Single Ladies In Your Area - The value of maintaining friendships, challenging the manosphere and living for your old-lady self with Jameela Jamil
Episode Date: March 20, 2026Single Ladies is BACK with a brand-new series, and to kick things off Amy and Harriet welcome an absolute icon to the pod - Jameela Jamil! She answers questions like: How important... is it to have your own friends when you’re in a relationship? How do we help young men and boys who have been indoctrinated by the “manosphere”? And are “cool” men on motorbikes actually just a bit …stinky?Enjoy this as a full video episode over on our Patreon at patreon.com/SingleLadiesInYourArea.CW: Sexual assaultCheck out Jameela's podcast Wrong Turns with Jameela Jamil wherever you listen.And Harriet is going on tour with her brand new stand-up show 'Floozy' from October 2026. For tickets and dates head over harrietkemsley.com.We want to hear your dating stories! Email in at singleladiesinyourarea@gmail.com.Follow Single Ladies In Your Area on Instagram @singleladiespodRecorded and edited by Aniya Das for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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Hello, I'm Amy Gledhill
And I'm Harriet Kemsley
We're both single and in our 30s
And we've found ourselves back on the dating scene
And the landscape has changed
Everyone has settled down
But we're back out there
And we're desperately trying to figure out
What the hell we should be doing
So we're going to speak to experts
Chat about dates we've been on
If we managed to get any
And share your tips and horror stories
So we all feel less alone
We might even get our exes on
Yeah, we'll see about that
This is
Single
Ladies in your area.
Da-da-da-da.
I don't know.
Yeah, and it might be the badgers of Star Wars.
Oh, dear.
This has gone really badly.
I told you I was nervous about doing this.
I'm absolutely fucked right from the beginning.
I was going to do like a trumpet thing
when you like announce somebody.
Oh, yeah.
Fuck sake.
How would it go when you have like a trumpet?
Do you do, do, do, do.
No, that's a cockerel.
Okay.
Okay, so we're not.
good at intros.
No, but we are back.
But we're back. That's all we're trying
to say, we are back. Welcome to
Season 3. Oh God.
Three. Still going.
Still going. Still single.
Still plodding along.
What is funny is we are recording this
in advance. So we're recording
this before the break.
And so we actually don't know,
it's like we're speaking to the future us.
We don't know what's happened in between.
What do you think has happened?
Are you married?
Maybe we're in high.
Hollywood.
Maybe we're in Hollywood, baby.
Oh my God, maybe we're like in Hollywood and like hot Hollywood hunks.
We're in Hollywood with Hollywood.
It's going to be so depressing.
I mean, I can't listen to the episodes.
But he said, are you in Hollywood?
And I say, nah, Streatham.
No, we're in Streatham with no hunks.
Yeah.
We might have hunks.
We might have hunks.
And that's fine.
We're allowed to have hunks.
We're dating.
We're getting out there.
We're getting out there.
We're dating.
I didn't think we'd make it to.
to series three?
No, everyone said.
You got,
your gals will be snapped up
within a series.
What are you talking about?
No, no, no.
Nearly two years later.
Oh, no, it's not.
No, is it?
Nearly two, I guess
18 months, one and a half
years.
No.
It will be, but by the time I'm saying
this, future me, it's three
years since I left
my ex-husband.
Wow. What a journey.
And how are you?
You've grown.
And you're thriving.
How we've all grown.
How long do you think it would take before you said someone was your boyfriend?
What of dating them?
Yeah.
Three months?
I think three months.
Because before I would have been like, oh, I just, I just want them to be my boyfriend.
And as soon as I can, then it's like both.
But now I'm like, I think there's like, has to be like a process.
I think there has to be a process.
Because you're like kind of like someone's becoming clearer and more like 3D.
Yes.
It's like someone like you're like painting by numbers is something that becomes clearer.
You're uncovering them.
Yeah.
You're like brushing the dust off and the cobbers and going, who are you?
What's on today?
I'm a paleontologist.
You're a paleontologist.
I'm a paleon.
Oh no.
It's too in common.
Oh and it stinks.
It's rotten and it stinks.
We've got to dip Ladokas again.
This is a disaster.
I love that you've got Egypt and dinosaurs, just all in one.
Yeah, I do it all actually, yeah.
Get it all done in one.
Victorians, dinosaurs, I'll uncover the bloody lot.
Who makes each other under the ground?
That's how I imagine it anyway.
Yeah, I think three months is a good thing.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
How long would you be exclusive until you're exclusive or something?
Oh, I think it really depends.
I mean, there's like some men that I have in my head
where if they even hinted at us being together exclusive,
it would take as long as me saying the syllable, yes.
But then there's somewhere like, oh God, I'd need to just, I don't know,
six months, three months, I don't know, I really don't know.
It depends, doesn't it?
What do you think?
I don't know, because the thing is you don't want to assume anything.
When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.
Yeah, and I don't want.
Mainly me.
It's always me.
It's always me.
And so you don't want to assume, you know,
but then it's like, I don't know.
I just, I think it's like, you know,
like I've been dating a bit,
but it's just like interesting to know, like,
when something would become something.
And also like, yeah, it's just interesting.
It's an interesting time.
It's an interesting time.
And it sounds like you have prospects
where this could be a thing that happens in the future.
Maybe by the time of series three,
maybe things have changed for you.
whereas I have no one.
No, but we don't know.
Because this is so, the tables could have completely switched.
The tables could have switched.
This is what we don't know.
And this is the thing.
Even people happily married, don't relax.
Nobody's ever relax.
Yeah, you listen to this having to married.
We could be married by the time we're listening to this.
100%.
You guys, all alone.
All alone.
All alone.
Just don't want anyone to relax.
Just say, I've been where you've been.
Because people look at me and they're like, yeah, the thing is like with us, you know,
like we've been married so long, like we'd never leave each other.
And I'm like, that's what I thought.
Just wait.
No one's getting married thinking this will probably end.
Exactly.
Everyone's like, oh, but you're like, you're like, I.
Yeah.
And no one gets into a relationship thinking this is going to end.
You get into a relationship because you're like, this is cool.
This is going to work.
This is going to work.
This is going to work.
Yeah.
Spoilers.
It never does.
It never ever does.
You all you've really got in this life as you.
yourself and that's it.
You're born alone, you die alone.
Welcome to series three and thank you.
So excited about the idea of divorce is happening across the UK.
It's the time of year.
It's the time of year.
No, I look, I've had a wonderful divorce and I cannot remember.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.
But if you're happy, wonderful, I'm just saying, have a knicker fund.
Have a what?
Maybe you haven't ever heard of a knicker fund.
A knicker fund?
Yeah, my friend Sennini's mom used to always tell us about having a knicker fund.
so you just like have a little stash secretly away.
This is just for the ladies, boys, if you're listening.
Oh, just knickers, what was I talking about?
You just have a little stash in your knicker drawer.
And then you have like a little so you can leave.
Little escape plan.
Yeah.
Yeah, just because you never know when you might need your knicker stash.
Wow.
I was like, God, people are, women are spending money on knickers in marriages
and that's making them happier.
But no, a knicker fund.
Yeah.
Oh, I really like this.
Oh, we must keep secrets from men.
every woman has to have secrets.
Blah blah, blah boys, if you're listening.
Formula One rugby.
Football, football.
Butholes.
That manager.
That football manager's butthole going round in that fast car.
Have a knicker fund.
Have a knicker fund.
When they're distracted, that's when I say it.
I distract them with the words.
And then I say it when they're thinking of that.
Quick, go to the window.
There's a Premier League footballer with his butt hole out.
Ladies, we must stash some cash for an escape.
I don't know why I'm obsessed with the idea that
the guys want to look at a Premier League footballer's bum hole
I was just trying to put two things together
but actually I don't think that's right
Oh he's holding a sausage roll
That they like that they like sausage
sausage rolls and stuff yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Just do be prepared
Do be prepared
Always be prepared
Have an escape plan
Always
Always
Yeah
Oh well I think we've started this
As we mean to go on
For series three
Is this what we
wanted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
I think we've gone on a journey.
I think series one was very much like, oh, we don't know how to get.
Oh.
Series one is so pathetic.
I can't even, I cannot even go without embarrassing season one.
I can't.
I know.
But I was thinking about the other day and I was like, if like I was to get married again or
something and it was to happen again or if I was to have like a breakup in a couple of years,
it's like nice to have it there as like a reminder.
100%.
I don't know if I will ever be in that place.
ever again like I just don't know if I could ever let myself get to that place again oh I I feel that
place calling frequently I feel like I could fall back into that place any second I feel like you're
completely different person do you think completely like we're completely different to who we were and if
anyone has had a break up recently and they're feeling like I really do recommend going back and
listening if you want to feel better about yourself yes go back and listen to the first series where
we're just asking people how you kiss someone like it's so embarrassing
And it's not even like how you like mechanically kiss.
It's like how do you get close to someone's face?
Like what do you do with you?
People were looking at us like we were fucking idiots.
Yeah.
But I really gent, that's how I felt.
Yeah, that's how I knew.
I was in the wilderness.
I didn't kiss anyone for like 15 months after the divorce.
Like I just was like, I just shut down.
Yeah.
We're not shut down anymore.
We're open up.
We're open for business.
We're open for business.
Get the word out.
Yeah, and series two was a bit more like,
okay, we're going on some dits.
Yeah, it was like our toes were in the water.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And series three, what is going to happen in series three?
Series three, we go skinny dipping.
Full body immersion.
Full body immersion.
Yeah.
I can't get my nose under there because I get sinus infections.
No, sure.
I feel like that about my ears.
Yes, we'll just keep our heads out.
Is that sexy?
I think that's pretty safe.
I just don't like my ears feeling full of water.
Yeah, I'm same with my nasal passages.
So strange that we're still single after all this time.
Don't wet my ears.
We're very lucky that because we're starting this season and we're off with a bang.
Oh my God, what a bang.
I can't really believe we've got this guest.
Neither can't. I genuinely can't.
I'm sort of nervous about it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I am.
She's such a legend.
She's a very impressive person.
That's it.
She's a very impressive person.
Actor.
Activist.
Yeah, she's very good at speaking passionately about things that I believe,
but I don't know how to say them.
Yeah, eloquent.
Thank you.
I mean, okay, yeah.
Okay, okay.
Exactly that.
We are honoured to be joined by the one and only Jamila, Jamil.
It's a match.
Well, we're very excited.
Thank you so much for coming in, Jamila.
We've been so excited for you to come.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
We look up to you.
Yes.
Why?
Just because I'm so tall.
Yeah, literally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do you do it?
No, because you're so, you seem so powerful.
Oh.
I think you're very good at saying, you're saying things and I don't know if you are
and afraid, but like speaking things that it feels like it's important to say and you say them
and I think that's a great quality. I think my superpower is probably just how comfortable I am
with myself. That is a huge superpower. With my journey. And so I don't feel like I owe it to anyone
to have arrived at a destination of perfection. And so I think that's what people perceive
as power, but it's really just ease. But because we're so unused to seeing ease in a woman
We perceive it as so powerful.
It's just ease.
I'm hoping it's contagious and I'm trying to spread it.
Oh, please spread it.
It's spread.
It's what we want.
Oh my God.
That's my first Fanny Woft on a podcast.
Oh, my.
That's a worldwide exclusive.
Not my first.
To be wafted out.
Anyway, I love that.
It's like you feel comfortable that you're going to make mistakes
because you're on a journey?
Is that what you mean?
Or you might say the wrong thing
or you're just learning?
I'm going to fuck things up.
I'm going to surprise myself in good and bad ways.
I'm going to learn all these different skills
that I didn't even know I had.
But the reason they try to get rid of women my age
and push us out of society
or force us to pretend like we're just a whiddle-widdle-guiled
is so that we won't, you know,
crone out and come and tell all the younger women
and the next generation all the secrets
about how to get to ease faster.
Yes.
So that's why I've been launching my crone years a few years early.
Oh, I love this.
I'm 40 in like two months and I'm just like, let's fucking go.
Cronier.
I can't wait for my crone years any longer.
I think that's so good though.
I think it's so good because I think that is a thing.
As women, it can sometimes feel like we're not allowed to make mistakes
because especially like we're female stand-ups,
it's like you go on as a female stand-up and you feel like,
especially when we started, there was a lot of, like,
believe that like women aren't funny like that was genuinely something people would say to your face.
It was just mad like women would say it as well. Yeah. It's just crazy. And so it's like you feel like
you can't be bad or you can't make a mistake because then no other woman will get the chance
afterwards. And so the freedom to feel like you can make mistakes and that everything is not
going to end feels huge. Yeah, totally. And it's so unfair to carry that kind of burden on your
shoulders and it doesn't come from nowhere. Like obviously it's it's deliberately perpetuated because
perfection is the enemy of progress and they don't want women to progress because even when we've
been subjugated for the entire history of the world, look how fast we've caught up and now are
excelling beyond men in many fields, whether that's school or as surgeons or as homeowners or
psychologically. So imagine what we would achieve if we didn't have a boot on our necks all the time.
So we are terrifying and you only ever seek to destroy something you're afraid of.
And so whenever like the media really come after me
over something really insidious and stupid,
I always know like,
oh, I must be doing a good job
because they're afraid of me.
You only ever seek to destroy something that threatens you
and I threaten a lot of corporate interests
and a lot of powerful people.
And I'm very happy about that.
I don't have any other hobbies.
I'm happy about it.
And I think you're so good at,
I've seen you online kind of come.
back at things and be like, I've been framed this way.
And can you see how this is wrong and what they're doing?
And I think that's so new for a woman to kind of have a right of reply and to be able to be
seen.
That's what's so good about social media that people can see you're showing people how it's being
framed.
Yeah, I've really enjoyed mapping it out.
And since I have, literally millions of women have changed the way they look at women in
the public eye because I was victim to this pattern.
I was such a fucking misogynist without having any.
any idea when I was in my early 20s.
And now I have grown up and grown out of it and educated myself.
But it was so interesting to be in the middle of a media storm where, first of all,
they build you up, they build you up, they hyperboise how amazing you are.
They then over-exaggerate how great you are further and start to put pictures of you
smiling next to an over-exaggerated headline about how amazing you are, which makes you
look to the leader like you agree, let you believe.
It's like you're saying it.
Like it's a speech bubble coming out of your head.
And so once they know that everyone is fucking sick to death of you,
but they're like, all right, fucking out.
She doesn't look at that stunning.
Like, oh, she's not that great an actress.
Then they go in for the kill and start with the spreading of humiliating things
or made up things.
And they just go through this like endless cycle of wait till you're at your absolute peak
because society has got such an appetite for the longest possible fall for a woman,
from the highest height.
We as a public have an appetite for that
because even women are like,
how fuck did you do that?
What's wrong with you?
And so they want to see you fall
without realising because we all have internalised
misogyny with us.
And then once the media have done that
and they've ruined this woman's life,
normally she goes away.
And then they just go on to the next.
And it was much harder to identify the pattern years ago
because it was so far and few between
like we would have so many, you know, women with such a big public profiles like Jane Fonda or
Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana. But now we have so many celebrities. We have so many women to
pick and choose from that it's happening so often. It's almost every few months now that a different
woman has pulled into like disgrace by the media and then by social media and we all participate
in it. Yeah. And then she goes away and then we just move on to the next. And so it has to be
called out and explained as a finely tuned, like it's a well-oiled machine. And, and then,
unbeatable pattern. Like you can't, you can't, like you can't unsee it once you see it. And it happens to,
it's happened to so many of my friends. It's happened to me. It's happened to so many women that I look up to
and admire. And it happened to so many women that I grew up disliking and not even knowing why I didn't
like them. Was there a moment that you kind of saw it clearly or that it happened to you where you kind of
your thinking was changed or was it like a gradual kind of? No, it was a gradual thing because I was
working as both weirdly on camera talent and a journalist. So I was seeing both sides of it. I was seeing what
editorial wanted me to get out of an actress during an interview,
but then I was also the TV presenter who was becoming famous for fashion or DJing or whatever.
So it was just emerging slowly as a pattern.
And so I knew when in like 2018, 2019,
I started this kind of like steep rise of like the internet's golden girl and people,
you know, like I think Harper's Bazaar or someone saying,
The Feminist Hero we need and Time Magazine making me one of the 25 most influential people in the world
alongside Donald Trump.
So I knew I was like, oh, this is like that bit at Alton Towers
where you're just going up the biggest roller coaster
and I knew it wasn't going to last
and I was just waiting for the moment that I was going to be dragged
by my pubs across the gutter.
And it happened.
And I knew it would.
And it was still upsetting.
It was still upsetting.
But I think the only reason I survived was knowing that this will,
be over soon and they'll be on to the next and now what is my position is my position to go away
and fuck off like they want me to because i've clearly like disrupted too many powerful
institutions etc and pissed too many people of or do i come back prove that there's life after death
prove that there's a career after disgrace and humiliation prove that it's actually not my job to be
liked approved of or believed or anything really yeah just like agreed with by everyone yes and so
I came back from that and I was like, I'm not only going to come back from that.
I'm going to show everyone this pattern so that it protects the next girl and the next girl
and the next girl so that we all start to look out for each other a little bit more and don't
keep falling down the misogynist trap laid for us by the media.
Yeah.
And I'm looking at primary schools at the moment for my daughter and one of them has a really
amazing IT class that kind of teaches about fake news and things like that and how the media is
handled.
And I just think it's such an amazing thing at that.
age to learn that you can't believe what you're reading and to kind of question it and to see
what is making you think a certain thing. That's amazing. Yeah. And so maybe when they come up,
it will be different, I hope. Media literacy is everything right now. It's the last, I mean,
I don't even know how far it will even get us because we're in such an age of misinformation.
I'm hoping that the AI pushes us off social media altogether.
Do you think that's where it might go? Yeah. Well, because I already can't tell. I already
reposted a fucking video of a seal being saved by a man from two or.
on a boat and I really believed it was real.
I'm always showing video.
And that's why middle-aged people shouldn't be on social media.
I'm like, look at this bear chasing this snowboarder.
It's crazy.
I was like, do you see that cat protect that household from that grizzly bear?
And so, and then you see that little blur that comes up where they've tried to cover up the soror sign and you're just like, oh God.
And so it loses its value when it's not, when you learn it's not a real person.
My belief with the way that women are being trained to look,
at the moment, like ageless, lineless, all with the same lips, the same eyes, the same nose,
same hairstyle, is all to groom society for AI.
Because then we won't be able to tell the difference.
If a face doesn't move that much anymore, it will be much easier to fake a person with AI
because we've become accustomed to women's face is barely moving
and women having completely pauless kind of Korean-level skin and all having the same features.
And there's a similarity to all of the AI created models.
And we, via filters, became trained to try and emulate that aesthetic.
And so I think there's an actual conspiracy to replace and erase women online
so that men will largely be the ones behind creating the women that are seen online.
Oh, my God.
So we're not trying to be like us.
We're trying to be like AI.
Yes.
And that will make it easier.
So then also your actors, your pop stars, like, you know,
You've already seen that girl who was an AI singer who got signed for like a massive record deal.
And then Tilly Norwood, the actress, you know, who's going to become an AI movie star or something.
You know, they're already quite realistic.
But the reason they feel more realistic than they should is because we've become so accustomed to seeing filtered, airbrushed photos of women or women who've gone out of their way to a dermatologist or whatever, a surgeon, to remove all signs of life from her face.
And it's because something that isn't real life is about to replace us is already actively replacing us.
Do you have things that you, like, do?
I'm a real bummer, by the way.
You've just blown my mouth.
Like, you're a comedy podcast.
I'm a real bummer.
How do you manage to feel?
I sent my boyfriend this video of me the other day where it's like, you know,
what I signed up to and it's this really sexy woman.
And then it's like, what I come home to is Bernie Sanders being,
and the thing about the climate change and the politicians.
And that is 100% what he was.
wakes up to goes to bed with us.
Why his music's so sad?
You've got to get in there and sniff them.
How do you manage to stay positive in it though?
When you're aware of it and you're thinking about it
and you're doing this stuff like how do you manage to find the energy
to fight it and the positivity and to not look away and to battle it?
Dogs.
I spend most of my time with or looking at dogs.
Just talking about this.
I think I might get a dog.
You have to.
You have to absolutely.
get a dog, it will change everything.
It woke something up in me that I didn't know was in there, which was a soul.
What?
I'm like a little bit of a heart.
And so my world just revolves around them.
And I think it's a big part of why you just stop caring what anyone thinks about you.
As long as your dog is like, approves of you and is happy with you.
You're just like, fuck everyone else.
And I am genuinely very disinterested in other people's opinion of me.
That's incredible.
Because if you don't know me, if it's just parasocial,
it's like, I hate everyone.
I'm so fine being hated back.
It'd be so weird to hate everyone and then want everyone to love you.
I'm just like the people who are like, I don't like you.
I'm like, I really don't think I'd like you even.
It's highly unlikely that I'm going to be dying to be your bestie.
And so I just don't really seek the approval of anyone who I don't really look up to in some ways.
Have you always been that way since you were younger?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, but I mean that doesn't go very well at school
because then you just sort of look like a school shooter.
I'm a big school shooter energy.
I didn't have any friends.
So you have to find your people, you know, later sometimes.
And I have and I'm very obsessed with my friends.
And I'd say that my friends are my main hobby
aside from the doom of geopolitics.
And dogs.
And dogs.
Yes.
Dogs are not hobby.
Dogs are my identity.
They are my lifestyle, they're my religion.
So yeah, so I pour maybe 50% of my life into my friendships, I would say.
And that's very precious to me.
And I don't have billions of acquaintances.
I have almost no acquaintances.
I've just got my closest friends and I care so deeply about them.
I'm so invested in them.
I want to build a commune for all of us called Jamilville.
Is a cult.
Yeah.
It sounds good though.
I'm the god.
But they are everything to me.
And so my career and my relationship even somewhat take a back seat to the emphasis I have on friendships.
And I encourage my partner to do the same because most men let their personal lives atrophy once they're in a relationship and just become friends with the friends of their girlfriend or the boyfriend of the girlfriend's girlfriends.
Yes.
And I have always been firmly against that and always warned of such a thing because I think it's really dangerous because it puts too much pressure on me to be someone's universe.
And I think it's such a dangerous part of the 80s and 90s and all the movies that you're supposed to expect like a soulmate and someone who's going to be everything you need in one person.
That's why so few people can find anyone.
I'm really like I've got almost everything I need in my friends.
And then James is cake.
And I am cake to James.
Do you know what I mean?
We have what we need.
We lived with flatmates for the first like eight years of living together.
Did you?
Yeah.
It was so fun.
We really miss it.
Did that take a bit of the pressure off the relationship as well?
Yeah.
It totally did.
Like if you have the right flatmates,
obviously like I've once lived with a crackhead.
That was not fun.
That would not have been good for the relationship.
Yeah, for sure.
But it's amazing.
It's like he's got someone that he wants to play video games.
There's someone upstairs.
I've got someone I want to watch a certain type of TV show.
Like I've got them upstairs.
It's just perfect.
That makes them sound like our pets.
That's not what that was.
They also would come to us to do fun things.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
But yeah, just friendship is such a massive, massive.
And every relationship that we've ever seen that's lasted into it's like 60s, 70s, 80s where they're still in love with each other, they are hugely social.
And they're hugely social together and apart.
And there's just energy and people staying and fun around the house.
And so it gives you constant content to talk about and analyse together.
Sometimes it can give you a common enemy, which is very bonding.
He has this line in one of his songs
that's, let's go home and talk shit about everybody,
let's go home finally.
And it's about the feeling when we get in the car
and it's just like, oh, did you see that face that he made?
And it's the single most romantic line, I think,
he's ever written.
He's written much more beautiful love songs,
but that to me is like, oh, that is an ode to me.
Like that I feel so seen.
That's Shakespeare, you know?
That's so nice.
I think that's nice.
It's like a way of seeing it like untraditionally, I guess.
It's like the traditional idea is you find your partner and then you settle down and you become kind of a smaller insular unit.
Tiny little unit.
It's fucked and it's really weird and it's very specific, I think, to this country.
Really?
Yeah.
I really do because I was raised in Spain partially and it's such a different culture.
Like me and my brother were not put to bed at like 6pm or 7 p.m.
and then my mom and my dad like stayed in
or like, you know, or with a baby.
Like we were just out with the restaurant,
falling asleep on the chair, on the floor,
learning how to behave in a restaurant from two years old.
You know, there's wine served at the children's park
so that the parents can socialize and relax and unwind.
Oh, please bring wine to the children's park over here.
What are we doing?
Exactly. Everything feels social.
Everyone lives like 20 minute walk from each other.
People chip in like teenagers
aren't just like these coddled and phantalized grown children.
They have to participate.
pay and help with the babies.
It's like everyone, it's a communal effort.
It's a communal feeling.
You know, men have more friendships over in Europe.
They have more things to go and do with each other
because men don't like to do things where they face each other.
They prefer to do things side by side with one another.
I think this patriarchy has terrorised them out of intimacy
because not all men and not all male cultures are like that.
Like you go into sort of more Arab places
and the men are sitting opposite each other, smoking together,
eating late night cake together.
But I do think like within Europe in particular,
you see that men have more activities they go and do with each other
and they have more... Fishing.
Boys trips and more...
Yeah.
Silence to each other in silence in a butt.
Yeah.
Exactly.
But there's less...
I'm hearing less about the male loneliness epidemic
in a lot of these places.
Mostly when we're hearing about it,
it's in the UK and England.
I'm not saying that men aren't lonely.
There's a general loneliness epidemic around the world.
But the places where I hear of it being the worst
are the place with the most Western patriarchal standards.
Places in Italy where the men are like kissing each other on the fucking mouth.
I haven't heard of them.
male a loneliness epidemic, you know what I mean?
No one's, I haven't heard about it, is so.
Yeah.
I think it's, as they talk about this idea of the third space
that we don't have so much over here.
Like, I think in Europe it's very big
that you'd have, like, you'd go sit in the square or whatever.
So there's like a communal area where you can go and sit
and you can chat.
Whereas we have the signs that just say, no ball games.
Exactly.
It's pub.
That is the third space is the pub.
Not even sitting in a pub.
Who the fuck wants to stand for that long?
after the age of 25.
No, I can't.
I can't even go to loud places anymore.
No.
Same.
I was somewhere on Saturday and it was like so late.
I was like, I don't know.
I have to have conversations and be in this environment.
I'm telling you it's a fucking sigh-op.
It's all to make us as lonely and far away from each other as possible.
They are, it's an attack on community and a village and friendships and like all the social media of it all, that false sense of being in touch with people.
That's a false sense of knowing what your friends are up to.
That's a fucking nightmare.
We've got to cling to each other.
we've got to build Jamilvilles all over town.
Obviously, name it your own thing.
If you want to name it, Jamilville, I would also be very flattered.
We could be a franchise.
It's really up to you.
Superbrand.
I'm coming for Trump Towers.
You can build opposite.
Oh, my God, imagine.
Jamilville is opposite.
Jamilton.
Oh, I love it.
Been up to much this weekend.
Let's talk about.
Dating. Yes.
So obviously you have your partner and it sounds good.
It is good, yeah. We've been together for 11 years.
11 years.
Isn't that mad?
I think this is what's nice is to have somebody that's in a relationship that feels healthy.
And I think we kind of, we have an experience.
Oh, no, we have people in unhealthy relationships on the podcast.
Well, we're speaking about ourselves.
Our previous.
Yeah.
We've not been good in relationships and we're not.
great at dating either
but we're sort of
we're recognising patterns
that we fall for
and we're trying to sort of break out of them
yeah which is good
and I think in a world where at the moment
like everyone's talking about like
is a boyfriend embarrassing
or like it's kind of this rhetoric
and then it's like you kind of forget
what is good about it
like what can be good about being in a partnership
about being with someone for a long time
where you have a support system
and to know what to look out for
in order to find a partner
that is good
that is worth it.
Because it's a massive fucking sacrifice.
Yes.
Being in a relationship is like hugely curbing of your liberty if you're not with the right
person.
If you're not with someone who values their freedom and values yours.
And it's secure enough to give you that freedom to work on the things you want to work
on, to build your dreams, to go an adventure.
You know, we are in a completely monogamous relationship, but we're very, very trusting
with each other.
We give each other loads of freedom.
And so it is a very healthy dynamic.
And is it always.
been that. No. God no.
And thankfully, he went and wrote about all of it in detail on his albums. So now all of his
fans sing my angriest lines from emails back to him on the stage. And I have to fucking hear
that. But no, it took work. It took adjustment. But I think, you know, a woman is the leader
of the relationship, really. I think in general, in life, especially when she becomes a mother
I'm not a mother.
But I think, and what I mean by that is not that you have to lead him,
but I think you have to at least lead yourself.
You have to be your own leader in the relationship.
We do not believe in being two halves of the same hole.
We find that shit really creepy.
And when I, when I talked about that in like The Guardian or the Times or something,
I was like, we are two separate holes.
They wrote H-O-L-E-S.
And I was like, that is not at all what I meant.
Also true.
It's true.
Also, that would be three holes.
Yes.
But oh my God.
It's clearly not what I meant.
I was so mortified.
Wow.
We are two whole individuals.
Who, like, found a way to fit together.
But he is very much.
much so his own identity and I'm very much of my own identity.
And what complements each other, complements each other,
and then we're allowed to have things that are separate.
We don't have to invest in every single part of each other.
And I feel very grateful to be with a man who's secure enough to do that and to rise to
that occasion.
Because a lot of men haven't, you know, got that capacity in them yet.
They haven't found their potential.
So do you think that's the difference?
It's the man being secure enough to let someone have to be secure.
But I just think it's really important to not allow your entire life to become dominated by your relationship.
Yeah.
And I think it's very important to not just throw away your dreams and throw away your identity.
Yeah.
I think it's very important to have goblin time, which is time away from them to be disgusting, just to be a goblin.
You know, just have space.
Space is almost as important as togetherness.
Yeah.
And we have that because we travel for our work.
And so I think that's, I think that's why we're.
still so in love with each other.
Like, we don't just love each other. We're actively in love with each other.
That's fantastic. And it's, it's really nice, but it was built, you know, because we were young.
We were 26 and 28 when we met, which, you know, might not be that young to the people listening,
but that's, that's young to meet the person you are probably going to spend the rest of your life
with. And so we had to figure it out. And I came into this relationship, knowing that I didn't want
to behave the way I had in all of my other relationships where I just laid down my life for that
partner. And I thought if I love them enough, if I, I will lead by example of doing so much
for you that then you'll want to do something back for me, whereas actually people by nature
are just predisposed to taking something, taking advantage of something or taking something
for granted. I was like, I'm not doing that in this relationship. So this poor motherfucker
was only 26 and I was just like, no, no, I'm not doing that, no. And I was just trying it out. And we didn't
really take each other that seriously, you know, at the beginning. But we were both trying out,
like, I'm going to be this kind of person in a relationship. And we gave each other the space to do
that. So it was definitely bumpy as we adjusted to each other. But we know that we love each other for
exactly who the other person is. Amazing. And that's, that's really nice. And that also can happen
when you don't seek everything you need from just one person. He is my best friend. He's my
fucking ride or die is my favorite person to gossip with in the world.
He's such a gossip.
I love it.
I'm going to add that to my list of what I'm looking for.
Such a fun, like, man for women to talk to.
Right.
He's so fun.
To bring a man that is, like, fun for other women is, like, that is so rare to bring
someone in where they're not like, here's Steve, you know, and then everyone's like,
he's friends separately with all of my girlfriends.
That's great.
Love that.
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
It's so great.
Great, but he's just a, but also what's great about him is that he taught me to stand up for myself.
He's part of why I'm this, Larry, is because he couldn't understand.
Like he, and partially this is probably from being a young man who wasn't exposed to that many women.
He didn't understand why I would make myself so much smaller than I actually am.
He was genuinely baffled by why I wouldn't speak my mind or stand up for myself or fight back.
And he encouraged me to do that with him, not just against other people.
He encouraged me to fight back in an argument.
of like, tell me how you feel.
Tell me how, show me how angry you are.
He was genuinely curious because he's such a fucking man.
He can take it.
And that's where I find this whole manosphere nightmare so misleading for boys.
We think that men who can tolerate sensitivity or display sensitivity a week,
but it's like, no, those are the strongest men
because they know that nothing can threaten their masculinity.
He's so manly.
But what I find especially manly about him is the fact that nothing can rock his masculinity.
No amount of my feminism or how my strength or my achievement can rock him because he stands so firmly in his identity.
He knows exactly who he is and nobody can take that away from him.
And that's what we need to be encouraging boys and men towards.
You know, I was saying to you earlier outside that I started to wonder if actually masculinity is more naturally submissive than femininity.
Because if femininity was naturally submissive, I think we'd be there by now.
The amount that we have tried to subjugate women or we have actively subjugated women and women always.
end up rising back up and fighting back. Whereas actually when you look at, you know, the people
who sign up for war in greater numbers, the people who sign up to do the dog's body work
for rich, older, powerful men, you know, going down the minds, the ones doing dangerous shit,
the ones hurting other people like, you know, you hear about all these horrific war crimes,
I'm getting a bit of a bummer again, but, you know, where they're not just raping women
as a weapon of war, they're shoving things inside of them, messages,
razor blades, all these horrific things.
There's just not a planet in which an army of women would do that to other people.
There's no planet on which women would go out of their way to genocide another race
and like hurt and kill babies, like shoot babies in their head.
There is something submissive in masculinity.
And I think that's probably read by patriarchy.
I have no idea.
But you even see it in dogs and animals, right?
The girl dog, my girl dog is off independent, less affectionate, like off doing our own
thing, my boy dog by my side.
My boy dog is, yeah.
Like just very, very, very trainable.
The girl dog, much harder to train.
You've got to get boy, Amy.
Women are so hard to train, which is why they're still, they're creating an entire
industry trying to figure out how to subjugate us.
If it was that easy, if it was natural, they wouldn't need an entire industry
trying to figure out how to subjugate us.
It would just happen.
It would just happen naturally.
It would just happen naturally.
It'd been trying for a really long time.
They'd be trying to such a long time.
Women are fighting back in Afghanistan.
They're not supposed to speak.
They're supposed to not only look out one eye now,
and they're still taking to the streets and protesting.
So it is just there is something in femininity.
And the reason I back this up is that all the men I know
who are the strongest, the most rebellious, the best leaders,
all have some form of being in touch with their feminine side.
Even the great innovators like David Bowie or Prince or Mick Jagger.
Like there's a femininity to them.
is something inherently rebellious about femininity that I do not see in macho masculinity.
Jordan Stevens, that man is in touch with his feminine side in such a beautiful way.
There's nothing unmanly about that man.
He's amazing.
And look at what a leader and a rebel he is.
There's nothing more rebellious than rebelling against the stereotype for your gender.
Yeah.
We're all in some ways doing that with femininity.
We're not all practicing all of the forms of femininity and being quiet and not having an opinion
and not having a podcast.
We're all rejecting it.
Yeah.
And I think that's the feminine in us.
And I think it's the feminine in men
that make them the most rebellious and extraordinary
and it makes them the best leaders.
So when I'm...
It's just something I've noticed.
And I think the opposite of that is like Trump
who his whole character is built on this idea of like...
He's camp, but he wants to be matcher.
But lots of people do.
Lots of people do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely. I just find a lot of the very, very macho people tend to be followers, not leaders.
You know, they're the ones in ICE. They're the ones in, you know, like at Border Patrol.
They're the ones amongst the police.
And the thing that they most need to keep us safe from is other men.
Amy, we've got to get out there.
Do you have any advice on what to do about young boys being kind of sucked into the manosphere and reading these things online?
like what do we do to kind of help the next generation
and protect them from this happening?
I actually do have some advice.
Oh my gosh.
I know.
I know.
It's undercooked.
Yeah, this is what we were.
Early advice.
I have found purely anecdotally,
every man that I have been absolutely amazed by
when I'm talking to him
and just been like,
the fuck are you?
Where did you come from?
All of them had a sick mother.
All of them had a mother who had a dependency
or some sort of vulnerability that she couldn't hide from him.
So he had to learn at a young age to empathise, to help, to look after himself,
to look after another person, look after a woman in particular.
All of those men are the best men.
And that tells me that us being superheroes and going out of our way to lead the example
of what a great woman is, sometimes in some way, disables the boys' capacity
because we over-coddle boys and we under-coddle girls.
naturally, like traditionally.
I'm not saying every single household.
And every single man in my life
who has had almost no work to do
on himself, who's like emotionally in touch,
emotionally available, knows what maxi pad sizes are,
like just has great friendships with women,
has great relationships,
is so loved by their girlfriends.
Always, I'm talking about straight men,
always had a mother who had a dependency
or was a single mother who did,
didn't shy away from showing him like, I need your fucking help. So they knew how to help.
They weren't rendered useless from birth. And so that's just my particular advice is I think women
need to take the tone the stoicism down a notch and stop doing everything and stop performing
Wonder Woman because actually what you're doing is you're setting up his wife for failure
because he's going to expect her to be the Wonder Woman that you're pretending to be to impress him.
That's my personal opinion. I'm not a mother. I'm well aware that I don't have a right to speak
in the space, but as someone who witnesses men constantly, I feel as though a little bit more
of leaning back on them actually in the same way that it makes women so profound and capable,
I think it would make them stronger and better and happier and better humans for women
to coexist with. Yeah, it sounds like these men that you're talking about have kind of grown up
in the role of the eldest daughter. Yeah. And that's why, you know, the
eldest daughter, the stereotype is that they're so strong and they've got so much empathy
and they can help everyone. But it's because they've been lent on and they've grown up doing that.
And it can feel good. Obviously there's a balance of how much you should ever have to do in service
as a child before you actually don't even build your own identity. But service feels great.
Looking after someone feels great. It's pure dopamine, doing a good job, like protecting
another person or not just in the means of like just being a man.
who's there so another man might not rape your girlfriend,
which is the form of protection they understand.
It's like, no, protect her fucking peace,
protect her the way that she protects yours
without you even realising.
Some of the time, obviously.
Yes.
I'm not going to give a blanket statement
that all women protect peace.
They haven't protected my fucking peace.
Okay, so I'm not saying all men are bad
or women are good.
Damn sure.
But you know what I mean?
Of course.
Yeah.
You know, just in the same way that I think that to me is,
is, I'm yet to meet a man who had a dependent mother
who hasn't become the most amazing self-affirmed, self-confident man
because there's a confidence to those men
because they know they can do it
in the same way that we just fucking know what we can handle.
It's such a good lesson for women, I think,
because so often you feel like I have to be strong,
I have to do this, I have to become kind of the traditional, like, man.
I have to take on a man's characteristics traditionally
in order to succeed in life, like in business,
in parenting in these kind of things.
Like I co-parent, but I'm a single mom.
Like you feel like you have to be that.
But actually showing vulnerability is something that is maybe a thing that we have kind of left behind.
We don't feel like we can do that anymore.
And getting him to rise to the challenge.
You know, I was talking recently about the fact that calling men out did not work.
Calling men in doesn't really work.
So they don't want to really talk to us.
We need to call them.
We need to call them up.
Call them up to the potential we see.
You know, I've been talking a lot lately about the fact that I find it deeply emasculating
the way that the manisphere talks to men,
as if, like, you're so inept that you can't ascend beyond this level here.
So you're just going to need to push women down
so that they stop catching up or overtaking you.
How offensive.
Imagine.
Imagine being told that as a human being.
Imagine being indoctrinated with that belief that, like,
you'll never grow from this point.
So it's only about keeping everyone else down.
How sad?
Whereas I think women genuinely have faith.
There would be no dating apps if women didn't actually have faith in men's potential and men's power to reach that potential.
Yeah.
We would just be on a new island of just women.
Yeah.
There would be convents again.
Yeah.
Which I know is what the 4B movement really is.
It's just a new...
What's the 4B movement?
Well, you know, I think it's like South Korea, isn't it?
Yeah, it's like no...
No sex.
Oh, okay.
Sex, no relationships.
No men.
And women are moving in with each other.
big houses, like loads of single mothers are like moving in together and just rearing children
together, you know, it's like, oh, great, that's someone who actually understands a mental
load. And it's a shame that we have come to that point. It's understandable that we've come to that
point, but I have extremely high standards. I just wouldn't be with a man who made my life harder.
So if he doesn't bring joy and pleasure to my life, then there would be no reason for me to
be in a relationship with him because...
The Marie Condor method, but for me.
Does it spark joy?
Is it useful? If it's not,
it's no use to me. And that's how they see us,
by the way. Which is why when we get
sick, they abandon us normally.
Statistically.
Was it 600% more likely to abandon a sick woman?
A woman will be there to the bitter end
and then they recover and they're like, feeling better now see you.
Yeah. So I would say like the...
I think it's, you know, there's a reason
they don't want us to focus on our careers or our education.
or building our skill sets is because then we will need them.
I think it's a terrible idea to need someone.
And I'm so happy to say that after 11 years of trialing this,
of trialing, building, focusing on my independence,
focusing on my female friendships,
focusing on my friendships in general,
and not making him the centre of my universe
has led to 11 years of us being madly in love with each other like the beginning
because we haven't disappeared off
and put all this pressure on each other
and suffocated each other and suffocated ourselves.
We have high standards for each other.
And I've been able to maintain high standards
because I have so many other places
to find comfort in my life.
So I don't need anyone.
I want him.
And that's a really amazing feeling after over a decade.
There's a weird anxiety.
I think sometimes when you get into a relationship of like,
oh, I have to like just be with this person all the time.
I don't know what that is.
It's like a feeling of I need to,
I just want to be with this person.
person and kind of aband and everything else.
You just can't stop fucking.
Yeah, I think you might be.
Because you can't say I love you yet.
You feel all these, you've got this love chemical that's going around in your brain.
And you know it would be fucking mental to say I love you.
But you're feeling I love you.
Even if it's not actual love, you have the chemical of love in your brain.
So the only way that we can express that affection is by just fucking all the time.
And that's why we have sex six times a day at the beginning.
Because you're just like, really, you're going, I love you, I love you.
But you can't.
But you can't say it.
So it's how we say it.
We spray it.
We don't say it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry, that's foul even for me.
We started with a vagina wash.
Yeah.
Is it depressing or hopeful to hear someone be like,
it's really hopeful?
It's really hopeful.
It's really hopeful.
It's really good.
It's like one of the most important things is to raise standards.
Like it just is so important.
Yeah, but also that's great.
Like we've risen to each other's standards.
There were things that I needed to shift about myself that were agitating him
and there were things about him that were agitating me.
And we both had faith and patience with each other to rise to those standards.
And I love that he's got high standards.
And I love that I have to meet those standards.
And I love the fact that we have set this dinette.
I mean, I set it up, but we maintain it together.
That like you don't get the job and put your feet up.
You get the job and then you keep the job and then you want promotions.
Yeah.
Promot?
Yeah.
That is...
For anyone listening there.
That is just...
Use your imagination there.
Promotions were said with a mouth full.
Blow motions.
Blow motions.
Yeah.
But you want to keep ascending to new levels of love,
which are capable.
Because once that like frenzy of the beginning
calms down,
that's when the real shit kicks in.
And that's when safety
and like someone becoming actually your safer space.
Like it's so.
annoying that I can't sleep without him. It's so annoying. It's so frustrating. I'm not at all
tired until he comes to bed and then I'm out. Wow. We were just talking about this about a study
that means that you are, you fall asleep if you feel safe. So if you fall asleep makes of somebody,
that means you feel safe and that that is a, um, yeah. Yeah, but can you imagine watching television
with someone like that? And I gaslight him every day. Every day. He's like, are you awake? And I'm like,
yeah. And he's like, what just happened? And I'm like, she was.
just talking about the gun shop.
You're just going on dates with somebody.
I'm awake.
And I fight like an 11-year-old at a slumber party.
Like, I fight to insist I am awake and I did not fall asleep.
And I'm so embarrassed at the idea that he would think I fell asleep during the TV show.
Yeah.
At 8 p.m.
It's just so funny there to go on dates with somebody, you just keep falling asleep.
And you're like, this is actually a sign that I feel safe.
Or a hit no, but sure.
Or if you fall asleep too early.
that's actually assigned to call the police.
And are you still in your relationship, even 11 years on,
are you still sort of like having chats?
Do you have to communicate about, oh, this isn't quite working for me
or can we do this or something like that?
Is it still a constant?
It's a constant because you're growing and you're changing and you're shifting
and you have to check in with each other.
It's like, right, there's billions of people in the world.
And if you're in our industry, you're access to more of them
than if you're working at HSBC.
Yes.
So in order to convince someone not to go and fuck everyone else,
you have to be like the best.
Yeah.
So we're like trying to be like Olympians in our relationship.
Like I want to, I don't want you to feel like you're sacrificing something by not dating other people.
I want you to be excited to come home to me so we earn that with each other.
And I very much so, like neither one of us is like, I'm the prize.
Do you know what I mean?
Like I think that shit is really toxic and intense.
I understand where it comes from.
but I don't think it works.
Like, we're both the fucking prize.
Someone wants to try, a friend of ours wants to say like, you know,
you're the garden and he's the gardener.
And I was like, ugh, no.
We are both wild forests.
They're tending to ourselves.
Like, that is horrifying to me.
Yeah.
I don't, yeah, I just, I think we have a lot of shit backwards.
I think it's absolutely devastating that Hollywood has made a concerted effort
to make up.
to emasculate nice men and kind men by always making them the loser and the sweater vest.
It's like very deliberate when you actually go back and you look through the movies.
I've been watching like old 90s and naughty's movies and he's always got glasses and he's always got a sweater vest on.
He dresses badly, badly shaped trousers and like he's the good guy and the nice guy and he gets overlooked.
Hollywood male writers, male rom-com makers and a massively patriarchally run media industry back then especially perpetuated the idea that the emotionally
unavailable, disrespectful man in a leather jacket who rides a motorcycle.
I would never date someone who rides a motorcycle.
Are you joking?
Fucking death trap.
Imagine, imagine loving someone who could die that easily.
Why would you ever date someone who rides a motorcycle?
Ever?
Like, no.
And someone who wears that much leather all the time.
It's going to smell pretty bad.
Oh my God, of course.
Like that stink.
Yeah.
I did date somebody who had a motorbike many years ago.
and this is way too much information,
but he's really smelt like vinegar all the time.
Oh my God.
That is also a pH thing, though.
That's coming.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Okay.
It's actually not to do it in the motorbike actually.
But thanks for contributing to you.
But obviously, yeah, it's like a fucking bacon roll down there.
It's like an oven.
Yeah, in a pigskin oven.
It's a pigskin oven.
Yeah.
He's slow cooking himself.
Well, that's why they have to touch their dicks all the time,
which why about shake hands with men?
Intrously.
I do not want to shake hands with men.
I do not want to shake hands with men.
I really don't want to.
And it's not just men because also like there's a lot of women who've recently touched a dick
and haven't, you know, like, washed it out.
You're fine in this route.
I can sense that when I walked in.
But I talk a lot about the penile imprint and I'm like, I can see it on everyone's hand in my head.
Like as if like a UV light or something.
I'm like, I'm like, a penile imprint on the hand.
I'm like, I don't want to shake people's hands because everyone's playing with their cocks all the time.
And if I had one, I would probably play with it too.
Well, if it's that hot down there.
Yeah, you just want to move it around.
What a bad, poorly designed.
Yeah.
Nightmare.
Like, a bit like tits.
Like, they're just inconvenient.
They're fun.
Yeah.
They are fun.
But my fucking God.
Leave us alone.
No.
No.
No.
God no.
Have you heard that big flaps are back?
I just wanted to say something that you wouldn't expect.
They were hard to...
Big flaps.
Yeah, big flaps.
So you know they were like, no flaps.
You're not allowed to have any fanny flaps at all.
Like, got to be gone, got to look like a newborn baby or a Barbie doll.
Now, flaps are back.
The new trend is to have a puffy labia.
And so women are getting a special type of filler in an area that has got some of the most nerve endings in your body.
And we don't have long-term studies on what that's going to do.
But they're getting their labias puffed up with filler.
Wow.
But it's good to know we're still finding new ways to mutilate.
Oh, thank God.
Women for a nonsense porn standard.
Maybe we might be done.
Yeah.
No, I know.
I thought earlobe plastic was the end.
What's that one?
When you just get your earlobes fix, so it's the perfect size, like a small child.
Everything's nonce.
Everything is nonce coded.
Everything about what we're supposed to look like.
It's all nonce coded.
It's a bunch of pedos at the top of this industry who want to justify their desire to have sex for children.
by making us all look and behave like children.
It's all non-coded.
And any woman who participates in it
is participating in nonstom accidentally.
Oh God.
And so we all have to.
I don't want to participate in non-stom.
I don't want to be a part of non-stom.
I don't know.
Exactly. Exactly.
I'm telling you, we need to like...
God. We need to call it out for what it is.
It's non-stom.
Yeah, and like acting like a little girl
and making our voices higher.
A friend of mine, I heard her on a business call.
I could tell she was talking.
talking to men on the phone because her voice pitched up.
Okay.
And her authority, like, disappeared from her voice.
And she did that to herself in that moment, from conditioning.
But ultimately, we have to take responsibility for ourselves.
Yeah.
And I was like, it's all, it's the noncery of the world that has made you feel like you need
to be a little girl to be able to communicate with men and the baby voices and that
all of this stuff is, it's all quite disturbing.
all to draw us away from the power of a fully formed woman.
Yeah.
Because they're scared of us.
You can't be threatening.
If you're yourself, you're threatening.
If you're a tiny baby girl.
Maybe you're not scary.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like that's, that's what they think.
No clitoris, but it's all puffied down there.
Yeah, it's like you haven't really found it yet.
So like they don't have to.
Whereas at 40, you just really know who you are.
You know what you like.
You know exactly where it is.
You're much better in bed.
You're, well, I mean, you might be.
I'm not.
Other people are.
I'm still really like banking on that car accident
that I've recovered from like 18 years ago.
But other people are really good at bed.
I sort of rely on the lulls.
Yes, correct.
Yeah.
What was I saying before I started talking about being?
The noncery thing.
The non-sory thing.
We've got to make sure that we stop
and vandalising ourselves.
Yeah.
And like if you're someone who's caught yourself doing it,
you can stop right now.
You can stop to.
day. It's very important. I speak in my natural register. I do not in any way allow myself to
hunch my shoulders or try to make myself smaller. I love wearing heels. I love being five foot
ten. I love intimidating both men and women and non-binary people. I enjoy being intimidating.
And not in a way of bullying because I'm never actually actively intimidating people,
but someone's intimidated by me. I consider that a win for feminism. And I don't hold back
my opinions. I don't know if you've noticed that over the years.
But I reserve the right to get it wrong and to try stuff out and to fuck about and to find,
figure out and find my own potential. And I believe in everyone having the right and the space
to do that. And I'm rooting for us all. But we've just got to get out of our own way.
And I think that one of the things that happen after the Me Too movement is a sort of infantilization
of women, a self-infantilization where we've gone, no, no, no, no, but we're not responsible
for anything. And it's not our fault about the beauty.
standards and it's not our fault about the way that we're trained to speak or communicate and it's
not our fault that we of course it might not be our fault but it is our responsibility at some point to
take hold of the situation and move forward in a progressive way so we might not have birthed it but
we are absolutely feeding it and watering it and keeping it alive.
Patriarchy is being you know it's being coddled within many of us yeah it's on the teat
it's on the teat it's on with our own bodies and I think that I had to hold myself responsible
You know, people sometimes get a bit upset when I talk about how angry I am with my 20-year-old self
and how if I met her now, I'd kick her in the cunt because she tried to kill me.
Sure.
Yeah.
But I do think that it's very valuable to me.
I feel very empowered when I take responsibility for my own behaviour.
Obviously, anorexia is a mental illness and I know that I wasn't fully, you know, in the driving seat there.
But I also made decisions that I knew at the time were detrimental to my happiness and my well-being.
being. And the way that I know I had some responsibility is I was able to drag myself out of it.
Yes. So the fact that there was an end to that shows I did have more autonomy than society
allowed me to believe. And so I cling to that in order to feel empowered in my life. I cling to
accountability, self-accountability and holding other women accountable, not just men. Yeah. And saying we can
actually do better. And so that's why, you know, this moment where we're all clinging back to really
disturbing 90s but evolved 90s trying to turn ourselves into like AI level perfection.
I consider it a betrayal to women. I'm like, what are we doing? We have to take some responsibility.
In the 90s we didn't know any better, but now we do. Now we do understand bone density. We do understand
the menopause. We do understand patriarchy and the system that wants us to look small and fragile
so that men will look big and strong and feel more powerful. We understand that you're harder to
kidnap when you can fight back.
We understand that you're harder to take rights away from if you can fight back.
It's harder to campaign an empty stomach.
So, you know, like, I do think it's important to take responsibility for that.
And the way that I manage that within myself is to always be thinking about what my
old lady self will be thinking about me now.
Like, well, if she could look back on me today, she'd be happy I ate the monster munch.
She'd be happy I said my opinion on a podcast that lots of people will hear.
Yeah.
And maybe I piss them off.
maybe I inspired some people.
Maybe some people thought that was interesting and she's still a trap.
But I was myself, you know.
And so I want her to feel like I was prepared for her and excited for her arrival
and taking cod liver all tablets, whatever the fuck she needs,
starting to lift weights.
By which I mean carrying around my dog like a little baby.
And so I want her to feel differently to how I feel.
I feel like my 20-year-old self was dreading my arrival.
And I never want old me to feel that way.
So I live firmly in that belief.
Yeah.
And belief system is that like everything we do,
we should be preparing for our old years
because this is the good shit.
This is when it gets amazing.
This is the happiest time of my life.
It's the most comfortable I've ever been in my skin.
And that's why I'm so fucking terrifying.
And I'll take it.
I love that.
Jamila, thank you so much.
This is, I think I'm going to just listen to this.
I want to make it into like,
a song or something.
Like I know.
Yeah, I'm gonna be like every morning I'm like, yeah.
Yes, I want to live for my old lady self.
And date for your old lady self.
Dude, I watch a lot of, and this is super creepy,
but I watch a lot of people like talking on their final days
or on their deathbed.
You know, on YouTube,
they do like kind of like a sort of random series and interviews.
Otherwise it sounds like I murdered people.
I hear a lot of people.
Any final words?
I just feel like.
Smother them with a pillow.
There's always old women
talking about wishing they'd not punish their body so much
or wishing they hadn't centred men in their lives
or wish that they'd chosen a better partner for themselves,
wishing that they hadn't had children,
some wishing that they did have children.
But like all of these decisions that we're making now,
someone is watching.
Just think about it that way.
Like she's going to look back on all of us.
And so I really, I really want to.
to make that woman proud.
And I think that society deliberately shuns that old version of us
and tells us all just to take any risk we have to,
just to meet the beauty standard in the now.
It is so important that we reject that.
And we are always building.
Men are building.
We need to be building.
Yeah.
They're getting that right.
Some things they just get right.
Yeah.
The way they advocate for themselves,
they get that right.
Yeah.
The way they show up for themselves.
They get that right.
And so we need to borrow a bit of that.
We need to borrow a bit from each other.
Yeah.
Yeah, do it for the old ladies.
Let's do it for the old ladies.
And how do you kiss someone?
Amy, you just got a lunch.
Well, that was very cool having Jamila Jamil on the podcast.
What an honour.
Yeah, I just feel like I've, like, known her for so lot.
I know.
It felt really, like, she's a real cool girl.
Cool.
That sounds like such a lame thing to say, but she's a real cool girl.
Yeah.
I want her to be my sister.
Yeah.
No, I don't actually.
I'd be too intimidated.
I want her to be your sister.
Okay, we'll take it.
Okay, okay.
No, that was amazing.
I'm so happy.
We had Jamila Jamila.
That's really cool.
Incredible.
She has an amazing podcast called Wrong Turns.
Yes.
So it's like this, kind of.
But it talks about all the wrong turns in life.
And it's funny and it's outrageous.
She's had Friend of the Pod.
Sophie Hagan on as a guest, as well as so many cool people.
Simon Pegg, Judy Love, May Martin.
Whoa.
It's a real who's who.
Yeah, hi-bar.
High bar.
Can't wait to listen.
And that's wrong turns.
Well, I'm so happy that we're back.
Me too.
It feels good.
It feels good to be back.
And I'm happy to be back where we belong.
Single ladying.
I'm talking about it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well then we will see you next week. We'll see you next week. We're weekly again.
We're weekly again. We're back. See you soon.
Bye bye.
Hello, single ladies. If you're a single lady and you're interested in meeting other single people who are really furious about the direction of the Labour Party and a contemplating voting green for the first time, then you might meet them in the audience at one of my tour shows.
I'm Nish Kumar and my stand-up comedy show is called Angry Humour from a really nice guy.
We're going to the UK and Ireland between September and November of 2026 and the tickets are available right now.
I will, if requested, organise a dating service during the show.
I would say if you're interested in meeting some very angry people, they will be at the show and they will be mad as hell.
Tickets are available at nishcamore.coma.com.com.com.com.
None of this is legally binding.
You may not meet your live partner at one of Nishkama's tour shows.
