SO MAYER: Being perceived, being heard: we often think about the painful aspect of that as being misheard, being criticised, being deliberately misunderstood, being shouted down. And I've experienced all those things, of course I have. But the possibility of actually being heard is equally as painful. Because it also asks what would be the result of that, that if someone said, "Okay. I've taken on what your book is saying. What now? Back to you." And that's what a good therapist does: "I've heard you. Now what are you gonna do about it?" And then going: oh, supposedly through my educational privilege, I've been taught to take power from using language. And here I am using language and I don't feel powerful. I feel afraid and I feel ashamed, and I feel like someone's gonna hit me in the mouth.
Read moreAllusionist 163 Rhino Borked Guy transcript
"Better to elect a rhino than an ass.”
Read moreAllusionist 154 Objectivity transcript
HZ: When in your journalism career did the problems of objectivity become evident to you?
LEWIS RAVEN WALLACE: Probably like the first day.
Allusionist 120 Shine Theory transcript
AMINATOU SOW: Hi. We are Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow, and we are the authors of the book Big Friendship, as well as the hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend.
HZ: And at some point between 2009, when they met and befriended each other, and 2013, when Ann used it in an article in New York Magazine, Aminatou and Ann coined the term Shine Theory.
ANN FRIEDMAN: I think this is just something that, you know, you probably said to me first, “I don't shine if you don't shine.” And then it became a thing we said frequently to each other and to other friends.
AMINATOU SOW: I will confess that it is the lyric from the Killers album that I just enjoyed a lot.
Read moreAllusionist 116: My Dad Excavated a Porno transcript
HZ: The Victorians really did a number on people. I feel like we're still unpicking Victorian attitudes.
KATE LISTER: Yes, we are. I mean, we're still very much the children of the Victorians, and they're a fascinating bunch, the Victorians. No generation, at no point in history, has sex been successfully repressed, ever. It just doesn't happen. But what you have is really strict social morality, conditioning and mores and constructs and power dynamics around sex that dictate what we are and what we're not supposed to be doing. And outward facing, they were so repressed and polite society and so offended by everything even remotely to do with sex, to the point of where they wouldn't say the word 'trousers' because they thought they were too rude. They were 'sit down upons'.
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