The spirit of Bonnie Tyler is with us...

0:00Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. requires iPhone 11 or later.

0:40Even I've had a pre-meeting and then a meeting. We had a semi-meeting before the pre-meeting by the Lyft. And now I just think I've said too many words today already. We've had a lot of conversations already today. do you find uh that some days because you're quite good eve at uh winding in your social battery at work when you need to be concentrating on stuff if i may say so you've got a very definitive force field around you sometimes have you always been able to do that no well actually i think starting this job and you must have found this at some point as well it's a massive learning curve learning to read and write with lots and lots of noise around you so there's obviously the outputs going with the radios on people are having interesting conversations around you all the time and sometimes they're playing pub quizzes and sometimes they're not that interesting and you have to really learn to tune things out and then sometimes it's too resistible so you tune them back in and then you join in we have a very chatty lovely lively office so i think you have to pick your battles but i think you do you do manage it quite well because sometimes i'll look over at you and i think no no she's absolutely this is not the time to say and i think that is a good thing working in offices with the level of noise that now exists i think is a is a massive massive change in my lifetime oh really god yes when i first started uh way back in the day in local radio stations you would have the output on in the newsroom but there'd be very little noise accompanying that you really didn't chat chat chat through the day in fact it was quite it would be quite odd if you walked into a room and people were having a conversation about something non-work oriented and i'm sure lots of officers are still like that but i think radio are we allowed to say radio anymore should we say audio audio i think now it is quite buzzy but then it's weird as well because everyone's got headphones available so maybe that just makes people talk even louder do you think it's social media and people bringing more of themselves to work so there's the chat flows freer i think that's a very good point i think all of our our kind of guardrails of different bits of our lives are down these days so it is it is very loud and we we all try and keep quiet for very important parts of the schedule like the quiz in in the mid-morning show which happens at 10 to 1 it's called uh can you get to number 10 and we all like to play along with that don't we yeah but it's the only time that everybody's concentrating on just the one thing.

3:26It's weird. Yeah. Because of the way the radio is structured, people have different points of their day where they need to focus and that doesn't always align with everyone around you. So we go on our two. So one o 'clock is supposed to be quite a concentration station. Yeah, we tried that, didn't we? That just lasted about a week. Me and Rosie had a very long, boring conversation yesterday about 20 past one about whether we snooze our alarms and how many times we snooze them. And I did think, God, we're going on now. I don't know if you tuned into that conversation. Company time. Company time.

4:06I'm going to give you some emails. That first email is about when we're at Cheltenham. Now, I know that we can't give away. We cannot give away our guest. We're going to wait for the announcement from Cheltenham and for that website to go up. But can we at least say the day that we're appearing so people can book their traveller if they want to? I can say definitively that we can share that information from tomorrow after 10am. Oh my word. So is it Geeta who has written in? So I'm sorry about this. You're going to have to wait until tomorrow. Hang on your hat. It's coming. Can we give the name of the person?

4:40We can share everything from tomorrow. Okay. Well. So tomorrow's podcast, we will have news of Cheltenham. Geeta, your best years are definitely ahead of you. Currently, we cannot confirm or deny whether we'll be there. and there was another lovely email in there i think as well from somebody who had been to north berwick yes this comes from wendy i'm sitting in sunny north berwick after a weekend at fringe by the sea just wanted to report back that while we were disappointed not to see you both we thoroughly enjoyed the interview with jan ravens i was looking out for waitress bags but didn't spy any but i did notice that all of us women of a certain age had all turned up in sensible footwear not a heel in sight thank you for your podcast it keeps my mind preoccupied in a worrying world she also says her husband was one of the few men in the big tent and he laughed loudly well done sir because there are usually only about three of you in there we do appreciate that we do very much so you've been dragged along and sometimes the arms are folded but sometimes by the end of it you're a convert uh i hope that everybody who went along to north berwick thoroughly enjoyed Ruth Davidson and Jan Ravens and our apologies again that we couldn't make it but we do very much hope that we'll be there next year.

5:53The early morning register needs a name added to it. It's Nicola who is joining us from Hertfordshire and I'm sorry it sounds like you had a really terrible 20 years in a relationship there Nicola and solidarity sister. You've now found yourself a late in life love interest and I very much, very much hope that it is going well. We also heard from our jewellery designer, Harriet, yesterday. Yeah, and we were wondering why she appeared on the radio. She had to get up at 4.30 in the morning to go on the radio as a jewellery designer. But it is because she's also a business founder. They like to call me an entrepreneur and retailer with four branches.

6:32I've been lucky enough to blaze a few trails over the years, both in creative business and jewellery ethics. So I sometimes get asked to put my business hat on and talk about the real world of running a business these days. Interesting question from Eve about what time I go to bed. I aim for 10 to 10.30, but in reality I rarely manage to turn the light out before 11.30. Tell you what, Harriet, you should just pop into the office at around 1.20 and join in the conversation with Eve and Rosie about what time they set their alarms for and how often they put it on snooze. On radio days continues, Harriet, I'm much more disciplined and usually manage lights out by 10.30.

7:06I used to lie awake worrying that I wasn't getting enough sleep, but these days I don't worry about it. I sleep well but for less time. get up and get on with everything else. Were kids, well, young adults now, three cats and six chickens? Bloody hell. I'm worried that you have three cats and six chickens, and I wonder whether those numbers were ever different, Harriet. Do the cats just ignore the chickens? Sometimes I think cats can be scaredy cats. I wouldn't be surprised if the chickens actually terrified the cats slightly. That's true. At least one of my cats would just run a mile. That's Miss Barbara.

7:40She's not interested. Not interested at all. Harriet, I tell you what, we're going to keep you on file because quite often we need a business leader who's actually out, you know, someone who's out in the field, who's actually running a business. And definitely when budget time arrives, maybe we could persuade you away from a rival radio station that you're appearing on very first thing in the morning. You might like to come and join us on Times Radio. Can you take some singing from me, Eve, or is that a bit too much? I might turn my headphones down, but go for it. OK, it's Sean in Caterham. Hello, Fee and Eve, as Fee once sang the theme tune to Champion the Wonder Horse with accompanying neighing noises.

8:18I don't recall doing that. Nor do I, thankfully. When reading a previous message of mine, I'm hoping that she'll find her inner Bonnie Tyler during this email and that young Eve knows who the Welsh belter-outer of songs actually is. You're aware of Bonnie. Why don't you remind me? Turn around every now and then And I get a little bit restless and I dream of something wild. Turn around, bright eyes. Earlier in the year, you held my hand through some pre-holiday jitters. Do you know what? There's a little bit more coming. You've got some pipes on you. Eve, that is the nicest thing that you've ever said to me.

9:00And it's only Tuesday. Crikey, girl. I tell you what, the really embarrassing thing is, only if I sing in a very, very low key. So when everyone else, I only ever sing out loud in public at carol services now due to the restraining order. And everybody else, you know, women are singing in a top octave and I do have to lower the octave. You can imagine it's the same for me. Of course, you'd be in the baritones, wouldn't you? Yep, no discounts for us. Earlier in the year, you held my hand through some pre-holiday jitters before I embarked on a blustery ferry ride to Normandy. We lived it with Sean, didn't we?

9:41Yes. Absolutely lived it with you. Now, should you read this during Tuesday's podcast? We're doing it. It's probable that I'll be listening while trapped in an endless European entry-exit system. That's the EES. Cue at Palmer Airport, against my usually better judgment. I'm travelling to a sweltering high seas in Mallorca. I've booked pricey but not ideally timed flights, a relatively expensive hotel, and an evening boat trip that should afford me a clear view of the west-northwest horizon. Now, Eve, why might Sean and Caterham have done this? Does it have something to do with Bonnie? If all of those elements come together, along with cloudless skies, I will get to experience an eclipse.

10:21Not of the heart, but of the sun. A bucket list wish achieved. However, this holiday's success depends entirely upon witnessing just one minute and 36 seconds of totality at 8.31pm on Wednesday evening. It could so easily all go awry. Encouraging words in the face of what I acknowledge is entirely self-imposed stress will be much appreciated. And the end bit... I really need you tonight!

10:51Amazing. Forever's gonna start tonight. Once upon a time I was falling in love Oh, now I'm only falling apart. You got a bit Elvis. I did, didn't I? I certainly did. Sean, I mean, that is an amazing thing to do. I hope that Mallorca's calmed down a bit because they've had some very, very big protests against tourists, haven't they, this week? And I don't know what you feel about it, Sean. But it's complicated that, isn't it? I'm very much with the Mallorcaans, but also I've really loved visiting your island and I've been one of those tourists quite often. And Sean seems nice. Sean seems lovely.

11:27it's not going to do any harm and you're by the sounds of it you're not renting out an Airbnb that actually used to be somebody's flat I think that's what they're trying to stop as is Barcelona but away from all of that stuff I really hope that you do catch a glimpse of it I really hope you've got the correct glasses there's been quite a thing hasn't there people selling glasses that don't use them are you doing anything special for it? no are you? No, but I sort of wish I was. Just don't use the 3D glasses that you use when you go and see Toy Story. Those aren't going to help at all. We don't get the best view of it, do we, in this country, which is why Sean's heading off.

12:09But I tell you what, mate, send us some pictures and I really, really, really hope that you don't see the eclipse through other people's pictures of it on their phones while you're still waiting in an EES queue. Because it does sound like that's a possibility and that would be extremely infuriating, wouldn't it? So, pictures of the eclipse, yep, those would be... Actually, they'd be very boring, wouldn't they? If somebody sent us one, we wouldn't want to see many, many more. No, especially not... Yeah, I'd rather... No. No, OK. Keep them to yourself. It'll come round again. We don't want to see them.

12:48In about 40 years. Short stories for summer. Etty's in Stratford-upon-Avon and she's still using the M &S disinfectant. Good for you. I've changed fragrance now in the tea tree and bergamot. I've gone to, I think it might be sandalwood and seed or something. It's very sophisticated. No, it's disappointing. Oh, are you going to go back? I'm definitely going to go back. Don't mess with a good thing was the message that I ignored. I've just read and couldn't put down the fabulous Persephone book of short stories published a couple of months ago. It's book number 100. And as per usual, Persephone...

13:25Am I saying that right? Persephone. Persephone. I thought it was Persephone, but what do I know? Persephone. You know a lot. Books have published a stunning summer read. It's a collection of 20th century stories by women writers from 1909 through to 1986. The stories are as varied as the women who've written them with some interesting themes, usually related to men. Persephone shined a light on the detail of women described as domestic feminism. I learnt this term recently, which perfectly describes the richness of women's lives, so often hidden, much like the authors they discover and publish.

14:00I read it in a couple of days. I wasn't even on holiday, but it transported me to so many different places and periods of time that I felt like I had been away. Well, that's a great recommendation. Domestic feminism, I've not heard that term myself either, so I'm going to use it a lot now. Oh, God. Yeah. On that tip, actually, I know that we're not putting the interview that we're about to do in this very studio in an hour's time out today, but can we talk about it? I don't see why not. Bonnie Garmus is coming in. She's downstairs. Is she? She's arrived already. Yeah. Okay, right. So we need to wrap this up quite succinctly.

14:37No, we've got a little bit of time. Now, you read Lessons in Chemistry. I did. What impression did it leave on you? Did you enjoy it? Yeah, I really loved it. I thought it was so readable. It built really well. It was quite a frustrating read at times, but then it had a great payoff. What did you think? Oh, I loved it. Really, really loved it. And I think as a very, very readable, dramatic, sometimes traumatic exploration of how a woman deals with her frustrations, I thought it was just beautiful. And also quite funny, which is hard to do in a book that does have traumatic bits in it. I thought it was a bit weird that sometimes you heard from the dog.

15:18Okay, yes, I know what you mean. But I got into it eventually. It was a very smart dog. Very smart. 6.30. which is just such a funny name but one of the things that we definitely have to talk about in this upcoming interview with Bonnie Garmas who has a new book which is out in October called Peck and Peck which is all about a poetry magazine and a young man called Batter who believes that his chosen path in life is to be a poet I didn't realise that Bonnie Garmas had a greyhound so we're going to have to talk about that my apologies in advance but also her dog's name was numerical and I've just never come across that before.

16:00So I chucked that out to the hive. Do you have any pets who you've called 37 or 5 or 212? It's a completely new concept. I like it though. Yeah, 6.30 works because it's not, it's a time, isn't it? Yeah. But just the number. I think her current greyhound is just called a number. So one of many, many facets, and you'll be able to hear that interview in October after the book is published. It's quite a big tease. It is a very big tease, isn't it? Yeah. I think Geeta's doing better with just listening to Moran. Yeah. What have you got? Do you have another email? And then we will introduce our guest today, who we really need to have a chat about this one too.

16:47I've had an email from Barbara, a hair loss follow-up. You did the email with Jane from Barbara. She'd been experiencing alopecia. Yes, and had started wearing a topper, which had been very effective. Barbara says, Jane asked how I am now after my alternative hair epiphany. So here goes. It's going well. I sent the link to the podcast to friends as a way of telling them about my hair loss and what's been going on with me and have a support and kindness in return. Sometimes when I'm detaching the hair clips from my meagre hair to remove the topper, I feel momentarily sad that it's not my real hair but I tell myself it's okay to grieve and the feeling passes quickly Reflections on wigs versus hair extensions I think the distinction is that hair extensions are viewed as an enhancement but wigs are seen as something diagnostic for a deficiency Thank you for reading out my email It's really appreciated, Barbara Okay, yeah, it is a good point Hair extensions, you need quite a lot of still healthy hair to attach them to, don't you?

17:47so they do have a different connotation Barbara we do have quite a few other emails about hair loss and some of these things we will save until Jane and I are back together again just so that she doesn't miss out on conversations that she very much wants to be a part of too a quick one on word faux pas comes in from Happy Days Helen Manley today's trailing labia email made me laugh out loud and reminded me of many years ago when a colleague was telling us all in the office about a wedding she had attended that weekend and apparently the bride had walked down the aisle looking all vaginal.

18:22I've been to weddings where they do. Lots of ruffles. Eve! Sorry. Eve Salisbury. Oh, my word. Very, very shocked at that. Has it suddenly got too hot in here for you? What happened?

18:42Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor, or treat medical conditions, requires iPhone 11 or later. I thought, what if I've scaled businesses?

19:14What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even greater meaning at creativeplanning.com slash impact.

19:26We've got a really important interview for you to listen to next, but it does have to come with a warning because we completely get it. Claire McGlynn has written an extraordinary book called Exposed, which is a very careful investigation into and consideration of the effects of extreme pornography on all of us, not just people who come across it or deliberately go out to find it or have been victims of it themselves. So we've been very careful in this interview not to be too graphic about some of the things that Claire has seen and is writing about. so please don't think that suddenly you're going to have terrible terrible imagery in your head you won't but what we've definitely tried to keep in is as much relevant material as possible to convey the true nature of what it is that she has been investigating i hope that makes sense i would say that our guardrails are good in this interview and it would be great if you could listen to it and let us know your thoughts afterwards here she is you say early on in your book, the problem is not with porn itself, the problem is patriarchal porn.

20:40Let's start there. What do you mean by that statement? So I use patriarchal porn to describe the mainstream porn, you know, on the likes of Pornhub, Xvideos, Xhamster. In other words, the material that's targeted at heterosexual men that's viewed by millions every day. That's what I really wanted to focus on because that's what's having the most impact on all of us. And that is what's underpinned by this kind of patriarchal values, really. And can you also just set out the stall for modern pornography? I mean, how many people are using it? How often people are using it? Is it possible to ever know?

21:19Well, we have some information. Pornhub itself tells us that 130 million people every day worldwide are watching Pornhub. But the media regulator in the UK, Ofcom, tells us that 10 million men a month are watching porn and mostly Pornhub again. And then another study, for example, of under 35s by Ladbible last year, 76 % of young people were watching porn every week and one in five men were. So it's being viewed all the time in millions. So this is why it's having, I think, such an impact on all of our lives. And where are the women in all of those statistics. Yeah, well, women are watching, are watching porn.

22:01And many younger women say they're doing it in terms of, well, it's an education, isn't it? That, you know, that's the sex education these days. And women as well are learning about sex, you know, what's expected, what's normal, what are the boundaries. And of course, for sexual pleasure as well. Although some studies, my colleague Fiona Vera Gray spoke to lots of women about their viewing of porn and some of them so uncomfortable about what's there but that's what's there you know that's what's easily accessible. One of the arguments that runs through the book is a challenge to people who say if you are illiberal about pornography you are denying people a basic human right you are prudish you are sensorial and you're just not really on everybody's side.

22:47This is what's been said to us isn't it, to shut us up for years. And I do try and turn that on its head, because if I think about it from a perspective of women, particularly younger women, my point is we have to regulate this mainstream patriarchal porn if we're actually going to free women up to have sexual freedom. Because at the moment, this dominant narrative that prioritises men's rights, men's pleasure, women are there for, you know, men's playthings, that's not about our sexual pleasure or our sexual freedom. So I actually think this is about liberating our desire by regulating this patriarchal pornography.

23:24So it's the exact opposite of those arguments. Very early in the book, you do say that there is hope on the horizon. And actually, I'd quite like to talk about that before we talk about all of the terrible, terrible stuff. Because sometimes I think we lose people when we start talking about the reality of porn because it's very difficult to hear. So I don't want anyone to switch off. I want to do hopeful stuff and just to warn people. We will then talk in a bit more depth about some of the terrible, terrible content that's out there. So set out the hopeful stall for us, please. Well, so when I describe patriarchal porn, that is about, yeah, men's rights and men's dominance.

24:08But the point there is that's changeable. You know, patriarchy isn't set in stone. It's very dominant, but we can change it. So my, you know, I try and set out in the book how we can regulate this pornography to free us and have better, you know, lives all around. And so that is hopeful. And we can actually do it. You know, it's not, I think the writer Rebecca Solnit talks about hope being a radical act that we have to hold on to. Because if we give up hope, you know, we let those who, you know, the tech platforms, the porn platforms, we let them do what we want because we just decide there's nothing we can do.

24:49So, yeah, hope is a radical act because we can make a difference. how has it come to be the case that if you start watching pornography very soon you are taken to quite disturbing pornography is it true that as humans we will only stay interested in something if we feel uneasy about it unfortunately it seems to be the case doesn't it like we know with social media we are attracted to what's you know more humiliating what's more shocking what's more polarising. Despite what we might like to think, that's what attracts us and draws us in. And we click on that material and then we get sucked in. And it's really important to remember that the porn platforms are just like the large social media platforms in this.

25:34So they want to keep us engaged. So they feed us more extreme content, more boundary pushing, more shocking. And that's how we get sucked into this, you know, more and more horrific material. How is the horrific material currently being regulated? Well, so, and we've just had some recent legislation actually adopted in the UK just over the last year. Much of that awful stuff, like say stuff of non-consensual, say rape porn, is not actually supposed to be there on the platforms anymore. It still is, because the law's not enforced yet. But we're taking steps and soon the strangulation porn should not be on there either.

26:16But again, we've got to wait to see if that's going to be properly enforced. So in the UK, we have taken some steps over the last couple of years to try and get rid of some of the sexually violent material online. Not yet happened in practice. And who is doing the enforcing? So in the UK, it's the media regulator Ofcom. And the challenge there is, we can persuade the government to act because many of us in public we'll write to our MPs, we'll campaign and we get a legal change. It then goes to the regulator Ofcom to enforce. And, you know, who knows who they are? Who knows what they're doing? And it's very difficult to hold them more accountable.

26:56And unfortunately, it's not just me. There's many people. The Ofcom has been disappointing, shall we say, in how it's been enforcing some of this. Yeah. And presumably one of the massive problems, and you do talk about this in the book, is is the idea of people being able to stop themselves from watching very harmful stuff. And also the idea that people who have grazed across something that is very, very wrong, feeling confident enough to report it, because there would be a fear attached to that, wouldn't there? That you had gone in search of that yourself. I mean, it's a very, very difficult area to police.

27:33Yeah, I mean, I don't think it should be on individuals to be governing this material and to be reporting it, etc. You know, I just don't think that's, it's not, well, it's not that our fault, because it is being algorithmically produced and presented to us. And so I really think it is the platforms that we have to hold accountable for that. It's not up to individuals to try and individually challenge these massive corporations. A warning would come up, though. Is that the case? It depends what you're searching for. You're right. You can't type into most of the mainstream platforms something like rape, but you can find it otherwise.

28:09You know, you can find force, you can find don't, you can find no, you know, so you can find it in other ways. Similarly, with child sexual abuse material, you can't type in some of those terms. But very recently, you couldn't type in young girl and that wouldn't bring you up anything, but you could type in girl young and it did. OK, and there are many, many more examples that you point out. So just, you know, to really make sure that people understand this, what's the difference between typing in strangle and typing in strangulation? That's another one, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's an example of when you get, and it's like the difference between sleep and asleep is another one.

28:53So sleep on Pornhub, they did block after the Giselle Pellico, convictions, but asleep you can still find. And it's the same on Google. And I suppose what it just shows to me is that these companies, whether it's Google or the porn platforms, they do listen to the public and they'll block some terms, but they don't do it in a wholehearted way. They're not actually trying to reduce this, the prevalence of this material. They're just trying to stop us, you know, finding some of the worst stuff. Yes. And a cynical person, Claire, would say that they are doing that on purpose to keep making money because it is absolutely within their power and their expertise and understanding to be able to put together every single term that would take you to that.

29:44Yeah, 100%. Of course they could, because they can block stuff when they want to. And we even know this from whether, you know, if you look at whether it's copyright, etc. If you try and share some copyrighted piece of material online, you can get emails very quickly and it will get taken down instantly. But we're not yet doing that, whether it's deep fakes of women, sexual deep fakes or some of this pornography, they're not yet doing it now. You have many, many fantastic lines in the book. One of the things that really stayed with me is the piece that you write that is under the heading, it stains your brain.

30:19Now, can you unstain a brain? Because so many young people are coming across some really horrendous extreme pornography out of genuine adolescent curiosity. And they have images in their mind that are harmful. Is there evidence that they can be helped to remove that? What do you think? so it stains your brain was a comment from a young boy a young teenage boy who uh yeah was describing the horrific material he'd been seeing online and just yeah couldn't get it out of his head and i can understand that i can think of some of the videos i watched when doing the research for the book and they're very visceral you can feel them in terms of can we change i mean you know young people's brains we're always talking about how fluid and plastic they are so i think we have to hope that we can shift those ideas that are implanted very early.

31:21But that takes action. You know, that requires active public campaigns. It requires different forms of material. It requires education. So we can do that. But again, it would need, it needs a national conversation. So actually, it needs more people to be realising what you're just saying about what what's going into young people's brains. And how do we change that? And how do we change that? for the better. We've talked about this subject and particularly on our podcast before and we have acknowledged the fact that very few adults, very few parents want to go and search out horrendous pornography on the internet in order to be better informed about what their children might be watching.

32:04It is completely understandable but would you advise people to do that? I mean you've just said you can't unsee some of the things that you've seen it's very tricky I don't know if it's about well I was going to say I don't know if it's about going online and watching it um although having said that when you do do that I think many people you know do have quite if you've not been on some of these sites quite a visceral strong reaction to it uh just because one of the comments that's been said to me over the last few months since the book came out is people know they've known it's gotten more extreme and they know you know a lot of it is sexually violence but hadn't realised quite how bad it was but I don't think parents have to go online but I think yeah educating themselves well that sounds too fancy but just understanding more about what's out there and even some of the children's commissioner reports explain that in detail so they are telling us that under 18s you know more than half of them have seen strangulation content have seen incest content, have seen forced content.

33:08So, you know, that's what the young people are seeing. And what happens with the advances in technology? If AI can make pornography that is completely illegal, so it's incest or it's extreme violence or it's child abuse, the simple fact that there haven't been real humans involved in that, does that mean that it's not illegal to have made it? does it exist in a different place what's that well so if any material so for under 18s um there's very specific laws and any ai generated child sexual abuse material is unlawful completely unlawful if you make uh say let's talk about something like rape pornography um and it's ai generated if it's realistic so it looks you know like humans which of course a lot of ai does now Yeah, that would be illegal as well to possess and to share because it's depicting rape.

34:05I think the really important thing to remember about the AI generated material is that AI can only generate it because that's what exists on the Internet. So I've had conversations with people who try and say, oh, well, AI generated child sexual abuse material, it's fine because it's not real children. and I have to point out it's only possible to make that stuff because there is real child sexual abuse material and so it's the same with rape porn or incest porn or what have you. It's a reflection of what's on the internet and that's why it's also still problematic. Do you think that enough is being done to help exactly those people whose lives have been ruined, not because they've watched the pornography, because they are the pornography?

34:48Well, certainly with sexual deepfakes, yeah women are women feel very violated when sexually explicit deep fakes are made of them without their consent and it's a kind of threat actually that hangs over all women I speak to young students and they're saying you know this now is one of the things they're having to deal with in their everyday lives you know the risk of being deep fakes and I don't think society yet takes that seriously enough yeah and it impacts on women's actions online as well it restricts our actions online. So if we go right back to where we started, if patriarchal porn is the problem, how can you get men to watch feminist porn, to watch a different type of less harmful pornography?

35:33Well, yeah, it's a difficult thing, isn't it? If you say that, in fact, you know, because pornography has always been around, hasn't it? You know, people want to engage in sexually explicit materials. And yeah, the challenge is, how do you get them to engage in stuff that isn't patriarchal? frankly, you're going to have to probably pay for it. You know, a bit like, you know, you have to pay for your journalism. You have to pay for your, you know, if you want quality material that's not harmful, you have to make a bit of an effort and you probably have to pay for it. And that's what we would have to do.

36:06The only thing I'd say about the, quote, feminist porn is that there is that material. And of course, that should be encouraged. But it's still a tiny part of what's out there. the majority of material there is still that what's accessible on these mainstream sites. Now can we talk about two very specific terms and I'm just going to do this right at the end to enable people who want to leave the conversation or have you know little ears listening god forbid so you know that you can go and it's been an absolutely fascinating conversation so far. I think just for people who are curious about what exactly it is that we're talking about can you explain two things to us?

36:46Can you explain Public Toilet, which was a kind of, I think we'd call it a viral sensation piece, wasn't it? What is that? So that, now that interestingly is a video I came across just towards the end of writing the book and it was actually on X. And so that's a very good point to make because although I've been talking about the mainstream sites so far, all of this type of material is on X And actually, X has even fewer content controls than some of the mainstream sites. Public toilet is a video. This woman literally has a public toilet, a toilet seat rather, around her head. Men urinating into her mouth and into her eyes.

37:27She's smiling at the camera, which is also one of the challenging things of trying to convince you that she's enjoying it. And in the end, she's actually forced to lick the floor and the urine off the floor. And I think one of the things for me about this video is that it's obviously deeply misogynistic. I think it shows the loathing by some men of women in porn. And it's not illegal, and it probably never will be. So although I've been talking about regulation and extreme porn, that's the type of video that's possibly always going to be there until society itself becomes less patriarchal. And can you explain the term blacked, what being blacked is?

38:09Because there's a terrible racist element in all of this, isn't there? Yeah. So although we've had more conversations in the last couple of years about pornography, very little actually about racism. You're absolutely right. Blacks is basically where white women are having or being forced to have sex with black men. So and there's various variations of that. But it's a very, very popular genre, as is some of the interracial material. And, yeah, you know, some of the black men as well, three times more likely to be portrayed as being forceful and aggressive, you know, kind of reproducing these sorts of stereotypes of black men.

38:52So that's about the only time in porn that you actually know who the men are, is when they're black, because they're labelled as such. Claire I think you do absolutely remarkable work and you know it is such disturbing stuff to talk about you know we fully fully understand that but it's also so helpful to know because it informs our voice our opinion all of that so I suppose I just say thank you for writing it you know you've gone there when many of us are fearful too so thank you well thank you for being so willing to talk about it because I know it's a it's a common topic on on your show and pod.

39:27Claire again and her book is called exposed i do think as a writer and an academic you've just got to give her so much credit for going to places that most of us just can't go to i just don't i don't want to go in search of things that i probably should know more about in order to do interviews about them in my job but uh you know the stain on the brain is a very very true thing you can't unsee things that you've seen so she has done all of that work so we can benefit from all of her knowledge Eve and I will be back tomorrow we're loving your emails just to tease you with some of the titles ones that we haven't had time to do today but we will definitely get to tomorrow chicken and biscuits a loquacious liver puddley and blockage more bizarre dolls names some tv recommendations and oh yes no we've had we've had sean's turn around a total eclipse not of the heart but with thanks to bonnie tyler we'd need an update so plenty plenty to look forward to tomorrow and we hope that you can join us then

40:49Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

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