Saturn Returns with Caggie - 8.6 Yomi Adegoke on Imposter Syndrome, The List, and The Power of Social Media

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

In this episode, Caggie is joined by Yomi Adegoke, a prominent voice in journalism and the bestselling author of Slay in Your Lane and recent Sunday Times Best Seller, The List. Caggie kicks off the episode by delving into Yomi's early life and her unexpected path into journalism. We explore how she entered the creative world and navigated the instability and uncertainties of this career choice. However, she explains that her journey defied expectations and led her to where she truly belongs.  Writing a book is no small feat, and Yomi candidly shares her struggles with imposter syndrome during the process. Caggie and Yomi delve into her new book, The List, and discuss the toxic world of cancel culture, where Yomi provides her unique perspective on this phenomenon and explores the powerful influence of social media. Additionally, Caggie and Yomi discuss the dissonance between our online and offline personas, uncovering how everyone becomes a different person when interacting behind the screen. Whether you're a journalism enthusiast, a writer, or simply curious about the dynamics of social media and cancel culture, this episode promises fascinating insights.  You can find Yomi on Instagram and Twitter. You can order The List and Slay in Your Lane here. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Today I am joined by Yomi Adegoke. Yomi is a journalist and writer and she has just written the most fantastic book. If you haven't heard of it where have you been it's been everywhere and it's called the list and it really explores the sort of complexity of the social media landscape what is true what is not it's something that I feel we've all experienced to varying degrees or we've at least witnessed and it's been picked up to be made into a tv show she's just on this journey at the moment that's so exciting to witness and so i was really overjoyed that she

came on the saturn returns show and spoke to me about her journey into journalism some of the tricky things she navigated along the way we touched a lot on imposter syndrome and how writing a book like all the things that come up for the ways that we yeah we have to face all the of those aspects about ourself battling that imposter syndrome and she's really come out the other side like conquering those feelings and has achieved amazing things and so it's very inspirational to see. We also discussed the toxic world like I mentioned of social media and how that has created this cancel culture space where without realizing you could say something online, go and make a cup of tea and come back and it's gone viral and everything has spun out of control and whether or not that has ever happened to you you have read it you have seen it online

and that creates this quite fear-based system where we're all very quick to jump on that judgment train and to as my dear friend africa calls it to digitally stone people it's actually really disgusting when you see some of the things that happen but what i think yomi has done so smartly is put it into a book that really captures that not really knowing what's going to happen not really knowing what's true or what's not. And that I think is why it's caught so many people's attention in this modern world that we live in. We also discussed the sort of dissonance of the online persona and Yomi highlights how there can be this sort of difference between our online and offline personas and how everyone can be a very

different person behind a screen but you might be saying certain things that you want to align with but are you actually embodying them and I found that a really interesting concept. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something from it. And 100% if you haven't yet, I suggest you pick up a copy of The List. It has been a Sunday Times bestseller and it's a wonderful book to read. Yomi, welcome to Saturn Returns. Thanks for having me, Kagi. I honestly just thinking like our names, Yomi and Kagi, sounds like a children's book. It's not like the proper protagonists.

The adventure of Yomi and Kagi is giving very much that. I'd read it. I'd read it. I would read it. I mean, maybe you could write it. But thank you for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Just to kind of add a bit of context we met probably

trying to think how long ago it was like maybe eight six months eight months ago jesus has it been that long i think it was a while ago because it was like spring was like in full force i think but so much has changed for you so you've been on a crazy journey but just to kind of add for the audience that hasn't met you before and doesn't know what you're about, like let's kind of bring it back to the beginning. Right. Because you've got this insane project that's happening at the moment that is

just kind of dreams come true kind of stuff, which I mean to kind of, we'll, we'll go back to it, but an amazing book that's being made into a tv show thank you that's fantastic by the way I'm loving it and I'm not great with fiction and honestly it's so so good thank you so much and I have so many questions about it but to kind of bring it back to the beginning like what has your journey been like kind of bring it back to the beginning, like, what has your journey been like?

Kind of childhood? Because then you were way back. So where were you brought up? Right. So I was born actually in Canning Town in East London and moved to Croydon when I was, God, I think I was like two. I say it like I remember. I reckon I was about two. My parents said I was about two.

And I've lived there ever since. And and gosh what can I say about my childhood? Always liked writing but funnily enough I've never ever really identified as a writer first and foremostly because I used to paint a lot and I haven't had time to paint in a long time but painting was always like my first love. It sounds really corny to be like I love storytelling and that's like through whatever medium so sometimes I love that I always say that I'm like I didn't know how to describe what I do I'm like I'm a storyteller through whatever medium whichever whatever that takes that is me and I think I used to like really love art for that reason and really loved painting um and still love art though it's more

now like trying to like buy art and decorate my flat with art but less actually you know practically doing it but like always was into writing like my dad was like a very keen storyteller I think that's where I get my talking at people from my dad used to like walk us to school and like tell us stories on the way um and I remember me my little sister would be like walking with him kind of like eye rolling between each other oh god here we go again but I think it you know I thank him for it because I think it's probably where I got my love of like language and literature but I think what what I always I'm hesitant to say is I think the one is for someone to be like god I'd always wanted to be a writer and it was like my

biggest dream and it really wasn't not not's okay but I don't think that's necessarily true I think that's why it's so interesting to actually hear how someone got to where they got so it's bizarre but you said that writing was still something that you loved it loved it in what capacity like journaling or writing stories no way actually no so me and my best friend, I'm fast forwarding a little bit here, but we actually released, co-released like a journal together and she'd spoken, she's actually like CEO now

of like a incredible journaling app, Storia. And she told me how much journaling was like so crucial and like kind of core to her understanding herself. And I was like, God, this is probably why I don't know who the hell I am because I don't journal. I like don't, I've never liked to like sit down and like write a diary I did it once it felt very performative for me I felt like I was like someone's watching

you right yeah it's so funny how people do that yeah they like start writing as if they're like I was definitely writing for posterity like okay so when this is found it didn't feel natural it wasn't natural at all um but I did write a lot and I felt like I would express myself through writing but it was like I loved English literature I loved um English lessons because I thought they were just really fun I had this um really I feel like it was really niche game that my dad bought um called storybook weaver which I don't feel like anyone else in the world I feel like it was really niche game that my dad bought called Storybook Weaver, which I don't feel like anyone else in the world, I feel like it was made, like it was just manufactured just for me and my sister.

Maybe my dad made it. I don't know. But basically you just had this like blank space and you'd write stories and had pages and it had like little characters that, you know, you didn't draw them yourself. It had like a witch and it had like a wolf and had kids. And me and my sister used to play that for hours just writing books and my sister wrote a book called um the magic cup because there was like a princess icon and a goblet icon so she

like wrote this whole book called the magic cup off of that and mine i wrote a book called baby world which was just rugrats it was justrats. I just got all these little baby icons and like just wrote Rugrats. Like all these kids go on these adventures. I think they even had a key that they like opened out to like, you know, out to- Yomi and Kagi's adventures. Yeah, Yomi and Kagi.

One of them was called Yomi, one of them was called Kagi. I'm not even joking. I might as well have been. But yeah, like I just wrote that book. I was like, I'm not joking it was like baby world then the list like my present thing i've never written a book in between just to add the list is being to a bbc show with hbo max and a24 so you went from that i went from that then i had like a 27 year hiatus or something and then that's not entirely true no no I wrote

fiction in between once I wrote a short story which was for an anthology called um comfort zones published by jigsaw and that was all about women they were writing about their comfort zones and I couldn't really think of anything to write outside of my comfort zone in terms of like you know an actual story or like article outside of my comfort zone or essay so I took it quite literally and wrote fiction because it was outside of my comfort zone but honestly aside from like baby world and um that short story I most of my writing was always non-fiction you know at school I'd really flourish I think in essays um my parents always say that like they really wanted me to be a lawyer because they're like oh my god you love to argue and I

was like what's called debating actually like I do I do like a Barney but not like an angry one I like to like defend a side for something so I loved essays because it gave me space to like explain things I think that's how I expressed myself and i if i had an idea i'd really love to be like this is why i think this thing and you might think this other thing but here's why you shouldn't and i enjoyed it so i understand why that went towards law absolutely which i was rubbish at which you hated terrible at law i do not say that to be coy because i'm actually quite like confident in my abilities and other things but law I was dreadful like because you went and studied that at uni I did study at uni my parents had always said oh we reckon you'd be a good lawyer um but there was no pressure

because I think there's often that narrative of like especially within like Nigerian households the idea that you can only either be a doctor or a engineer or a lawyer there's quite you know stringent rules for what's deemed as successful but my parents weren't like that at all my parents loved that i painted and god bless my dad really wanted me to be he wanted me to be an architect because he felt like oh it's just drawing houses he literally like kind of putting it in one of the lanes of like doctor law it's like not just a painter but they did definitely nurture my like artistic talents and would have let me do what i wanted but it was more kind of like we've seen your strengths and you are good at arguing and then i got to uni

and was like terrible at it it was just so much Latin I was like where did all this come from there was a lot of Latin and there's a lot of kind of like practical stuff I hadn't expected I thought I always say I thought it was gonna be like Ally McBeal I thought it was gonna be like mini skirts just like a gaggle of friends and it wasn't that um but yeah I think writing in the non-fiction sense didn't surprise me because it was something I enjoyed doing basically I like was completely terrible at maths terrible like science but like humanity so like history sociology anything that required writing geography I was able to like blag my way through because I did like writing I just didn't think oh that's going to be my career really. So it sounds like creativity was very much in the household,

was encouraged. But then you were also trying to pursue things that were a bit more, I guess I'm going to use it like, the more stable career choices. Yes, that's the right word. Right? Which I think a lot of us feel. I mean, as you know, the journey of being a creative

is kind of unstable absolutely and our parents are always going to try and give us the best opportunity to do the most sensible things so that we're safe and everything so what was that was that a tricky thing to kind of navigate going from studying law because i think a lot of people probably do study law and then they're like yeah a lot of creatives as well i feel like because law does require a certain kind of um a particular skill set that I think actually is then you can then translate that into like writing like for like as a journalist or other things because a lot of people I know that studied law have then gone on to do something quite creative and also I know quite a few people who

were doing something creative and then decided to go into law because I do think it has quite a lot of transferable skills but growing up with certainly a level of financial instability meant that my parents were quite laid back but simultaneously were like look whatever you do we want you to have a nice life and we want you to feel stable and comfortable and I think that's why art was always off the guards for me because I thought it doesn't scream stability and it screams very much like you know notoriety a hundred years after you're dead you can't spend the money so I was like I don't know about that I don't think I'm gonna go down that route so I remember like at Warwick which is a very kind of um corporate uni I'd say in terms of there's a real focus on you know everybody wants to work at like Deloitte, PwC and I knew that wasn't my journey but

simultaneously I felt that that was the thing I should do because that was what everyone else was doing and I remember very vividly having a interview with like Barclays and I can't even remember what the role was for and I remember like pretty much like disassociating on the phone like just like out of body experience like what am I doing like I'm never gonna get this job and I don't even want it like the worst thing that could happen for me was to get this job but I at the forefront of my thinking even when I decided to do journalism which is all I've ever done really was how am I going to make this something that is stable for me how am I going to make this something that means that like I'm able to make ends meet comfortably and I'm able to not look back at it as uh as a mistake or something that I've enjoyed doing but I can't

make it work yeah I couldn't make it. So a lot of thought went into it. And my older sister's a journalist as well. She like navigated that world before me. So I think I was able to see like, God, it's not easy, but it is possible to like make a living. But I would absolutely say that like, it was at the forefront of my mind constantly. If I hadn't been thinking about stability and like finances,

I'd have most likely like gone to Central Saint Martins and like done art fine art or something or like done like fashion but it just didn't seem possible and then what was it like stepping into the world of journalism so to back it up a little bit I was still like oh my god what am I going to do with my life it's really funny because me and my best friend we always say that like anyone that ever says that like oh you knew you'd make something of yourselves when we wrote our first book slaying your name we're like if they met us at uni they're definitely lying because we were like a mess we were a mess i literally fell my first year failed my second year took a year out in my third because i was like going through it they can't fail me if i'm not here i like it left came back but literally only just like scraped my

two one because i was just all over the shop um i never had that much freedom like it's weird again my parents like used to let me go out and stuff um again kind of pushing against I suppose like certain stereotypes because there's definitely a stereotype of like African parents being quite like strict which which there's some truth to but my parents let me go out they were just like you know what as long as you get the grades you can like come in whenever you want just bring home an A and I was like I'll do that if it means I can like go raving all the time so I used to go out um but i'd never like been away from home i'd never like lived out of london it was just so different for me so i think i just got very like drunk literally figuratively like i was just like this is insane and like met all these amazing people and law also was something i'd never studied before the gap between you know a level and uni was huge so I was very lost very lost and then I started blogging so

writing kind of found me where I was on my year out and I was like god I don't really know what to do with my life and it was like a pop culture blog very similar actually to like I write a column for the garden about reality tv and it was literally just me like moaning about things like writing all these like pop culture stuff like oh yeah you know like this is my opinion on this show and this is my opinion on this album and someone um who I actually thank in my acknowledgments who I probably haven't spoken to in like 10 years except to thank him on LinkedIn for saying this to me he was like this guy that went to my uni who I didn't really know that well and he just said to me one day like I read your blog and you could do this properly like this you could be a journalist so off the back of that blog I started like a zine zine public like magazine

thing that was like funded by like this organization called O2 Think Big another one called Inspired did that for a little bit then I left then I did internships then I was in journalism and I was like oh my god it's not just me now these are real people and they're all completely different to me and I'm not only like really young and black and from like a normal background I was just like I've also not got a journalism degree and I'm a blogger my CV is like I started a blog I'm like in a newsroom so I was like this is insane so it was very intimidating and overwhelming initially because I just felt like oh my god this is a lot for somebody who was self-editing up to however many days before so it was terrifying very very very terrifying And what were some of the experiences like there?

Oh, gosh. It was, you know what? I would say really actually positive. I met these amazing, like all really talented journalists and I was the youngest and they were all really nurturing and like kind to me. But also I had all these ideas that were like super niche, very, very much like specific to my background

and like spoke to my editor and was like I have this idea and you might not get it because this is like quite specific to me but I think there is value in that specificity because no one else is writing about this thing so like for instance there was this defunct like grime channel called channel you which like is the most niche like really specific channel that like a lot of people would have grown up with especially like inner city like londoners um that listen to like grime music and like i'd never seen anything on it and i was like we should like find all the musicians from that channel that disappeared and interview them and ask them like what they're what they're

up to now and it was very niche but he was like my um editor then was like you know what like that's actually a really great idea and that piece went really viral and then he just like supported all of my ideas that were like quite again a bit more risky so I think it really helped me with like my imposter syndrome because I had an editor and just a team that really thought I was on to something you do need that kind of validation right okay I'm on the right track yes I was thinking actually earlier in terms of the advice you'd give your younger self I was thinking how I wish that I'd been able to authorize myself a bit more yeah at the same time we need a team you know and so it sounds like you actually you know luckily had a support system around you that

was encouraging you to do the things that gave you more confidence to kind of take the next step absolutely I definitely was surrounded by I mean it's not like things were perfect but I think I'd heard all these really scary journalism stories and I kind of my first experience was very much a nurturing one and as you said like there was value in authorizing yourself and kind of like self-affirming but I don't know when you're like 22 how old I was and like like didn't know a thing about like they were like oh we've got off-com regulations I was like what is that like genuinely I was like well I've just been blogging probably like committing libel even though I should know what libel is for my law degree. But like, I was just a mess.

And like, they were able to kind of like, just remind me that, yeah, I, my route had been different to getting there, but I should have been there. When, so kind of overcoming the imposter syndrome thing, because obviously writing books is like the destination point for imposter syndrome. So what?

You're literally begging to be like, to have imposter syndrome. How old were you when you wrote your first book aside from the baby? Aside from baby world, I was like six. I think me and Elizabeth were like, I was 23, I believe. and she was 22 when we had the idea and what happened is that she was working in the city in a bank was i i might have actually

been at channel 4 news at this point and i'd been like plodding along and i you know it was an amazing place to work but again like huge imposter syndrome and it was a lot more intense than v point which had been like opinion like pieces this was like real hard news and i was a lot more intense than v point which had been like opinion like pieces this was like real hard news and i was like oh my goodness if i thought i didn't know anything before now i really don't know anything so elizabeth was working in the city and we were having like similar issues but different so she was like oh my god i have this idea for a book it's basically like lean in but like aimed at black women in the uk and she was like you want to write a book one day surely you're right i like you write it and i was like uh that's

the best idea i've ever heard and i don't think she realizes how good this is otherwise she would just give this to me so i was like it was actually her idea she literally went do you want to write this and i was like um i do but I also think we should write this together because it's so good and like I don't want to be sat here kind of like with what actually happened with Samuel and it was like a huge success and she's just looking at me like hang on that was my idea so thankfully we wrote it together that's so lovely yeah no she's she's the best because she I'm like the fact she even just gave me that idea and then I was like no let's do it together it's so like kind of representative of like our friendship because we just want wanted and want

the best for each other so we wrote that book and it was like you know guide to life interviewed all these amazing black women about their careers and stuff and then um i think that conversation initially happened when elizabeth was 22 and i was 23 and i think when it came out maybe at that point we were like 25 or something and it was so funny because like we were gonna write this like guide like yeah it's how you slay in your lane women and we were like we want this book because we don't know what we're doing so how can we possibly write this that's where all the interviews came from because we were like we don't we're like sat down right and we're like so how do we tell them we're like oh you don't know hence the book

so we interviewed with these women but it was also really funny because we were so young and I think having each other really helped us with the imposter syndrome because if anyone ever recorded our conversations like they would think we are insane like we literally are like yeah man we're gonna do it we're amazing like we just really affirm each other and like we just constantly would tell each other like yeah we're the best it we're amazing like we just really affirm each other and like we just constantly would tell each other like yeah we're the best people for this and you know this book's bigger than us like we literally sounded like it was constant ted talks like just constant back to back ted talks we sounded like lunatics but it was so useful because we were just constantly like

reminding the other one and there was two of us so the other one it was like if one of us felt a little bit like oh god the other one was always there to like i know you've got this girl pick up the energy yeah it always always so that's i think how we how god it's like a blur like that period of life is such i can't believe we wrote that book what was one of your biggest findings from writing that book oh god so many you know what i think that a lot of the things that the women in the book were experiencing like so our oldest interviewee margaret busby was definitely in her 80s um and our youngest florence adepoji was definitely in her 20s early to mid 20s and the stuff that like florence was talking about in terms of barriers in the workplace and stuff like

that were like the same thing that like margaret was talking about and they're like multiple generations different so we were like wow that's like really quite shocking that like so many of the women are still experiencing the same problems and hurdles but then i think in a positive way the thing that like we um picked up on was that also the same like the interview said a lot of the same stuff and that was like when it came to like yes negative things but also just in terms of coping and like positive things like, okay, how much sisterhood had helped them, how much allies had helped them, just even leaning into the difference of being like, you know, the one black woman in like a workplace, like really leaning into that difference and being like, well, I'm going to stand out

anyway. So when it comes to like, I don don't know putting forward an idea in like a meeting or something like relying on that difference of perspective as like value when I think back to what I was saying with like um when I was at ITN and I had that very different perspective I was very lucky that I was in a in an organization that saw value in that and I think throughout my whole career really I've very much like understood that you know journalism is quite a homogenous industry and I know that like I kind of am like a rarity certainly to an extent and I think I've lent on that and I very much tried to like talk about things and write about things from a perspective I know is different and write about things that are different and look at that as a valuable thing and I think a lot of my editors and people I've worked with

have seen it in the same way so yeah in terms of sisterhood and allies I think that's such an important and beautiful thing but women also can have the capacity to not be so supportive of each other and there's quite a I mean i've been thinking about this in the sense that women haven't been able to even be in the workplace for all that long so there's quite a scarcity mindset in terms of oh well if you're here then i can't be here yeah you get that job then i can't get that job has that been very present in your experience i find it so interesting because it's like on the one hand, I'm like, you know what? Yeah, not all women are allies

and not all women support other women, but I'm kind of like, you know what? It's like the duality of women, like, you know, in the same way men could be terrible, women can be terrible too. And I'm like, it's a given, it's an absolute given. And I think it's why people who went to girls schools like fascinate me because I think there is often

that kind of like almost idealistic, like utopian outlook of like, oh, women supporting women, but then girls I know that went to girl school. Like, what do you mean that like all women? So of course they don't. I went to girl school, like my best friends were women and my bullies were women.

So yeah, there's an understanding that like, that's just not always a given. But I think I have been like incredibly lucky I mean being able to like work with my best friend proved to me like that you know the sisterhood was like a real thing like having someone who absolutely had my best interest like be basically my like co-author my business partner um yeah showed me that it was like a very real thing and just I think if anyone like the interviewees oh my god to this day because me and Elizabeth were complete randoms

we slid into Vanessa King Corey's dms this was when she was at GQ and you know we were just like hi you don't know us but we think you're amazing and we have this book and you've heard nothing about it but we'd love to interview you for it even then she was the busiest person in the world and she was like why not and like june saw pong who we saw um after her and beauty live and we like knew she was gonna be there so we approached her and she's like yeah like i'd love to be interviewed by you guys and she gives us her email and we're like waiting for the bounce back and she's like no this is my email like let's let's do it and i think more than anybody if i'm being honest that showed us that like sisterhood and like you know putting that

ladder down like is a real thing it was the interviewees like so many of these women were so important mallory blackburn like margaret busby like these are legends charlene white who i costed in the toilets of itn she's washing her hands she was washing hands in the toilets of ITN, she's washing her hands. She's washing her hands in the toilets. And I was like, hi, Charlene. She's like, hello, who are you? Kind of thing. And I was like, I'm writing this book. Like so many of these amazing women, they believed in it and they took their time out

to support us and be in the book. And they're people that we still like speak to, many of them. So that showed me sisterhood's real and how important it is because without their inclusion, the book just wouldn't have been what it was. Yeah. And also shows your ability to have that kind of conviction in what you guys were creating and the courage to go after it is incredible. Because I think for many people, the hardest thing is starting. If you haven't, even if it's an amazing idea people sort of get stuck at the first hurdle because they're like oh i don't want to but you know don't want to bother

people they're too busy but it also goes to show that actually this idea of networking really and giving each other the chance and the opportunity and the time and if you just reached out to people like the worst that can happen is they say no and I think I learned that because I was a journalist when yeah you know so I was so used to like no's not even just from like job applications but from you know sources people you want to speak to so I really was just like you know what the worst thing they can say there's like a really gross but like very accurate phrase where people say vomit and move on move on like the worst thing that can if something bad happens it's embarrassing you just like vomit move past it i've never heard that before it's it's a fact i live my entire life by just vomit and move on

just do the thing my friend actually she was she called it eat the frog have you heard of that never i don't know and it's like a similar thing i'm someone I'm always like oh no I don't want to and like you know yeah exactly I'm like I don't like vomiting but actually it's so true because like you just kind of either know one way or the other yeah every single one is true because I think we were just like you know what let's just do it and I think I have always to be fair had that like as long as the worst case scenario isn't death I'm likely to do something I'm likely to try something I'm likely to try it because there are worse things there are actually worse things than like failing I feel so I just am very much like let's do it and Elizabeth was saying that like you know with

Slaying Your Lane like she was saying that she's really happy we did it together because she knows that like she had this brilliant idea and she knew that like I'm convicted like I believe what I'm saying like I'm very much like that person so I was like so passionate about it and I really believed in it I used to say to her I could like see in my mind's eye like that as a journalist I could see how it would be written about and all this kind of stuff and I was I believed in it so much that like the vision I had the vision you can probably say I'm such a manifestation hun I'm like such a manifestation hun so to go from all of that to then I mean we've got to talk about the list because that is it is everything is amazing but then this is like a huge leap like you said fictions a whole beast in itself and that was something you did alone in the pandemic I did yes so kind of what was the

pandemic i mean obviously you're bringing something to life that's an incredible creation off the back of the pandemic but what was that kind of process like during that time and writing it conceptualizing yeah everything so i was in a long-term relationship it ended like i maybe a month or no maybe two months before the pandemic um really starts here so i was like you can't even do the things of like oh i'm gonna get drunk with my girls and i can't do any of that i'm literally locked it's locked down i've got like be got i have to have like a mask on and be like however many feet away from everybody else so i can't do any of the things that people do which probably is for the best because they're like self-destructive but still they're distracting so I was like I can't do what I would normally do to get over

this thing so I was like literally losing my mind I can't bake I can't cook to save my life Jesus Christ so I was like what am I actually gonna do with all this time so what I initially was doing was painting I was like doing all these paintings and like really actually enjoying it um and like having a great time with the like painting and stuff but like after a while I kind of felt like god I don't really know where else to go with this I was kind of losing my creative mojo but knowing I wanted to do something and then someone was like to me well have you ever thought of doing more fiction and I was like well I had this like you know kind of seed of an idea that wasn't actually more fiction? And I was like, well, I had this like, you know, kind of seed of an idea

that wasn't actually supposed to be fiction that I was gonna write as a like long form article. And I was like, yeah, I had that thing. I could give that a go. I know I wanted to do something on that topic, but like I kind of originally conceived of it- The topic of the list. Yeah, of like anonymous lists and like-

Well, just to kind of add and explain to people yeah would i mean would you be able to explain the sort of storyline of this because i'm like oh with pleasure when i was reading it i was like is this based off so ola is a feminist journalist whose brand online is very much like she's a feminist she's a writer like that's how she's known she's one half of a very visible couple um her partner's called michael they are hashtag couple goals everyone loves them they're about to get married and another part of like their brand is as michael and ola like well or michael they're known as this unit they're like instagram famous internet famous they're gonna get married in a month's time a month before the wedding ola sees michael's name on an anonymously curated list of abusive men in the media

and a month is like long enough out that like you can change your mind but also not yeah the stakes are high the stakes are pretty high so it literally counts down from the you know from that month all the way down to like you know the the wedding day do they get married do they not that's like basically what it's about it's a great idea oh thank you so much i don't know it depends i suppose it depends on like how online someone is post me too there were like a lot of different lists that kind of went not even post it was like kind of in the height of media, or lots of different lists that like went around anonymously that were kind of like outlining various abuse allegations.

Like outing people. Outing people, right? So I was like, okay, this is something I wanna look at in nonfiction and I wanna do like a journalistic piece. Cause I thought it'd be really interesting to look at the ethics of it as a approach to justice but also to look at the women involved because i feel like so often maybe understandably the focus is on the accused the accused men but i was like i'm interested in what if you're the mother of

someone the partner of someone the sister of someone what if your male friend shows up on this? Because I've seen names on lists and recognized names and I've seen names where I've been like, oh wow, okay, I've heard about this before and that tracks and then other things, other times it's more complicated, right? So I was like, okay, I'm really interested in like, how to kind of tell this story. From a different perspective.

From a different, like exactly. So I was like, do I interview- not the mainstream narrative of like these bad men right or even saying these bad men but this also bad medium of online do you know what i mean so so these bad men often but also like what if it's not always that but then also is online the way to do it and that's why i have it in the book that you don't know for the vast majority of the book whether michael or his fiance you don't know until like the very last page whether he's done it or not because i wanted to be like whether he's done it or not is this approach do you get what i mean online the right way to do it regardless of what the outcome is of whether

he did it or not you cannot help but empathize with both party so i was writing this during lockdown and then it was my god i think i wrote like 80 000 words or something i was actually agentless at the time and then i was like speaking loads of of different agents. And then I spoke to one of the agents I met was my agent, Haley Steed, who's incredible. And she was actually the most critical of the work. She was like, this is really good, but I think you could do this. I think you could do that. So I went on a writing retreat, like cut, I think 50,000 words. From 80,000?

Yeah, from 80,000. Wrote 30,000. It was like completely different. It was just a just a completely different how did the story arc change originally actually i think the lead up to their wedding was like a year or something it was like and your agent was like you need to up the stakes and my agent was yeah like just so much stuff she was just like it i think i was very concerned i think that's the thing about being a female writer isn't it like you're concerned that like it i think i was very concerned i think that's the thing about being a female writer isn't it like you're concerned that like am i gonna be taken seriously and i'm someone who doesn't take them so seriously at all so why wouldn't you have been taken seriously because i think the original

version the original iteration was very verbose and very like no humor and then i actually read a book called such a fun Age by Kylie Reid and it was like irreverent and it was dealing with serious issues like racism and like class difference and but it was funny as hell and I remember interviewing her and saying like how did you do that because I want to do that and she kind of was just like respect to like literary fiction that's really like serious but I think her example is like not everyone can write about the old man journey to the top of the mountain with the like you know pocket watch like that's not everyone's journey and like for me i'm not she was like i don't write that way and i was like neither do i actually so i think the first version was really verbose and serious and i think my agent and as

well the writing retreat just gave me permission to be a little bit more to not care so much people said it was commercial like and inject a bit more yeah exactly like commercials good i mean commercial sells and also do you think sometimes with creativity there's it's sort of the commercials like the sellout route oh my god yes which is so annoying i write about reality tv and i write about it in the most serious like i honestly think it is like a microcosm of life i think it is most reality shows will be used as like evidence of like life in like 100 years time and we'll look back and be like oh my god we learned so much about misogyny and like race and all this stuff from reality tv it's like why I'm obsessed with Love Island. Like constantly be like, oh my God,

this is a microcosm of like what happens in dating in real life. And I genuinely respect the form. And I think when I say to people, I write about reality TV, they think like, oh, like gossip, but I'm like, no, I literally write like an anthropological column about reality TV.

They're like, oh, what? How does that happen? And I'm like, that's my approach to everything like i really that's why i don't know what caught in my head imposter syndrome probably that like i felt i needed to write something that like was like really serious and stunned and then like as time went on with the help of my like brilliant agent and the people at the um writing retreat it gave me permission to write what i wanted to write which was dealing with very serious themes but like of course they're going to be jokes in it because there's life is dark and light and you know I mean and I felt confident to write something that was a mix of things

serious but in parts not I was given permission to make something that people wanted it was propulsive and not apologize for it and also touching on a really serious subject yes the kind of the wake of the me too movement right when you were saying that all these lists were going around what is your sort of view on the consequence of of that it's something that i really tried to touch on in the book which is that the internet is incredibly powerful and I don't think we have come to terms with how powerful it is yet what I wanted to show was that the internet can for lack of better phrase knight you and good night you like it is something that can make or break you quite literally Ola and Michael are famous and successful because of the internet and they owe

their livelihoods and their notoriety everything their jobs to the internet if it wasn't for the internet which i think i can relate to because i started out as a blogger um and then ended up at like channel 4 news so like yeah like i thought it was really important to look at the fact that like yes it is powerful in the one way that it can also give a voice to the voiceless which cannot be underestimated or understated like those lists what's controversial are not born out of boredom or malice it's born out of constant failings from systems that are supposed to protect women so people feeling like they have to take things into their own hands simultaneously the internet is not a safe place

it's open to weaponization it's open to abuse it's led to like trolling and like malice like we've never seen historically and i wanted to kind of show that like the outcome of these things regardless of what the intentions are aren't necessarily things we can control and i think we are societally but even just in terms of law it's unregulated it's completely it's a wild west and we will look back in not i don't even think 20 years time 10 years time and be like what the hell was that like everything goes online and i just think conversation around like cancel culture which i'm really i can't try to steer clear of in terms of in relation to this book but like cancel culture and like but it must be you must

be asked about that of course absolutely and i feel like the conversations around that kind of thing are really commandeered by people with often nefarious interests and people bad faith actors who want to talk about council culture i want to talk about a stifling free speech in order to kind of like stop people being able to use their voices and speak truth to power that's why i think it's important for progressive people to wrestle back the conversations about council culture and free speech from people who would prefer people didn't speak at all if that makes sense i think it's important that if you are a feminist and if you are someone who like values giving minority people the ability to form movements online it's important then to make sure we are

having those critical conversations as well even though they're not comfortable even though they're not easy because if not then you leave it to people who kind of want to potentially undermine like movements and will say well hey how about if you create a list like that it can be used in this way but that's why i feel like it should be a conversation that we are also having so that we don't leave it to just one side of the debate i think we all sometimes those uncomfortable conversations i think what worries me is that people good faith actors and people who have everyone's best interests at heart shy away from these conversations because they're uncomfortable but then that means that because they're scared of getting it wrong exactly and

also because they're like oh i don't want to feed into the narrative that like this is a bad thing but i'm like hey sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing but sometimes it's a flawed thing and if we don't talk about those flaws we're pretending that it's not flawed and then things slip through the cracks that like then become out of our control i'm a journalist so for me it's like one of my friends said that like journalism deals with facts but fiction often deals with truth and like it can be easier to tell the truth in fiction and i feel like that is why I wanted to do this this way both sides of the debate both sides of the conversation have just been like I was walking a tightrope whilst writing I was just constantly like my friend was like oh my god it's such a road I felt queasy because

like the minute I thought one thing you just like pull the rug and I was like because that's life which is I think why it's so powerful and it's been picked up and everything because life is nuanced and there are you know two experiences of one situation and both valid and hold their own truth but because of the way the internet is that doesn't really it doesn't make space for that and so i think which is intentional which is intent what when you say intentional as in as in platform being weaponized yeah like i remember some sort of report i'm gonna get this totally wrong but i remember there was some sort of information that was suggesting that like platforms like facebook and twitter like literally thrive on

like polarization so the more we stoke up these like fires and these debates in a particular way that's like you know really rigid and black and white it actually like it gets people riled up it it it lends itself to clicks and virality and if everyone's having a nice conversation and you know it all like kind of in you know communion it's not very volatile it's not really volatile and no one's going to click on like no one it doesn't it's not clickbaity it's not clickbaity it literally they prioritize like but when you say the the sort of intention behind it is that just because as human beings we're more drawn to the volatility or because it's actually being actively weaponized to create polarization we all contain multitudes right so like everyone is like constantly in some way like

being hypocritical or like undermining something they're supposed to believe and i think lots of things can be true at once and lots of people can hold multiple ideas in their heads at once and i think that we are you know you know when people talk about like if you don't pay for something you're the product so that's kind of changed with twitter now but like it you know i feel like we are often in many ways the product in terms of like social media and what we give is like attention so i think it's stoked up i think i think it's very intentionally like ramped up because they know that in order to keep our attention especially with competing platforms is to take things to the extremes and it just completely kills nuanced debate and i

think that feel it feels very intentional to me because i feel like i would feel like oh wow maybe human beings are just that way wired. But then you come offline and you have a conversation with someone about the exact same thing. The exact same person you're talking about online, talking to online. And it's completely different because everyone just takes it down a notch. Everyone takes it down a notch. And it's it seems like people are less activated. Yes. In a way that online people seem to be triggering the shit

out of each other absolutely and sort of passing their trauma it's just like oh my god i'm gonna get out of here what am i doing with this but on the other side i also feel that people now are having their public opinions that they're sharing online and digitally but then their private ones are very different it's actually very true yeah and i think that actually lends itself to that part of the conversation because i feel like if there was room for nuance then people would probably be slightly more authentic but i think again not to you know the fucking specter of cancel culture which i don't want to talk about too much but is the center of everything people do live in that fear of like backlash or i constantly

live in fear of um misinterpretation so my thing isn't oh i have a completely different opinion offline it's more maybe i just won't even have an opinion online because i'm afraid it might be taken out of context or misconstrued. Yeah. And I guess that's probably why you don't want to talk about the cancel culture thing, right? And also in the way that you did the book

with this very sort of tight rope balanced. Absolutely. Because you don't want to. Because I just know I could just, we could be sat here having this perfectly nuanced conversation and like, I don't know that like the end of a sentence can be chopped off where I'm saying so cancel culture. I don't even know what I like.

Even now I'm like trying to think like, what's the wrong one again? I can't remember. Like, I feel like it's a minefield. Like it's a minefield. It is. And I just feel like,

and also on the internet, there's no room for people to just say, I don't know. So for me, me and Elizabeth were like, Oh my God, like people would ask us questions about like how to stop racism in the workplace and we were like 25 and we're like we don't know what like we have no idea but everyone's a journalist today and everyone has everyone's a critic everyone's a critic so like no one ever

just says i actually don't know what i think about this thing it's like you need an immediate answer and you need to have it right now and it needs to be right so for me sometimes i'm just like i'm actually gonna sit this one out because i haven't decided what i think yet and that's also as valid as saying i have a really strong everyone has really strong opinions about everything online and i don't actually understand how it's possible because i'm just like yeah there are loads of things to like without really knowing what they're talking about if you have a strong opinion on like i don't know poverty oh my god hats off that makes sense if you have a strong opinion on like smarties or something i don't know skittles like friggin rye bread why i'm just like

these are things that like i don't know you people argue vehemently and angrily about things that i'm just like how do you how are you this upset about someone saying that like it's a transference really is 100 it's never about what's like never it's never about the smile it's never about those skills or the m&ms or whatever other confectionery it's just about whatever else and i think again it's like a feeling of like superiority like that that people, oh my God, the worst thing that people are able to kind of like, I suppose attack people, but also the internet allows you to do it under this guise of like righteousness.

I think that's what really worries me. That virtue signaling. Kind of, yeah. Cause I feel like virtue signaling in and of itself, it's like, you know, is not necessarily like a great thing, but I think when it then is coupled with someone going i'm telling you that you are the scum of the earth and don't deserve to live and i'm doing that and guising it as it's um now i'm able to say it like yeah i'm couching in this

thing of like but i'm righteous in saying this because you are an arsehole and sometimes they are an arsehole and other times like people make mistakes and either way i don't know if the way to navigate like holding people accountable is a level vitriol but this is why i bring up things like skills and stuff so i'm like i honestly my sister always says to me like when people come out talking about like you know hate they've received online and they're like oh my god i got death threats my sister will like trace back what like happened and she's like how is this person receiving death threats when literally from what i can see the debate was that they said that mean girls was actually a shit film it's certainly been normalized certainly for worse where it's like oh with a certain level of visibility

comes a level of unfair and disproportionate criticism but i think why now it feels crazier is because it's like you can literally just be someone who fires off a random tweet one day and then turns off their phone and comes back cup of tea and comes back and and it's like it was 15 minutes of fame before it's like 15 seconds now where it's like you can literally just be this teenage tiktoker that like says something stupid and suddenly you are the most famous person in the world for 15 seconds but there's 15 really intense seconds and that can be damaging for the rest of your life absolutely yeah which does make people I think live in quite this fear-based way of monitoring everything

everyone's living in it yeah it's crazy and in terms of with the book then kind of getting the story to a point where you felt happy with it what has been the craziness experience of then it being picked up to be taken to tv because that's just the whole and it's not even out it will be out hopefully when this it will be out i believe hopefully it comes out july 20th it's been amazing but without sounding like the world's like least grateful person i'm like oh my god sending your book before it comes out everyone's like this has got to be fucking amazing and i'm reading it back like i'm like oh my god selling your book before it comes out everyone's like this has got to be fucking amazing and i'm reading it back like i'm like i like it like i'm like because like you've got quite a big time in between i have i'm like god i've got to sell this thing i've got to really like but then also simultaneously like manage expectations i think

people literally think i've like written like the bible i'm like i don't know how like this is like it's it's extreme because even when it went out to auction i had zero expectations it was a lockdown but i i sold it on a partial so i'd written 30 000 words when you're doing um non-fiction as you'll know you don't have to complete the whole book but when you're writing fiction you have to write the whole thing so i thanks my agent was just like we're gonna take this out on submission i was like but it's not finished and also it's like like given the themes and stuff like people probably gonna want to know how this ends before buying it and she was like no trust me we had a nine-way auction for slaying your lady and i was

like there's no way this is gonna like beat that but it was an 11-way auction and then we took it out to um tv and then i was like 17 different production companies bidding and i was just like losing my mind i was like i can't i can't believe this is happening the time difference means i was like literally in pajama bottoms but like we're putting like a smart shirt but like i have my pajamas on because it was like 10 o'clock at night but because of the time difference so you're actually there so they they kind of like oh god it's crazy like you get your agents just calling you like this person's offered this and this person's offered that and then they're just kind of going back and forth that's that was the book auction but the tv one was like slightly different like you know we were on zoom and they'd all kind of like pitched at the

same time so it was like less of an auction with the tv it was more like here are 17 people you do want to meet them and see what they what their interpretation of your book would be for screen me being the chakra and i am i like got my notes because i was like i can't pick between those three i remember getting my notes app and putting a24 hbo max and bbc and just being like it's above me now i leave it to the universe kind of thing and then however many days later my agent us agent was like guess what they've all agreed to work together and i was like this cannot be happening like i don't even i almost don't like talking about it because it sounds i'm always saying it sounds made up it sounds like i'm just chatting shit so when i

couldn't talk about it for like a year because this happened all like last february so i was just like people can't possibly think i'm telling the truth because people are what you're doing oh yeah well actually they've all been on my book and yeah i'm working on a24 and i was like i need this to be announced for me to know this is happening so real yeah and then it's been an absolute whirlwind because i've been i hadn't finished the book i still was on 30 000 words when all this happened so then i was like oh my god i spent the year writing it being like to my agent are you sure this isn't shit? Are you sure? Like my editor, like,

what if I wrote the first nine chapters and they were really good and then the rest is just really rubbish? That wasn't gonna happen. I just feel really grateful without sounding like, you know, too sashimun, but like I actually am just like a normal person. I can't believe this happened, so.

I think it's amazing and it's so inspiring because, and also just hearing the whole journey for anyone listening that is thinking of starting a creative project or having that imposter syndrome or got an idea that they're sort of scared to start off, just that, you know, your evidence of making it happen. And I think it's really amazing.

And I cannot wait to see the actual TV show. Oh, that's going to be some time. I think that won't be like till 2025, six but it will come. It's gonna happen. It will happen. Oh thank you. Yomi thank you so much for joining me and congratulations on everything you've achieved. Oh thank you so much Keggy. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode with me and the wonderful Yomi and I hope you enjoyed it and it inspired you if you are on that creative writing journey I know it can be a challenging one but from hearing her story I definitely feel inspired that the most

beautiful things can come from these creations and I cannot wait to see what the future holds for her so yeah very very exciting and just a reminder to pick up a copy of the list it is available from any good retailer you can order it on Amazon I highly suggest reading it so thank you very much Yomi and for all of you who listened. And as always, remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.