Hello and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, a very unprofessional podcast whereby I, your unqualified guide, talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.
Okay, so welcome back.
I'm recording this episode in my car, in my backyard today.
Just because you know how it is, lockdown, all my housemates are home, I don't really want to annoy them with my ranting about this week's topic.
It also means if you hear like some beautiful bird noises, hopefully it brings something to the ambience.
It's very Snow White -esque.
Okay, let's get into it.
So this episode is probably my absolute favorite I have ever recorded.
Don't get me wrong, I really have loved all the other topics that I've covered but I think that none have kind of struck me so personally as this one.
It's really hit a bit of a raw nerve, honestly, like researching this, thinking about this because currently, if you don't know, Canberra is in lockdown due to the Delta strain as many parts of Australia thanks Sydney for that one, but as much as it has you know created some existential...
Maybe we should talk about what these questions are.
I'm also, I'm just an add -on by the way, thanks for the feedback.
No, no, no, no, no!
You're here to contribute a unique perspective of a twenty -something year old.
No, she's just my housemate so we thought, oh we felt really bad.
We value your insights.
Yeah, no, I found these questions on TikTok.
There was this guy talking about like this college in Oxford.
It's just a residential college but in order to get in, it's a very rigorous selection process and they make you sit for three -hour exams.
12 hours in total. Yeah, in total.
It used to be five and then you have to have an interview where there's like 50 people interviewing you and they admit one to two people every year.
It's really, really selective.
Some of the hidden psychological secrets maybe behind why we develop strong feelings for those who could never reciprocate those feelings back.
Now I feel like I don't really need to explain how unrequited love relates to our 20s.
Like, that's not kid ourselves.
Spotify, it like gives me a little wrap -up of the ages or demographics of people who listen each week and overwhelmingly or as you know the title of my podcast could probably predict.
The majority of you are in your 20s and I'm sure are very familiar with this feeling, that fucking gut -wrenching feeling of having these insanely strong emotions and expectations of someone who will never, you know, could never return them.
And the pain, the confusion of unrequited love, I think it is its own psychological challenge and if you know, you say you've never experienced unrequited love, well firstly, this episode is not for your ears.
Please kindly leave.
This is a safe space.
But secondly, I think you're probably lying to yourself.
You know, I refuse to believe that there is someone out there who has only ever loved those, who has loved them back in equal measure.
It's impossible. Like, psychology literally says it's impossible, which we'll obviously get to in a moment.
Anyhow, like I mentioned, I've been thinking about unrequited love quite a lot in this time of lockdown.
You know, I kind of used to semi -joke that I came out of the room in a state of unrequited love and I still slightly believe it.
You know, it feels weird to share this insanely personal dimension of my life, but fuck it, I think it is a universal human experience that needs to be shared and for a long time unrequited love really did define much of the narrative I would tell about myself, you know, the men I was so in love with, so devoted to,
so had so much admiration for, who would never reciprocate.
Me and Gemma would get into Oxford College.
Oh, I really think that we would.
I think we would as well.
Well, we'll have to say, but maybe we should like probably, probably just give you guys more of an introduction and tell everyone how we met.
Oh yeah. Get them get them familiar before we deep dive.
So Meg, how did we meet?
Well, we went to BNG together, but we weren't friends.
Yeah. And I think we both thought we headed each other.
I remember you told me like, conception that does not forget that hurt.
It's a wound that really does cut deep into your psyche and it becomes ingrained into you and it does become part of how you address all future experiences of emotion and feeling because it is, it's bigger than rejection.
You know, unrequited love is not just rejection.
It is heartbreak itself and a lot of research into how our brain reacts to human connection really does confirm this.
There have been so many people who I have believed I have loved and who have not loved me back.
You know, one of them is even married now and there are times especially in this recent week, strangely, when, you know, I have had time to reflect on that emotional experience that I do feel these like strangely old urges and the pain of my story.
Okay. So I was, hadn't had anything to drink so I drove them to...
It was me and two others.
And Jasmine and Erin.
Someone's birthday.
It was someone's birthday, wasn't it?
Yeah. It was Jasmine's birthday.
Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.
It was a year ago basically.
Yeah. And so I drove them up to, we got McDonald's and then I drove them up to Black, to Mount A and they were these two people having sex.
Really love, like all those intense emotional experiences.
Are we correct in labeling them as love, even unrequited love or love of a lesser degree?
So like I said, a highly personal episode, but I think I've, you know, I've always said this podcast was for my own self exploration and if you get something out of it, if you connect to my stories of, you know, always being the one who has more to give than I could ever receive, I'm glad that you can get
something out of it.
And I feel like I've talked to my friends about this so often, you know, this is probably time for an immense shout out to my friends like Kate and Erin, friends of the show who I think for years have witnessed me becoming overly invested in silly little men and then crying on their months later.
But I always hear the same line of reasoning for this predicament.
You know, it's always you love too much, you care too deeply, you see the best in everyone, you have so much to give.
And this episode, well, how about while you do that, Maddie, how did we meet?
I think we had chaps at B &G.
Yeah, but I think we both did love.
Like make no mistake, unrequited love has an origin in our formative experiences and how we've been taught to expect rewards and returns from our expression of emotion and unrequited love can occur because our mind is simply hijacked or programmed to respond to what we interpret as love in a very specific
way and beyond a level of consciousness.
So okay, with that kind of fun thought in mind, let's jump into the psychology of it all.
I once had someone tell me that unrequited love was the purest form of love and despite that being kind of highly manipulative for the situation that we were in, this was years ago, like four or five years ago and what he has said has stuck with me because his sentiment is absolutely everywhere but whether it's
correct is probably a whole other debate, there's that quote that all poets must have an unrequited love and true love is that which we can never meet and we see unrequited love showing up everywhere in pop culture and media performances, movies, Call Me By Your Name, Great Gatsby obviously, Pokes of Being
a Wallflower, even Forrest Gump.
It is such a deep inspiration for a lot of creative works like music and art as well and oh my gosh there's that one, this one song that always gets me when I find myself in these situations as I regularly do, it's Adele's version of I Can't Make You Love Me and if you are currently experiencing a love
that is unrequited, listen to that song, feel your pain and take it as a sign to move the fuck on because if you are listening to Adele, they are not the one, they are just not it but in all seriousness it is a really beautiful song and I think the repeated theme of unrequited love across a lot of creative
media really expresses two things that relate to the psychological underpinnings of this concept, firstly the experience is universal and has some innate premise that makes it so commonplace, as I've alluded to, everyone has experienced this, we all tend to make other people sacred in the absence of true
emotional connection, you know placing someone on a pedestal is better than acknowledging that we have been short -sighted in essentially worshipping someone that's really not worth our time, I think very few of us can rationalize desire and can rationalize wanting someone who does not love or want you
back and I'll go more into this later but a love that is unrequited is very much tied to our brain chemistry it's tied to reinforce or if you just have an addition if you agree with us but if you disagree we don't want to hear it yeah yeah just I'm just gonna block you spam yeah okay Meg has the first
question okay yes is the internet changing the ways in which we think good question that's a very broad question I think it's obvious it is but but then I think it depends like how you narrow it down because like if you if you think about internet as an isolated concept secondly from how this experience
is portrayed as romantic as a powerful force we can see that unrequited love is somewhat glorified by our society in kind of an unnecessary way and I definitely want to talk more about why I find this interpretation so incorrect later on because I think although we romanticize the suffering and grief
of longing of not being loved back it is actually a really fucking terrible feeling and can we even call that love you know a feeling that is that painful in many ways is it right to kind of combine that with something that is meant to be as beautiful as love and I think the romanticization of unrequited
love also relates greatly to our glorification of things that are beautiful particularly art and obviously opinions were more up for discussion whereas if you spend a lot of time on the internet especially as we all did last year when we all inside our homes it's actually harder to get a diverse opinion on things
and especially like you can kind of cherry pick the information that you want rather than and also it's grief and and death the absence of love is such a moving experience that we must glorify it because of what it produces artistically and creatively but the pain and discomfort and discomfort of you
know it's not something to be understated from a psychological perspective that feeling of hurt that is associated with with something deeper than rejection it does cause long -term shifts in neural pathways our schemas of the world and how we learn to interpret people's actions you know as either threats
or as encouragement and before we dive into this I do To read more diverse sources of information.
That's a good point though because like I feel like with the internet and like what do you call technology coming on I know like the generations of like 10 year olds now can't think for themselves because they've got phones to search up on Google like when we were 10 we fucking had oh you know i just
swear we had to go out and like you know make up ideas for ourselves literally we had to think for ourselves and i'd such a like i always think about this i'm like are we gonna lose our like process of this is a bit i don't you know what i mean like we can just search on google like that's something
i often find is i have these feelings of unrequited love for someone i think i really care about them you know you can become obsessed with them but at the same time there's this contradictory voice in my head saying you know you don't need them if they don't you know the phrase that my friend Aaron always
uses is like the egg doesn't chase this worm like if they don't like you back that does create kind of a cognitive dissonance with this sense that you are this independent person who who will survive without them okay i have a few theories around this obviously which is why i'm making this podcast but firstly
unrequited love it serves a purpose as an emotional curtain or a distraction from the real issues that we may be experiencing you know external to these feelings oh maddie's got a quote she literally did you hear her she's got a little bit she was like going she just sprinted yeah we didn't get any
i do get criticized for my elephant feet around here all the time yes no it just reminded me of this book that i'm reading at the moment it's by thomas friedman great um thomas grew with some guy i've been talking to for months and you know yeah i started developing feelings for him they obviously weren't
reciprocated but there was some small part of my brain that was almost grateful i had this person to pre -occupy my mind with because it meant that i could have a mental reprieve from thinking about the bigger issues that were going on you know i really remember it was almost like a conscious sigh of relief
like thank god you've come along and and fucked with my feelings because now i can project all this other shit onto you and you can kind of be like a little thought vacation from the reality and then the past that i have to heal from so if your mind is preoccupied with thoughts of another person admiration for them
and fantasies of you know what it could be like if your feelings were reciprocated as well as that emotional discomfort of the what -ifs that is like the ultimate distraction from other aspects of your life that may be causing insecurity or general unhappiness you know our brain and our mind is at all
time second we create our own echo chambers which we've kind of touched on a third online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs persistent thought patterns perhaps about past loves and not in my case that's what it was or even aspects of your life that are entirely unrelated you know unrequited
love for a short while does serve as a substitute or a distraction okay but it's it's obviously i think more than just a coping mechanism for other aspects of your life that you might not be happy with another theory which is a more learning -based theory suggests that these this unreciprocated feelings
and this pattern of sinking deep into emotions for someone who's obviously unavailable comes from a pattern of past love perhaps starting early in life that has taught you to crave what is being withdrawn and held back and on the flip side it makes you scared of love that is obvious and available you
don't simply fall for people because of an innate weakness or a personality characteristic but because it is a pathological pattern of behavior that you've been taught especially from formative experiences maybe like a first love or from observing others like your parents or those around you so this experience
and and seeing these things creates memory roots in your mind that are associated with a particular feeling or reaction and in this scenario a feeling that is akin to what we believe is love so for example you know say the first person you ever loved or dated was really inconsistent with how they showed
affection or they would say things that contradicted their actions like saying that they loved you and then showing little physical intimacy or a few acts that actually reflected that love you know they had it they had the words for it but they weren't able to kind of demonstrate that they did have these
feelings you know but they call it love and you assume that's love so in the future when you have feelings for someone who reacts in a similar way that's love to you you convince yourself of the possibility that you know what is one -sided quite obviously it may actually be more nuanced like no wonder
you'll be attracted to people who are similarly withdrawn or in some cases just like blatantly uninterested because our brain is is confused it's programmed in some way to take ambiguous situations or situations even of ambivalence from another person reflect back on those early experiences of love
and match these experiences you see those similarities and result this kind of results in a cycle of feeling of emotion of care that is you know really unsatisfying and probably often one -sided because well you know obviously you continuously fixate on people who are not interested love that is available
on the other hand may be scary because it doesn't match your pre -existing and internal conception of what that feeling should look like it kind of all comes down to what we expect love and relationships to appear like and this also connects to attachment styles which i alluded to earlier you know getting
stuck in the loop or repetition of consuming you know crushes and unrequited love this kind of signals towards a fearful avoid an attachment style which is in contrast with something like secure attachment so let's break down write this down a little bit because i know attachment style gets talked about quite
a lot but what do they actually mean okay so these four attachment styles so yeah there are four attachment styles um one of which really relates to unrequited love and then there's that kind of two that are in the middle and then there's one that's you know secure attachment and that's kind of we'll
start with that one secure attachment is like the gold standard like if you want but now we pick up our phones we go on the internet it actually makes that cognitive process like you were saying may be a lot easier a lot quicker i still want to say it because i was just thinking with social like not just
social the internet or any like news or evidence thing on the on google whatever like i think it really favors people who are more self -aware what you were saying maddie and like intellectual like if i know so many people who have different like range of skills and aunty's like you know university educated
and stuff and they like they get sucked in really bad and like scammed like that's a bad case in art you know like anxious attachment this is marked by like deep fear of abandonment and clinging behavior and then we have avoidant or dismissive which i think is probably like the shittiest or the second
shittiest form of attachment style someone could have so essentially what this attachment style means is you just have a fear of intimacy and you really just avoid getting close to anyone people with this dismissive ambivalent avoidant whatever you want to call it attachment style they're more likely
to have relationships whereby one party is just highly emotionally unavailable and they really prefer to be independent finally we have fearful avoidant attachment style and this is kind of a combination of anxious and avoidant attachment starves so people with fearful avoidant they desperately crave
affection but they also want to avoid it at all costs this is kind of why it's also known as disorganized attachment and it is associated with significant psychological and relational risks you know including a greater greater likelihood of a repetition or a pattern of unrequited obsessions and unrequited
love and this style it's it's developed in the formative years of a person's life and it's highly dependent on the responses and the nature of their bond with their primary primary caregiver so usually their mother or their father and the kind of bonding one has with their primary caretaker in their
formative years goes on to define their attachment style so someone with fearful avoidant probably had a parent or maybe an early relationship in which love was shown inconsistently and perhaps combined with with violence or manipulation or emotional abuse it may also then the flip side of that may be
that a lot of love bombing may have taken place in response so the person whether it's a first boyfriend or girlfriend or a parent they withdraw love they combine love with manipulation and then they also you know overwhelm you with love when they feel guilty so this person kind of learns to crave a love
that is withheld but it's also fearful of feelings that are obvious and apparent because they indicate you know something else coming along and this kind of leads to this cycle of unrequited love okay obviously this is not the only answer you know i've pointed out multiple times the university universality
of this experience so there is another element and it's not just those with fearful avoidant who would find themselves in this situation because this detachment style only makes up four percent of the population and if the statement i'm making it and i'm pretty sure i'm i would be right like most people
have experienced unrequited love you know if only four percent of the population is fearful avoidant this assumption that it's just because of your attachment style is is obviously incorrect so another theory put forward is that unrequited love also has a lot to do with sunk costs and variable reward
and you know self -delusion as well so if you like someone and you've built this image of a future with them or a fantasy in which they play a role you have invested in the notion that they are a good person and someone who is worth your time we often will also make the mistake of viewing everything
they do with rose tinted glasses and giving their actions a lot more meaning than they probably deserve so in this way it's hard to break away from those feelings because of sunk costs essentially we've already spent emotional capital on this person and time that cannot be recovered and then we we have already
you know metaphorically spent this emotional currency we don't want that to go to waste so we continue to pursue them either in our minds or externally because we want these sunk costs to have some output or a positive consequence for us we don't want to lose that investment of time and energy and thought
that we've placed in that person secondly when we are experiencing love that is unrequited we also have to consider variable rewards so the use of variable rewards um it's more of like an economic term but um it's often used in marketing but variable reward it's used in gambling all the time because it's
a pattern of reinforcement that is just scientifically proven to be the easiest way to get someone hooked to an activity so essentially your behavior is rewarded on a schedule that is impossible to predict so with gambling you know it's a best example because you just never know when you're going to
get a jackpot or when you're going to get your money back so in regards to relationships for example you know you text someone and sometimes they leave you on red for like days and other times they're super enthused and they get back to you quickly but it's impossible to tell when each response may occur
so think about it this in the case of unrequited love you know you have these feelings for a person and occasionally that person may accidentally or maybe purposely reinforce them by hanging out with you laughing with you reaching out and every time we try and pull away and be reasonable or realistic
about our feelings this variable reward schedule kind of stinks us back into it it's really difficult to escape so we are really good at convincing ourselves of the things that we want to believe so self -delusion is like I kind of said is also a huge part of unrequited love you know the fantasy that one
day this person might change their mind turn around confess their feelings it's really self -soothing for a lot of those different reasons that I've mentioned and often it is that person who is the most unavailable which is which is why we become hooked because it is their unwillingness to acknowledge
you as a sexual or romantic partner that keeps you in a state of expectancy and longing and this may especially be the case for those who are high achievers or those who have big ambitions you know we are so often told that if it was easy everybody know much about this topic but yeah yeah and like because there's
a question on this exam that was like is international development a good oh yeah like that kind of was like we because we're being globalized that's able to happen but also like how does it is it used for manipulation as well like yeah foreign interest political dual reasons rather than just humanitarians
well I feel like we're going in a rabbit circle should we do an next the next question yeah I think okay which question do you have make what if you ask that question do you want to ask a question ready yeah oh actually I'm like can I ask one yeah this one's like is is a social value perhaps one of the most
important no other idea or feeling in history is as revered as love but the way this concept this larger than life emotion is displayed in our culture is really contradictory and I think it's what contributes to this admiration of unrequited love because there are these two distinct displays or depictions
of love in our society that are so so very different but they're equally admired and I think this is what contributes to these confused feelings around reciprocations so firstly we see love as this stable mutual enduring force that it is comfortable and safe this is often associated you know with long
-term relationships and ideas of marriage and long -term couples but on the other side of the coin we are also taught to see love as this burning electric desire you know characterized by butterflies and intensity and full of longing and hope and you know just oh my god it's almost painful like you just
love them there's nothing you can do to control it and these two depictions they essentially make up our romance culture and it creates this like Madonna whore complex but for love whereby you have to have both you have to be in pursuit of what is stable but also constantly in a state of this all consuming
electric feeling and our idea of love as a society is so fucked in that way you know it creates such an internal confusion because if you think about someone that you're obsessed with this person you know you're consumed by them and you're consumed by this electric feeling and you know all this all
this confusion and these butterflies and they're all these psychologists who I just like hey John Watson and BF Skinner an example yeah you know him right no I know him from Sherlock how do you know him from Sherlock Holmes John Watson who's that he's like Sherlock's comrades yeah oh I've not watched
Sherlock Holmes 221B they live together oh that's cute yeah anyway is Arthur Conan Doyle an overrated because well firstly they haven't consented to it they may not even know it exists you know they may not even be aware but we still feel anger towards them and and can can that really be love can a feeling
that includes so much resentment and anger and frustration does that mean that unrequited love is real love and I had a huge huge discussion with my housemate around this which I think revealed like a lot of revelations about how we think about ourselves in the process but that's kind of beside the point
what we came the conclusion we came to is that there are two broad strokes and I'm talking very broad strokes interpretations of love firstly there's the idea that that love is a feeling and a distinct universal experience it's something beyond our control and on the other hand we also see love as a performance
something that you need to work on and towards so therefore we do see unrequited love as you know whether you see sorry whether you see unrequited love as real love depends on whether you see love as a practice or as an emotion because if you see it as a practice unrequited love can never be confused
as true love because for you love naturally needs two players and there needs to be some mutual foundation on which to build this this temple of care and reciprocation and empathy and giving however if you see love as an emotion as an all consuming feeling of passion that arises naturally from some
deep place in our conscious and our soul then we can say unrequited love is true love and it may even be pure love because that feeling can exist in only one person and still be valid it doesn't need to be reciprocated to still be felt um I'm really skeptical to call it love because I think calling
it that really glorifies the experience and we put other people on on a pedestal which is really problematic we begin to confuse things and move away from what a healthy and stable relationship should be.
Confide with a certain skill and they use that skill in their career.
It is unrequited love the real thing no it's not love can only be felt at its deepest and most profound level I think when it when it is shared and love is the process of gradually revealing yourself to someone and although you know it can be all consuming as well and it's definitely incredibly natural
and an organic feeling it also needs to be deliberate and must be mutual to be fully felt but again like kind of what I was talking with there is no right or wrong answer what we expect from love is based on what the relationships around us have taught us like our parents or our first relationship or our
crush and that really determines how we view love.
Okay that was a bit of a rant I think maybe it's time to to wrap things up yeah I just I hope you enjoyed that discussion like I said I really got into it um I think just like having that time to sit down and reflect on so many past experiences that I've had it really made me realize their own kind
of karmic cycle of my relationships and you know feelings that I've had for others and it was really therapeutic to actually read up about why this happens to kind of give this highly irrational experience more of a logical tinge and more logical input and psychological input as well and yeah just breaking
it down it was actually really helpful so I hope that you found it helpful as well if you are in a situation where you're experiencing love that is unrequited you have all my well wishes it's really shit it's really crap and it is really hard to break out of so I hope yeah everything works out for you
I hope that you know I'm not gonna hope that they're the one because they probably aren't but I hope that you can kind of see the irrationality that maybe this has helped you realize but what I'm saying is that it's not true like especially in isolated industry industries or in an isolated community
like Australia where they're like it suggests that when people lose jobs in one area new jobs are always created elsewhere so say we shut down that's like their skill set that's what you were saying about their skill set you know 45 year old skills they only have like a certain skill set they can't
change it's incorrect right wing economics is very much like the market fixes everything yes woman this is getting very like new age ranty like independent woman vibe but you know what I mean you can do it all on your own you don't need to beg someone for the time of day or for a message back or for a reply
um so I hope you guys are all doing well wherever you are in the world if you're in Canberra we're getting through it we only had eight cases today which is so exciting I never thought I'd say that um but yeah I hope you guys are all staying safe remember to subscribe if you're listening for the first
time on Spotify or Apple podcasts and follow us on Instagram like I said this idea for this one came from like an Instagram poll I did so if you want to kind of contribute it's up to you um to what episodes I get to look into yeah definitely give us a follow and thanks again for listening in take care of yourselves
and remember the egg doesn't chase the sperm bye this year I've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so I decided to commit to dry January to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for dry January because you feel like you're still participating
when you're out for dinner with friends out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals I'm a big beer fan so I also love the taste of Heineken 00 plus being alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery
at Heineken .com you must be 21 plus to purchase enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January next question I asked that question um oh okay so there was was it not your go make no I had that no it is definitely my job Maddie wants to go um there were a few questions so we could do the ready
to run a full hike oh yeah oh yeah the music one or the deaf versus blind community or um I feel like we can't really talk on that because none of us are deaf or blind that's very true we're not we're third party yeah well that's a question but that's not a question on the list going to ask is it a question can you
question is like can we make commentary on like things well the government does none of them are blind or deaf are they I you know some of them might be what they call people that stand on behalf of people yes rich but they're so unaware of the culture around them at the moment but that's interesting
because this is such a designer clothes like maybe maybe um if you've got someone in designer clothes asking you to give money it feels less like they're begging for money oh oh my god because it's less like they don't need it but like oh my god that's so true that means it's like the the rich people
always own the business you know I mean they're giving it to someone rich I don't know that makes sense but no I do I do know what you mean I was also gonna say it's an idea of in groups and out groups so people who are wearing people who are wearing like designer labels you form this kind of in group
that a you also want to be a part of yeah you want to be a part of that in group so you can see that a gateway it's like oh western society you want to be rich again and a way that you can seem like you're part of the in group is by donating you know so that's firstly like the social pretense of wanting
to be wanting to appear wealthy but secondly it's the thing of like I could be this person if I gave more generously like I'm gonna look like this individual if I give more generously like a very giving like generous yeah or this is not the rich people give I'm gonna give and then I'll be wealthy like
or you know I'll attract that's that's rude not rude but fast fashion yeah are these clothes made sustainable I'd actually trust someone who's wearing like not like who was still clean but who was wearing like ethically made clothes yeah like second -hand clothes because I'd be like oh my god they actually
care like you know about fast not this is about fast fashion you know about like that's still in in in economic what's the word like less economically developed countries yeah I think it's always what their appearance is and what appearance of the company attracts like what you're attracted to what the audience
is of the company advertising yeah if he wants a company that you think is trustworthy or like if you want one that seems ethical like how do you navigate that in terms of presenting a brand what was the question sorry oh I forgot what was it oh right better yeah we went on a big no no that's fine it
wasn't one that I initially kind of flagged to do but then I it popped up and I thought oh that's a bit of psychology it was yeah so it was why are we more likely to donate to charity yes by people wearing just yes oh that it does relate to what we're saying and that's how we want a complete tangent
we are on the right track exactly would you hear that what is that no but this morning there was actually like 1400 carol oh there was yeah it was carol i did and jazz was asleep i was like surely jessica wake up i don't know there's one there there's one every northeast southwest never took me week
weeks anyway oh very good um but i remember um when i used to speak when i when i was in russia i would like my russian was so australian so i'd be like i would just use like i would just say i speak russian and russian so like yeah i what you meant say is you're covering your poroski but i would say
yeah but i would say yeah cover are you poroski yeah but you know once you go over there because i learned french before i went over and i was like so australian but when i went over i was like fuck why am i saying this so are you both saying that the different identity would come from the different
accent i feel like it's a it's an indicative of the different identity you step into when you go to that language is literally interconnected with items yeah i did see new 12 and i stick by it how do i gotta explain it okay i didn't go that well in english but i can try to explain it um please do no it's
just like the words we use the syntax the semantics the meaning behind everything we say means that like you do have a different identity because otherwise you can't communicate with people so it's like you have to do is it because you you can't speak the language without having the accent basically
the language yeah at least having i think i think you have less flexibility with your pronunciation yeah when it's a tonal language yeah and then you know what do they think like you know what i mean like what do french people think when we speak aussie french like do they like oh if we just when they
hear australian yeah i suppose like they would just think of it they could understand like what the fuck is this but actually can i say this about what you were saying like when you go to french or when i was in like russia and you know the accent was such a huge part perhaps people who were speaking
russian who come to australia are equally like oh my god i feel like i can't actually get into this culture because the aussies have such a strange accent that's why so important to travel and like understand that because we will understand like if if a french if like a you know whoever like an international
person came to australia it'll be like oh that's so like they're speaking english like that's amazing you know but they're like oh but i can't understand aussies like i often got that was like when i was in russia like people couldn't understand my english like sometimes even though they spoke english
it's english or american yeah that's a big problem and then i'd be there like heavy on the vows it's as much as much as a dialogue interesting of nasal pronunciation nasal yeah do you find because when i whenever i go back to queenland my my australian accent just like what's that's what like no i noticed
when my brother went to queenza when he came back his accent was so queenland i was like get out did you notice that when we were in queenland was my accent stronger or did you not really notice i didn't notice well you're gonna say maddie you had a point i saw you opening up my mic oh another thing
i wanted back down yes um back down to the ground drop it no no another thing that i find really interesting about chinese particularly now that we're having a huge conversation about pronouns is that in spoken chinese there is no differentiation between men and women everyone is tah oh is that you
or is that he she he she oh really that is cool because everything's complete opposite it's it's yeah it's everyone is tah it's only when you write like and you want to say tah blah blah blah as in a woman that you use a different you use a female radical and interestingly when you use the tah character
for a man it's not a male radical it is the person radical because man is the default human and when you say they in chinese is man the default human in chinese or are you talking about in general just in chinese what's the default human is it person like you know i mean because you're referring to
like what's that object over there so say it's a chair would you say that most objects are male or eat or eat or their itch that's so good chinese is so you don't use that word that often in chinese because chinese doesn't um you don't really repeat the subject that's being mentioned for the first time
so that doesn't really arise but when you want to say like they and you use the tah character plus the character that indicates like like the plurality you use the male tah character um and something as well words like like jealousy in chinese that that has a thing you're not like a or in chinese yes
but in arabic and russian you're not a day like there's no you can't be a day you can't be poor you can't be you can't you're either that's really hard for our like growing worlds though because like how how are people who are non -binary or that is their identity fitting with their cultural background
oh it's a linguistic background it's very historical they're like this is a very historical you would like to do that and i was so fucking curious oh my god myself yeah that was really interesting i did not even think about that i have to re -listen to this because i forgot about that oh yeah any time
you need a bit of a positivity i am a genius yeah that's what how about we just send this to oxford and be like here you go what are your thoughts yeah give me we would like some constructive three phds please hundred fully i'd like to work on climate change yeah and i would like to work on i don't
know i don't think i do climate change it's too big what would you okay wait kind of an interstate like a bit of a a movement away what would you do your phd on and if you could in the next five years maybe five in australia something to do with bushfire
