be outside of my comfort zone and exposed to people with totally different worldviews to mine. That is the best therapy for me, the thing that gives me the most perspective that grounds me and that can pull me out of any crappy mood as quickly as

possible. That is such a wonderful definition. Thank you. I'm going to steal parts of that for myself when I have to do this in the future. You're welcome to. I'll credit you. It's fine. So you both started MediaStorm as journalists who wanted to change something, right? And like change seems to be also at the center of how you both define yourselves. And changing something also means knowing what came before and deciding it, it can be better, it can be improved, or it could be different. And And I'm curious about what that journey was like for both of you of realizing this is not the space where I'm going to tell the kinds of stories I want to tell, whether they're my story or stories of other people who live very different lives from me. And what was that like for you? I think, I think for me, before I studied to become a journalist, I was working in TV and I was working on these TV, I mean, documentaries and Inverted Commod,

I'm not really sure what you'd call them, but they were, I mean, they are documentaries, but they were, yeah, the kind of, I was working as like a researcher and a production assistant on shows that were like, help, I'm addicted to tanning and like, help, my mom's hotter than me. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just, I always wanted to be in that like TV broadcasting world, but those were my kind of first jobs in the industry. And as I was doing those jobs, that's when I sort of realized, like, I want to be telling you. important stories. I want to be telling stories that create change, stories that, you know, help people that change the way that the world is and change the status quo, or at least try

and help change status quo. And then that's sort of when I found journalism. And a lot of my jobs before Media Storm were fantastic. Like I had amazing experiences in the jobs. I worked in so many newsrooms that were great and met so many amazing people and, you know, worked in big, big newsrooms like the BBC and small newsrooms like London Live and local TV and had so many fun things to do, like reporting from the top of the O2 and all of that. And it was amazing. But I think there was always something in me that was struggling with being bound by these, actually when you think about them quite arbitrary editorial standards. These, and each, each newsroom I worked in, you know, had their own different ones. And I think that's when I met Matilda working at a

mainstream London newspaper. We were both video journalists. And we had the same sort of feeling and the same sort of ideas about how we should be approaching journalism. Yeah. And I had come into journalism with a quite different approach. I didn't grow up knowing that I wanted to be a journalist. I grew up knowing only what I wouldn't, didn't want to do. And that list just grew and grew. And then I worked in the refugee sector for some years. And it was that that led me into journalism. And I went into journalism with a very specific idea of what was wrong and what I wanted to do differently. So I only went into journalism because I wanted to work out how I could be useful in what I decided was a real passion for me and a passion that could pull me through life.

And that was the refugee crisis. And I was working on the front line. It was very frustrating work and it chips away at you because when you're working in camps or on the border providing emergency aid, there is no long-term solution that you see anywhere. And it's still the case. I mean, every time the government announces a new policy, it's following the same falsified logic of deterrence and hostility that doesn't address the fact that we have an explosive growth in global displacement, no infrastructure to deal with it.

And so it wears you down when you're providing that aid. I wanted to think about what service I could. provide that might have a more long-term role. I thought about think tanks or law. If you look into it, the thinking has been done. There are great minds who've come up with these policy reforms to fix the problem. And they won't get through because of the political atmosphere in which we live. As long as it is political suicide to implement any of these very effective policy reforms that may come with a net increase in immigration, nothing's going to change. And so, that's about attitudes and communication. And I came into journalism wanting to redress how

we framed the immigration narrative. And that meant that when I went through my journalism training, oh, I had such a niche idea about the role I wanted to play. I was quite immune to the very competitive environment in journalism training and journalism entry-level jobs. And when I met Helena, working at this London paper, I was already quite frustrated by the fact that we were putting out so many articles about channel migrants. This was right at the start of that dingy in the dingy arrivals on the channel. We would put out, I was counting 20, 30 articles in a fortnight and not a single one of those articles quoted a single refugee. So I expressed this frustration to Helena at a time when I was writing, I wanted to write to the editor

about it. And she pointed out that this is a problem that is scalable. This is so true for refugees. And it should be so obvious because it's the first rule of journalism, right, that you talk to the people involved. But it's true for many other minoritized demographics that are often the focus of our headlines, be that people with disabilities or trans people, homeless people, sex workers, the list just grew and grew. And that was when we decided that there was a real project we could embark on to fill this gap. And that's how we set up media stone together. And at what point did you decide? You know what? The system is so broken that we have to like get outside of, or like these places exist already. And we can't change them from the inside. So we have

to leave because so I've been on a similar journey so many of us have and the thing we always are weighing is can we change these behemots from the inside where they are the ones that are actually shaping culture right that's where most people get their news get their understanding of the world we live in or do we go out and build something entirely new and I'm curious about what that moment was or like what those conversations look like they're like okay this is bigger than fixing it in here, we have to leave. I mean, as Matilda said, you know, we did write to the editor and I'll let Matilda tell that story in the moment. But really, for me, that moment of being like, oh, I just, I'm not

sure anything's really going to change from the inside. It wasn't really a moment. It was a long, long buildup of so many years. I think as a woman, as a young woman, as a young woman, and then also as a young woman of color in newsrooms, it's incredibly frustrating from the off. It's just exhausting, really. I mean, at one place I worked, there was one other Indian woman who worked there and pretty much everyone else was white

and we would get called each other's names just interchangeably. Also, she was significantly older than me, so I was like kind of annoyed, you know. I've been there. Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, exactly. I'm sure you can relate. It was, there was a lot of that. There was also, I think, being young in the newsroom, you had, I mean, we still get this now. People call us, like, the girls or hey girls. We still get that now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We were sharing panels with, you know, some male journalists. And they're like, well, let's hand over to the girls. It's like, okay, we're not on like a girly trip, you know. We're not in magic. like come on um yeah maybe let's invite them to magaloof but it was there was a lot of that it was a it was a long slow buildup it was the frustration of not getting the stories i wanted to

tell through because at the very top of these newsrooms sit the same people sit usually straight white middle class men who, you know, so often they're extremely talented, they're very good at their job. But I think a lot of the time the frustration I was feeling was, oh, I have this story, I have this story. And because it may be about an issue that affected women more, or maybe an issue that affected women of colour more, they would kind of go, oh, well, it's not really relevant. It's not really relevant. And I'd be thinking, well, yeah, maybe it's not relevant to you, but it is relevant to, you know, a significant mass population of the UK. So I think that that was really my frustration and that was the moment that, you know, I thought

this isn't going to work. And when I resigned for my job, you know, I resigned like still mid-pandemic from a full-time job, that was a big, big risk and also, you know, trying to explain that move to my Asian parents like I went through something okay so that was a big big move but yeah it was it was worth it that was it for me really and I'm curious because I've been in your shoes in those same newsrooms and my journey ended up here but it took me a while and it sounds like you had a lot more like of what I didn't have where I was just convinced that everything I said didn't matter for a while because it was like oh when you keep hearing that's not relevant or that's not really the right idea. I was like, oh, I really need to change how I think about things because

I have all the wrong ideas, right? And I turned and looked around and all my friends who were women or men of color or young women were getting the same thing. I was. And it's like, oh, we all just seem to have really shit ideas. That seems like the one pattern I have found here. But I'm curious about how you kept believing that like what you had to say mattered. Honestly, because I definitely felt that way earlier on in the career when it was first happening. But Honestly, what sort of changed that was when stories that I had pitched to editors, maybe three weeks before, then ended up on the front page of other publications three weeks later. And that was really what kept, you know, me thinking, okay, no, I'm on the right

track. Like, I know this is important. I know people need to hear about this. Maybe this is not the right space to do it, but like, I'm not being an idiot. Like, I know, I know what, what is good and what needs to be spoken about. That was it. And what about for you, Matilda? What was that journey of like getting the call from Helena and saying, okay, cool, I'm out too. What was that there was one breaking point necessarily for you? But yeah, I think it's such a good question because it's a question I have been asking myself and debating with my dad all through my childhood is can you change things within the system or do you have to change things outside system. And the conclusion I have come to from years of thinking about that and studying history

as well, like I'm a bit of a nerd, is that you need both. You know, we always needed the suffragettes and the suffragists, even though they would both say the other one was doing it wrong. We needed the black power and the Martin Luther King, even though each side thinks the other is doing it wrong. You just, you need both. Can you do both? I don't know, but working out which one you're better suited to is maybe the best thing that you can do. And all little revolutions are valid in my mind in that sense. So I had the opportunity to try from inside. Getting into a mainstream news outlet, we all know, is really difficult. And so getting that opportunity felt like a real privilege and a real opportunity to try to do that from the inside. So we wrote to the editor. I had a

very detailed list of not just why I thought it was wrong for them to not include refugee voices, but the outcomes of that, the factual inaccuracies that resulted from that, the side of the story that was missing. And I was invited to sit down with some of the news reporters and point some of these issues out. I got to commission an opinion piece from someone with lived experience of displacement that they published in the paper. This was really exciting. They said, oh, you know, the problem is it's so hard to get a refugee source to speak in our, under our time pressure. So I said, okay, I'll come up with a solution for you. My then partner at the time, who was a refugee himself, and I set up an organization called Refugee Media Center. We collected

a network of spokespeople with lived experience of displacement. And we lobbied for journalists to come to us and we could provide them with that connection, that source. And, we were juggling this on top of our other jobs. Anyway, some weeks later, it just fell back to old habits. Even now, I'll still do work via refugee media center. Journalists will come to me. I've had BBC Newsnight just a couple times this week. But the priority, the thing that they're looking for now in the refugee source isn't someone who is an expert because of their lived experience. It's someone who can share some really traumatizing anecdote. Yeah. So they will say, oh, we need someone.

Can you give us someone to go live on air on Wednesday to talk about their crossing in a dingy? I said, look, most of the people who've come over in dinghies, their asylum claims are still being processed because with that behind, but also with all the threats of Rwanda, they don't want to make themselves that visible because of the fact that they came over on a means of transport that has now been criminalized. So I can give you someone who has been displaced, who has had to make the same choices,

who can speak to that experience, but they don't want that. They just want to put someone in a chair and question them about trafficking gangs. So even when you do their job for them, and that's what I'm doing unpaid work for these journalists, finding sources that they can't be asked to find themselves. And even when you do that,

it's still feeding the same sensationalist, voyeuristic, root problems within the industry. And so I think that experience was really what made me think we've got to make our own platform and we've got to set our own editorial rules. What are the editorial rules you have set? Lived experience first and lived experience as expertise, not just as case studies. And also I guess the aim, you know, perhaps is not an editorial standard as such. But I guess always sort of doing an interview with the aim that this is going to promote empathy in the news.

This is going to promote empathy in the story. This is going to allow people to be able to put themselves in the shoes of people that maybe they wouldn't have thought about had they read headlines that were, for example, thousands of migrants swarming our country. You know, that doesn't allow you to think about, what does it like for somebody to get in a boat and risk their country? their life to flee something. What are they fleeing? Why would somebody make a decision to do that? What about that person's families? You know, those kind of headlines don't allow you to, they don't give you the space to be able to think like that. A big one is balance or what we call false balance. This applies to all topics, not just migration, right? Oh, we think that news should be objective or impartial and we think that impartiality means having someone who agrees and having

someone who disagrees. But that's not impartiality, because often when you have a refugee or let's take a different example, you have someone with gender dysphoria, a trans person. And then you have someone who has absolutely no experience or doesn't know anyone who has ever experienced gender dysphoria, but just hates the idea. Opinions and experiences are different things. Right? They give an equal weight in the debate, even though they don't have equal stakes in that debate. So that's not impartiality. And I remember having this debate when I was training to be a journalist in our class. And the teacher, you know, asked people to put their hand up if they believed that journalists could be objective.

And some of the class put their hand up. And then they asked us to put our hand up if we didn't think that it was possible for a journalist to be objective. And those of us who put our hands up were actually, and those of them who put their hands up believing journalists could be objective fitted a very clear demographic pattern. They were all privileged white straight men and they were not able to see the relevance of that to their answer. But the perspective they had

and the perspective they had of all forms of identity-related reporting was that the impartial view is the white straight male well-off view and everyone else is imposing their subjective, marginalized lens on reality. And this is what we're fighting against. So, yeah. So balance, we have a very different definition of

and media stones editorial guidelines. Do you have a definition of, do you even attempt balance? Because I think balance is bullshit. But I think we see ourselves as correcting a lack of balance in the mainstream. And so, yeah, we may be seen to weigh down more on one side. I mean, what is the side?

It's the side of lived experience, which can take many views on the spectrum, yeah, untold stories. But really, when the seesaw is already so wonky, we're just doing a bit to even it out. I think it's also just demonstrating to people that you can report on a story, let's say, about climate change, where you don't also have to platform a climate denier. Like, I think a climate change denier. Like, I think it's just demonstrating that to people. So even the basis of it, you know, people get a little confused about because news is done in just one way so often.

Yeah, like balance to us, for example, with abortion would be interviewing people who have had to make choices to do with abortion based on their own bodies. Also interviewing medical professionals, policy experts. It's not just going out of our way to find some random person who, objects with absolutely no level of professional medical personal expertise and that that's such a good example actually because I remember doing that episode and we made sure to you know do our research and what we found out is that nine out of ten people in the UK are pro-choice they are pro-abortion or however you want to describe it but I think they described it as pro-choice and that's not really reflected when we see abortion coverage because they fill the need to find that one out of 10

person who is anti-abortion and then put them up with equal weight. But how is that balance? That isn't balance. It makes it seem like it's 50-50. Exactly. So balance is bullshit. You don't do balance. You try and amplify voices that are overlooked. Is that fair? I'm curious about in like in the deciding to do this what that journey was like, because is you still, we still, we all still, very shared values and approaches, and we all exist within the larger ecosystem, right? And at least in my experience, I find a lot of people around our age who, like, agree with us and are willing to rally, but also the power brokers are just like, ooh, you want to change everything. Well, that's interesting. I made it work in the system.

Or, you know, we like, what was that journey like when you decided, like, at the core to be disruptors. I feel as though, correct me if I'm wrong, it was scarier for Helena for a few reasons. Firstly, I was already out of the mainstream. I'd been freelancing for a while and had the opportunity to pitch a podcast to the guilty feminist, which if anyone doesn't know is this big activist feminist podcast. And as well as that, I was raised by parents who didn't do the expected path they both did their own thing quite eccentric and really always encouraged me and my siblings to do the same and said that they would support us in that and had a place you know they live in london and made it easy the financial risk there wasn't so much because

I could live with them if everything went south so this opportunity when it came up from the guilty feminist was a no-brainer for me. And I really wanted to do it with Helena, but I knew Helena was working in a really secure job, a really sought-after job within the mainstream media. So I put together a list of other potential co-hosts that maybe I could pitch with. And then sort of on a whim, I called Helena just to check in and see how she was doing. And also to be like, well, you know, what would you do if I told you that there was an opportunity and I asked you to jump ship and come on board with me? And I said, it's funny you should call today because I've literally quit this morning. Wow. Talk about timing. Yeah, it felt very like universe

supportive. Yeah, it was a real, it was a real moment. But yeah, I'd quit without anything lined up. I had, I'm quick to go freelance basically, which is something that I thought I would be able to do, but is extremely difficult. It also takes a lot from your own personal, like, energy resources to be freelance, because you have to be the person pitching your ideas constantly and many, you know, nine out of ten will probably get rejected and then when you get the pitch, you actually have to write it and, you know, or film it or whatever it is. So yeah, it's obviously very difficult being freelance, but I was ready to do it because I knew I didn't want to be where I was. But yeah, like Matilda said, I mean, again, my parents have always been extremely

supportive of me and, you know, still have that sort of layer of privilege that Matilda talked about, about, you know, growing up in London and being in the hub of things and that just can't be overlooked in our situation. I don't think at all. I think it's just a difficult, it's different and it was, it was and is more difficult because, you know, they are they are Asian parents. Like that is what they are, you know. And, and also, and not a lot of people in my family have done something that is, um, not scientific or not, uh, IT based or, you know, medical, for example. So it's difficult taking, um, a different part. from what is the norm, from what is known, you know, I think my nan is still trying to get me

to become a teacher. I'm like, that ship sailed, okay, we're done. I get lawyer all the time. Yeah. And even like, even the beyond your families, like looking in the industry, looking at friends, looking at peers, like it's hard, it's hard work and hustle even when you have the backing, right? If something like the guilty feminist where you're going out there and you're like, all right, we're doing this thing and like sliding into people's inboxes, reaching out to people, trying to build something which at its core is disruptive, is, I have found at least, is like, it's really rewarding when you find the like-minded folks, but it's also you're going to come up against a lot of friction because you're,

you're questioning what everyone is doing and if they're paying attention, they're going to realize that immediately. Oh, we hit so many obstacles and that there'd be no illusion. The hustle continues. And I think the hustle may just be an innate part forever of doing this. And when we say we've done it with backing, we've done it with the minimum level of backing with which you can do this. When we started with the Guilty Feminist,

they gave us a small sort of freelance fee to produce this. We wanted to make it a lot more than just what they initially were looking for in terms of the level of research and journalism and reporting we wanted to do. and so we were juggling what could have been a full-time job in itself with other part-time work. And every season since then, we've fought to get funding from external sources so we can go full-time. And we've managed to do that, but we need to do that more. It's constant. And then it's not just the fact that you're doing something independent and you need to sustain yourself.

It's like you say, it's inherently disruptive. And that means that the resistance you meet just from. moving is greater than all the rest of your competitors who are going with the grain. So whether that's trying to get any press promotion when you are criticizing the press, whether that is trying to get sponsors for content that isn't commercially that's suitable because you're talking about abortion and human rights violations. And we do try to keep it as accessible and fun and funny as possible because if you're in these situations as our guests are, you are still a human being with a sense of humor and you still need to laugh every day and you can see the humor in your situation and you can make jokes about it, that the rest of the media can't because they're not including your voice. So we've even been told by the commercial branch of ACAST, which is the podcast platform.

we're on that oh helena and i we're a dream sale for advertisers because we're you know young hot hosts obviously but that just doesn't mean but because of the content we're dealing with it has been really difficult to see any immediate route yeah that we can just walk down we have had to hack our way through the jungle every step we've gone and even as you were saying friction from, you know, people, like, not necessarily people in the industry. I think there's been huge amounts of positivity. I think especially on our episode about sex work and about sex workers that centered sex worker voices.

We had some people who, you know, had probably grown up very anti-sex work their entire life tell us that their opinions had changed and that they'd never seen it in that way. and that is amazing and so so great and like hearing that feedback is like yes like this is why this is why we're doing it but also we've come across so much stuff that has been just quite difficult to deal with you know we did an episode on fat phobia and then yesterday we saw a one star review of somebody who was just basically just being really fatphobic in who was like really angry at that specific episode. that like fat people should get medical care like how dare they and he got like so angry they gave us a one-star review and as far as saying we're laughing about it but it's also frustrating because it's it's hard because we're like they're saying we're trying to reach those people

we're trying to reach those people with empathy and with an open conversation and you do get people just shutting shutting shutting the book I mean our episode on policing with those comments yeah the comments can be quite rough we did this we did this investigation recently it's sort of just wrapped because we did a three-week deep dive. And it was into racially discriminatory recruitment from the police. And we sourced freedom of information data from, you know, 43 police forces. We made the most comprehensive data set that exists to demonstrate that, contrary to popular belief, ethnic minorities are now actually more likely than white people to apply for the police.

they are not the reason the police isn't representative. They are being rejected at radically discriminatory rates. So when our first episode on this came out, we were presenting the data and presenting those findings. And the overwhelming theme with the comments was, yeah, but who says that's racist? Maybe they're just not as good. You know, maybe the minorities just aren't as good as the white applicants.

So then we were like, fine, fine. We're going to ask that question. we're going to look at why. We really try to engage with. I think there's two types of trolls. You know, there's the trolls that come to you with all their reading and data that contradicts everything that you're saying

and they have a level of rationality that maybe I'm always going to believe you can take on and change one person's mind. And then you have the trolls that are just bigots, bigots and haters. and probably in 90% of the time bots and you need to learn to sift those ones out of your line of vision

because that's not doing anyone any good. Yeah, I mean, we literally addressed to their questions in an entire episode. So, you know, they said, oh, well, is it actually racism? So we literally did an episode about, is it actually racism? Could it be other things?

And then the comments were just like, yeah, but is it actually racism? I was like, well, you didn't listen. You didn't listen. That episode late. Listen to the episode. It's like, I'm not going to address your comments anymore. Is that your approach to, like, the trolls because they obviously do exist.

And you're both young women on the internet and the trolls are going to come for you because that's what it is to be a woman on the internet. And it's hard, right? Like, everyone has their own strategy. Some people are just like, I'm going to go offline. Like, I'm done. My mental health, my sanity. Some people, it sounds like you guys do that.

We're going to report it out and just respond. Like, what is, how do you stay? How do you stay okay? I think Tilda likes responding a lot more than I do. I'm not a big responder, but also I'm on social media a lot more than Tilda is. I have a very limited engagement with social media anyway, so I guess I have a natural defence. I've also, you know, grown up with, surrounded by a lot of people who take a different ideological view, I suppose. and I've always enjoyed having those debates

at when you know that people are listening to each other. So I can find anyone who's going to listen and who I can listen to as well. I think it's really important to know why, what is motivating the criticism and the backlash. I do think that's very important. So if you can find someone who's going to listen and who you can listen to,

I will always try to engage. But I have also come across, across the most hysterically obstinate forms of trolling, I, before media storm, many years ago, I started this blog with two of my cousins. And we called it people who do things. And the idea was you can write about anything pissing you off as long as you tell people what they can do to help. And we had this troll who would do a fake people who do things account.

They would, God, they were creative. But instead of it being people who do things. they would do like people who poo and then they would go through old Facebook photos of me or my cousins and in any where we're sitting down they'd be like here's me pooing in my granny's living room

and then they would do people who eat and the description was like oh it's so it the description would be like we're a restaurant chain but you have to show visas on entry only black and brown nations will be allowed into our restaurant no Australian

visas allowed and yeah and the and I what was so hilarious our blog was just a tiny little blog with like a few hundred followers and it's like this is almost a full time job that this person thinks

their revolution is ridiculing with the basis level of humour these like three you know girls doing their little corner of the internet that's so bizarre it is mental actually

what motivates these trials. Maybe you need to get some of them on this show and ask what drives you because I would love to know. See, you're curious for us. I'm like, I don't need to engage. Yeah. It's like, I don't know if you're like me, Helen.

I feel, I see both sides of it. Maybe I'm somewhere in the middle of you too. That's how I see it. But like, I think there are some people that are worth engaging where you can see they're asking a very relevant question. And there are some people where it's just not worth engaging. I mean, I saw Gina Martin, the artist, recently,

who had been on one of our episodes talking about gender-based violence. She recently posted an Instagram that said, you know, you don't have to argue with men on the internet about sexual violence. Their opinion does not take away from your lived experience and what you know to be true. And that I find, I found very important. You know, when you just come across a post, and you're like, God, I needed that post today.

You know, I really needed that post that day. It was when the Russell brand allegations had broken. And there was a lot of crap on the internet that day. So when it's like that, when it's somebody being obstinate, when it's somebody wanting attention for saying something horrendous, there is just no point in engaging. When it's somebody who is asking for conversation, I think it's incredibly important to.

give them that conversation but it's really difficult I'm not I'm not I'm not very good at it I think like I'm not I'm not great at staying in calm in situations where I feel really passionately about something it's a tricky situation I think we deal a lot of with a lot of that stuff through humour like we just have like some of the biggest laughs about that stuff like that is definitely our way of coping with that feels like the only way is to laugh at the absurdity because because otherwise you just lose your mind, right? It's, we're also not, I think we're not built to, like, deal with the amount of engagement that we all have to,

especially in the types of jobs that we have, where we are very online or not so online, but the trolls find us and they want to engage with us. And it's like how much, like, how much are you supposed to engage with other people and, like, how much of your life is supposed to be spent trying to convince someone? Right, because if you didn't have Twitter, you wouldn't know what, like, Rob from Essex thinks about, Russell Brand, like you wouldn't care and you wouldn't, you wouldn't even know.

You probably know like the 10 people you saw that week and they would tell you what they thought and you would disagree with maybe five of them and, and that would be the extent of it where it just feels like it's, it's so much and it's also hard, at least for me to, to be conscious of like one that we have our echo chambers, right? So like bursting that bubble and making sure we're listening outside of it, but doing it in a way that feels safe. So we're not just listening to the other side and I'm air quoting the other side because sometimes there isn't another side

and it's just listening to people who might hate you or your humanity and it's like, do we really need that? Probably not. And I think far more important than engaging with trolls for all the reasons you just said a, you know, they're often representing a very radical perspective is engaging with people who disagree with you in real life.

Like you said as well, today we are exposed to engagement that is historically unprecedented and isn't even necessary. But in our everyday lives, we are exposed to people who don't always agree with us. And I would always prioritize saving your emotional energy for those conversations than for the dark wars being fought on X, as I hate to call it now. Oh, X. You're the first person I've ever heard say X and actually mean it. Insert, insert, alt-right social media here.

Oh, hang on. X is its own. So if you had to like think back to younger Helena and Matilda who are, or the younger versions of you who are either like trying, you know, 18, 19, figuring out what their space is in the world or they're like 25 and in that newsroom or in a job where their voice isn't as valued. or they don't see themselves represented, and they're not sure what to do,

whether, where they make the difference from, where they fit in. What's the thing? Not that there has to be one thing, but, like, for me, that's so clearly the little revolutions in your lives, and I'm curious about what you would advise to younger use to do. Oh, younger me had, I think, a very different idea of what her revolution would look like. to me, I thought that feminism meant being successful in spheres where men are successful. I thought that feminism meant I needed to go into law or finance and just be better than the men doing that

and be really ambitious in the traditional sense of the word. To not be distracted by men. And I think even patriotism was part of my idea of principle so different now. You know, I am incredibly feminist and just as determined to fight the revolutions that I can. But those are totally different. I very quickly decided that success to me had nothing to do with traditional ideas of ambition or success. I very quickly decided that love, both romantic love, but love of friends and love was a huge part and work life balance and love work balance was a huge part of what I

wanted to aspire to. So I would have maybe removed myself from the quite small-minded, the small world in which I defined revolution and success and expose myself to the many, many different ways that people live their life successfully. But I did that quite quickly leaving school. I think I wanted to run and I broke out of the world in which I was in and very quickly saw how illusion, illusionary, illusory, illusory those values were or those ideals were. And how would you now define you, there were three definitions you threw in there, success, feminism, and revolution. And how would you define those three now? Success for me is to do with winning the British podcast work now. It's very non-traditional.

Today is more to do with inward reflection than outward reflection. I think growing up I thought success was something you look. looked at externally the expectations people had of you, the value society placed on certain positions. And it's more about discovering inwardly what I, A, am really good at, and B, I'm going to deliver my best work in because I really enjoy it. And, yeah, working to the highest, discovering what my highest value can be and delivering that value. And feminism to me, oh, that's a good question. Feminism to me is still a real work in progress, I think, working out that definition because I have a very privileged position within the population of women and intersectionality.

is something that I am learning more and more about every day. But I think definitely it's less self-representative and more representative of a wider population of women than I thought of feminism, meaning when I was younger. And revolution, I think again when I was younger, I had very grandiose ideas about what revolution looked like. and about finding huge sweeping solutions and working towards monumental sort of change,

whereas revolution to me today lies much more in the small acts of kindness or the small conversations in which maybe you change someone's mind or maybe you change your own mind by listening. I think that the way I fight feelings of cynicism or helplessness is to set small achievable goals about what I can achieve within my sphere of influence and within myself and my own flawed personality. And so to me, a revolution is much less, yeah, grandiose and much smaller,

but I think it's that the butterfly effect, looking at the butterfly effect that you can have in the world and starting to change your tiny corner of it and hoping that bigger change comes from there. It's really beautiful. and very hopeful. What about you, Helena? Talking to younger you. Young me, I would say your gut is never wrong.

Like, it's never, never wrong. You know yourself better than anybody knows you no matter what anybody tells you. Anybody who's ever said to me, I know you better than you know yourself. No, you don't. Yeah, your gut is never wrong. Your gut instinct about a job, a person,

um what to have for lunch like it's never wrong so i would have definitely told myself to have lunch yeah no i would have definitely told myself to trust myself more um trust my own brain more um which was definitely hard when you know a lot of the time i felt like my brain was attacking me like i've had a long long road of struggle with mental health and and there were there yeah a long time like I just I thought and when you were talking about success I was thinking what success is to me what I was told it was was always to do with money and how much money you were making and and again obviously I think it's it's you know taking money out of not completely out of an equation but out of an equation a bit is a very privileged

dance you have to be very privileged to be able to do that um so it's it's not saying that success isn't about how what you do or how much money you're making. But genuinely like success to me now is like if I have a a day which is happy and not sad because and I have many, many, many of those days now, which is great. But it's like, it's like there's no, what's the point of anything if you, if you're not, if you're not, not even enjoying it, but just if you're just not comfortable in it. if yeah that's what's having a successful day is a day where you know not that you're not sad because you will feel sad at points but having a day where you're not like under a dark cloud

yeah you know that that's really what success is and I do think a lot of that comes back to knowing yourself and trusting yourself and trusting your gut instinct and you you can do that from that's not really about growing up you can do that from a child I think it's important to teach children to trust their own instincts and trust their gut because that would have helped a lot. It's also such a journey, right? Yeah. It's also really beautiful where both if you have touched on like the small things

and like very much the idea of how we spend our days is how we live our lives, right? It's not it's not in the grand sweeping anything. It's just in how we do the doing. Definitely. Yeah, I think, oh, so much we, there's been a, huge movement in our generation, I think, oh, you know, mindfulness and this is great. People reflecting and looking for meaning and being critical of the choices. I think this is also important, but I do think it's possible to overdo that or to forget that there is meaning

in doing. And you can reflect and reflect and reflect, but it is in the small reality that you will find purpose. We will always find purpose and the little things we're doing. I feel like often people who get stuck in the thinking, it's also not knowing what the like perfect next step is, right? Because there's, you see like the infinite possibilities or the finite many possibilities in front of you and there's just no way to know how everything will play out. And it's like, I would also definitely say to people who, you know, a lot of my life growing up was like, your Jesus disease, then your A levels, then your university, then a job, then like, and then you get married and have loads of babies. And you're just like, oh my God, I don't.

And I don't know what, like, I just get rid of that concept of one path. Get rid of that. Like, just kick that in the ass out of the door because that just is just not real. It's not real. It doesn't suit everybody. Everybody is all, everybody is so different. That might suit one person so well. And they may, you know, in whatever way they define success, have a great life with, with that route.

But that's not going to suit everybody. It's not real. And that is one of the most comforting thoughts. the world. It's like, it's like, I think, looking up at the stars and thinking about how small you are. Well, my cousin's always said that is to her the most terrifying thing in the world. She's like, ah, what do I mean? I find that the most comforting feeling in the world. And it's the same when you realize how small and irrelevant are single-minded view of what life should look like is as soon as you're exposed to other cultures, other backgrounds,

other ideals and all the ways people live their life. It's like, huh, well, you know, if that doesn't work, what else is, what's next? It's holding both, right? It's the, like, you don't know how you're all small, but also we're not so powerless. It's both things. I was just saying it's interesting holding both the, like, what we do is not, it's not irrelevant, but, you know, there will be other parts and everyone is valid, but also we're not powerless, where it's the flip side of that of like, oh, we're so tiny, we can't do

anything. And we often hear about that from our community where it's mostly young people, young women who want to change the world or want a better world, whether they are the ones like out on the front lines of doing the changing, but they're definitely doing the living. And it's, you have power even in just how you live your life, right? It's enough. There's that saying, isn't it, where you can, you can help, if you help one person, you can change the whole world for that person so realizing our smallness comes with power because it comes with setting yourself with starting with a realistic idea of the influence that you have and that's achievable that is something that you can do you know i think i also would have would have told

myself not to um not to take things so seriously not to take life so seriously um i think think it's quite because we do such a serious job, you know, in a way that, and we tackle and talk about such serious things. But I think we have managed to have so much fun whilst doing it and so much lightness in it. And that's something I think I've only learned to be able to do quite recently. Yesterday. I was going to say yesterday was so fun. She came to me in hysterical laughter. I was crying with laughs, basically, because we, again, like, we, the way that, you know, we edit and we go through everything with a fine tooth comb and we upload our episodes. And we did this episode with the actress Nazanin Baniardi.

It was an amazing episode about women in crisis zones and how they're disproportionately affected. And Nazanin says this amazing point, as she's talking about social media and how the Iranian government have used sites. cyber army tactics to silence people, and she says, you know, they will try, but I will not be silenced. And then Matilda says, wow, Nazan, that was amazing. What we actually uploaded was Nazanin saying, they will try, but I will not be silent. 15 seconds of silence. And then Matilda saying, wow, Nazan, that was amazing. Yeah, I came out. She was laughing so much. And I was like, oh God, something really funny's happened. And you were like, we made a really big mistake. Yeah, yeah, but it's the ability to laugh at those mistakes and not free.

I mean, I think the ironicness of 15 seconds of silence after I will not be silenced just killed me. But I think like, but I think the ability to be like, oh, well, let's upload the episode fresh rather than taking that so seriously. And I'm worrying about every, every single mistake and worrying about how many people listened to the 15 seconds of silence and thought, are they making a weird editorial judgment? Or are they like trying to show that the site? I don't know. But yeah, just not taking things so seriously, I guess. Yeah, the small stuff doesn't really, it matters, but it can get through it. Once it happens, all you can do is fix it.

You know, you can't cry over it. Yeah. I feel like I could talk to you guys forever. But is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't? What secrets of Helena's? Can I reveal? I think that was a really nice. any nice conversation.

Yeah, no, I don't think so. I feel it's very catholic. Thank you so much for being here and for doing this. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Helena and Matilda for a wonderful conversation. To learn more about MediaStorm, the work they do and listen to their podcast, check out our show notes.