Untethered...with Clementine Ford
Untethered...with Clementine Ford
THE FRIDAY FIVE: Not My King
Let’s face it, we don’t always pay attention to the news. But just in case it comes up at pub trivia or knock off drinks with our friends, we still want to know what’s going on. Clementine's Friday Five provide's a quick cheat sheet of five of the week’s biggest news items, political gaffes or pop culture tidbits so YOU can bluff your way through whatever comes up.
It's smart, irreverent, quickfire and to the point - just like that friend who everyone always says should have gone into politics, if only she didn’t hate authority figures and rules.
This week: The courage and truth telling of Senator Lidia Thorpe; news on the climate crisis - spoiler, it’s not good!!!; Kamala Harris and back-pedalling on trans affirming care; Abercrombie & Fitch CEO arrested for sex trafficking; and the use of technology to give voice to people.
For the week ending October 27, 2024…this is The Friday Five with Clementine Ford.
If you're enjoying Untethered, please consider rating and reviewing the show and becoming a subscriber! New episodes every Wednesday.
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Free Palestine.
Hello everyone. It is Friday and that means we are back for another episode of the Friday Five with me, your host, clementine Ford. The Friday Five is where we gather at the end of the week to look at what I think have been the top five news stories, so that you can go into your weekend prepared and ready. The Friday Five is part of my podcast channel, untethered, which basically is all about untethering from social expectations, the status quo, and questioning our place in the world so that we can really truly live to the greatest capacity that we have in our limited time as humans on this earth.
Speaker 1:If you're new to listening to Untethered, I do a advice line every Monday that's, dear Clementine. On Wednesdays I drop a conversation and Fridays, obviously, is the Friday Five. Just letting you know it might be a shorter one than normal this week because it's my son's school fate and I am hosting a tarot card table, so I've got to get there and set up because I'm already going to be late. Very typical for me. I'm recording this on the land of the Wurundjeri people Remember wherever you are, know whose land you're on. For the week ending October 27th 2024,. This is the Friday Five with Clementine Ford.
Speaker 2:This is not your land.
Speaker 1:That was the legendary, iconic Senator, lydia Thorpe, staging a much-needed and truth-telling protest against Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, who is better known globally as King Charles. Now I will just issue a disclaimer at the outset. That is probably not surprising to anyone who is familiar with my work or has listened to this podcast, even for a cursory few episodes that I think the monarchy is fucking bullshit. I think that our obsession, culturally and collectively, with the royal family is embarrassing. It's twee, it's cliched, it's passe beyond belief. But, more importantly, the royal family and the monarchy of England has been responsible for centuries' worth of colonisation, violence, bloodshed and theft. And, of course, the land known as Australia, where I am recording this podcast from, was one of the many places around the world that the royal family and the British Empire decimated and essentially ran through, murdering the First Nations people of those lands, stealing their land from them, brutalising them.
Speaker 1:The colonisation of Australia is ongoing today. The First Nations people of this land continue to be subjected to that violence. They have a much lower life expectancy. Aboriginal women are 81 times more likely to be hospitalized as a result of domestic violence and abuse than white women are. Children as young as 10 are being imprisoned, still in the Northern Territory. The legacy of the stolen generations continues and persists today, and anyone who is not familiar with the stolen generations? There was a policy in Australia in the 20th century to remove Aboriginal children from their families and place them in white servitude as in, to place them with white families, often as domestic servants read, aka slaves, enslaved people. Aboriginal people have suffered horrifically and monstrously as a result of the colonisation of this land, and the fact that we as a nation still and a white supremacist nation at that still have the audacity to revere a family who have done nothing more than be born into inherited wealth, privilege and theft is disgraceful.
Speaker 1:But of course, lydia Thorpe is a massive thorn in the side of the status quo and empire and the upholders of it. They can't stand her because she cannot and will not be controlled by them. And, of course, the racist retaliation for her disobedience, for her refusal to play the role of the grateful senator, so grateful to be included in the Australian judicial and democratic process. The punishment that is consistently and persistently meted out against her is to frame her as the angry black woman, to ridicule her, to mock her, to discredit her, and all of those things have been done to her since Monday, when she had the courage that no one else had to stand there in a government built on stolen land that has existed to serve the needs of the most privileged among us, but certainly the needs of white people, that she had the courage to stand in that monument to colonisation and call a fucking spade a spade, to call Charles out, and I cheer for her standing there and saying you are not my king. Why should he be revered and honoured by her? Why should he be respected by anyone, let alone by the First Nations people in this land that Senator Thorpe brought to that place that day?
Speaker 1:I find it embarrassing and parochial that anyone would line up to wave their little flags and honor the fucking royal family, honour the fucking royal family, the tears that were shed after the queen died, as if somehow I mean, apart from anything, she made it to her fucking 90s like it's a fucking good run, but as if somehow something great and true and real was lost that day. It is so disgusting how people bend over backwards to fucking lick the boots and asses of empirical rulers and to judge people like Lydia Thorpe, to waggle their finger at her, the naughty little girl, the angry black woman and say that's very bad behavior from you. How dare you? You should be ashamed of yourself. It's actually insane to me how people will so willfully and enthusiastically participate in a system that considers them less, participate in a system that says we are your rulers and you must respect us. How could anyone legitimately participate in that and not feel completely ashamed and embarrassed of themselves? And that doesn't even take into account the absurd and obscene amount of cultural artifacts, priceless objects, that the British monarchy, over the course of centuries, have stolen from nations that they plundered and pillaged and stripped for parts. I just want to read you a little part of an article that was posted on the Solidarity website that's solidaritynetau. It's titled the Queen's Obscene Hoard of Stolen Wealth, and so, at the time 2022, they wrote.
Speaker 1:The Crown estate controls a $26 billion property portfolio, including prime real estate in London, buckingham Palace, the Royal Art Collection and the seabed out to 19 kilometres from the coast, including the right to lease it to offshore wind or mining projects. While the British government now takes revenue from the estate, it pays the Crown an annual payment in return, currently set at $172 million a year. That doesn't include the cost of royal visits or special events, such as the $47 million spent on the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations earlier this year that's 2022 again in Britain. Her last visit to Australia in 2011 cost taxpayers $1.74 million. Visit to Australia in 2011 cost taxpayers $1.74 million.
Speaker 1:A separate financial empire called the Duchy of Lancaster and held since 1399, 1399, is valued at $1.1 billion and covers 18,000 hectares of farmland and property, including the Savoy Estate Buildings in central London. Last year it earned the Queen $40 million. In 1990, the Queen graciously agreed to pay tax on the proceeds, but negotiated a deal with the British government allowing the douchy I don't know if it's said like that, I just want to call it douchy to be inherited by her successors untaxed Untaxed. A third fortune is held in the douchy of Cornwall, valued at $1.7 billion and managed by the eldest son of the monarch, that is, charles Mountbatten, windsor. On top of all this, the queen privately owned the palaces of Balmoral in Scotland and Sandringham in Norfolk, because why have one palace when you can have two? Then there are the crown jewels, including the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of the world's largest diamonds in india under the british colonial empire. That's just one of many things, and mark finnell, I know, has a documentary that's screened on either sbs or abc, called stuff the british stole, which goes into much more detail, I mean.
Speaker 1:The fact remains that the british monarchy is a monument to theft, violence, inherited fucking nonsense, ideas of class, blue-bloodery, the upholding of the monarchy and the bootlicking that comes with that, the kowtowing, the bowing, the fucking protocol. This is a relic of a past that needs to well and truly be left in the past. The British monarchy needs to return everything that it stole. All countries need to declare themselves republics. Away from the British monarchy.
Speaker 1:The fucking person who calls himself King Charles is not my king. As far as I'm concerned, I do not have any king, queen, prince, princess, anything like that. Who fucking rules over me, and why should anyone else? Certainly, why should a staunch black woman like Lydia Thorpe, who has fought relentlessly for the liberation of her people, be expected to, simply because she became a senator in order to try and fucking disrupt the system from within? Why should she be expected to participate in this pantomime of bullshit, this performance of admiration and respect? I think she's a fucking legend. We need more people with her level of courage and I support and celebrate every time she pisses off anyone who gets on Sky News and talks about respectability and protocol. Charles Mountbatten-Windsor may not be my king, but Lydia Thorpe can be my fucking queen any day, speaking of nations ruled by ill-equipped people who should not be revered or admired.
Speaker 1:And I'm very sorry to bring you this news because I realize that so often the Friday Five just features incredibly depressing news stories, because that's kind of where we're at in the world right now. But I'm sorry to let you know that one year reading here from the New York Times, one year after world leaders made a landmark promise to move away from fossil fuels, countries have essentially made no progress in cutting emissions and tackling global warming. According to a United Nations report issued on Thursday, that's right. According to United Nations report issued on Thursday, that's right. Despite verbally agreeing to and you know rolling out all of the correct moves and the right head nods and the you know the welcome promises that nations would collude together to actually address greenhouse gas emissions, nothing has been done. So we can look forward to the global temperature of the world increasing to uninhabitable levels within our lifetime. So that's great, isn't it? In Kamala Harris there's a presidential candidate who has committed to continuing fracking, so that's also excellent for the environment. Good job, democrats.
Speaker 1:The genocide in Gaza, which is, of course, funded primarily by the US, and to which they send 2,000 pound bombs for Israel to drop on Gaza, is I don't even think that we know yet, or can even perceive yet, conceive of yet, the drastic and terrifying impact that's going to have on climate change. Just in terms of those emissions, that war is one of the surest ways for us to destroy the planet quickly. I'm just reading again from the New York Times here the new UN report finds that at least 151 countries have formally pledged under the Paris Climate Agreement to curb their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. If every country followed through on its stated plans, which is far from assured, then global emissions could be 3% to 11% lower at the end of the decade than they are today. But that would still put the Earth on track to heat up an average of roughly 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by the century's end. The report found the planet has already warmed roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius. That may not sound like much, but every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.
Speaker 1:Scientists have said how are we living in a time when the people who are best equipped in terms of the fact that they control the money and they control how things are done, are just willfully leading us all into climate collapse. Like, do people not understand how immediately pressing this issue is? We are not going to fucking survive and the worst part of that is that I don't know that humans do deserve to survive. To be honest, as a species, we clearly are the only species on this planet that works tirelessly to fucking destroy everything around us, but the worst part about it is that we are going to take everything down with us. The earth will survive Ultimately. The earth will heal and repair from the failed project that is humankind. But the number of species that we'll take with us, the destroyed habitats, the animals that will die in the billions, in infinitesimal numbers, that is incomprehensible. That there are not enough people, let alone a majority of people, who recognize the depravity of that and who will do actually what is needed to be done to fix it. Instead, we've got fucking billionaires indulging their egos, building essentially, giant dicks to fly into space.
Speaker 1:This talk of like fucking getting to Mars. Why would we go to Mars? Why would we go to Mars? Just spend the money on fixing this planet. Earth is beautiful. Earth is so beautiful it just breaks my heart Genuinely. I'm not even being flippant. I feel like my heart breaks at the thought of destroying something that has been so kind to us. Kind to us. My heart breaks at the thought of why anyone would be able to look at a sunset and not think we have to do everything we can to preserve this. So, in short, we're all fucked and the earth is going to heat to the point where sea levels swallow us whole and we probably deserve it.
Speaker 4:Do you believe that transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country?
Speaker 5:I believe we should follow the law. I mean, I think you're probably pointing to the fact that Donald Trump's campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 4:They're trying to define you on this. Yes, I'm asking you to define yourself, though. Just broadly speaking, what is your value? Do you believe they should have that access?
Speaker 5:I believe that people, as the law states, even on this issue about federal law, that that is a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary. I'm not going to put myself in the position of a doctor.
Speaker 4:I will move on, but I don't know that I heard a clear answer from you on the issue of gender affirming care. It sounds like what you're saying is there should be something between trans Americans and their doctors. It feels like that's a long way from we see you and we love you, which was your message to trans Americans in May. What do you want the LGBTQ plus community to know, as they're looking for a full throated backing from you for trans, for trans Americans?
Speaker 5:I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect.
Speaker 1:Listen. Much as it's no secret that I despise the monarchy, it's also no secret at this point that I really have no respect for Kamala Harris, primarily because her complicity in the genocide that Israel is waging against Palestinians is unforgivable, absolutely unforgivable. There is nothing about her position on this issue that is understandable, that is acceptable and certainly that has earned her the right to call herself president of the United States. That is a separate issue to what I think about Trump, which is that he is a lunatic and a despot and that he truly is the last person that should be given any kind of access to nuclear codes. Again, I feel so frustrated at the inability to have that conversation with people because every single time it always comes back to oh, I guess you think Trump should win and you're like no, I don't, I don't think either of them should win. Well, the reality is that it's a two party system and one of them's going to win. Yes, I get that. Do you understand that intellectual conversation and ideas is about discussing alternatives, that the reality in this day and age might be that one of those two people will become president on November 5th, after the votes are all collated? I understand that. My argument is that neither of them deserve it, that the system itself is flawed and that I actually think both are bad enough that either way, not just America and people in America, but the people of the world are fucked. It may be true that Trump will hasten that fuckedness. For others that's not a word, but I'm just making it a word now fuckedness. Of course Trump will hasten that. He will be surrounded by equally insane and hateful and dangerous people.
Speaker 1:I understand and agree that a Trump presidency is a disaster. What I object to is this pretense that somehow, because he is very, very, very, very, very bad, that the alternative option, the only option, as people say, must be the opposite of that, must be very, very, very, very, very good, as if the only possible thing that needs to be worried about is keeping him out of power. One thing that needs to be worried about is keeping Trump out of power, but I think that people should also worry about keeping the Democrats out of power. At this point, that may not be possible. I do understand that, but why can't people say we are being presented with two shit sandwiches here and being asked to eat one, and act as if it's somehow fucking gourmet?
Speaker 1:Kamala Harris is pro-fracking. She's pro-Israel. She will not commit to an arms embargo. She won't even call it a genocide. All she has done in the last year has issued mealy-mouthed, fucking weasel words around Israel's right to self-defense. All she's done is prioritize as the worst thing, the most tragic thing, the events of October 7th, as if somehow that disclaimer always needs to be included in order for her to say yes, it's also bad that Palestinians are being killed. And even in her conversations around that she's so specific and careful you can see her brain freaking out whenever she's asked about it because she's so terrified that she might say something that will piss off AIPAC.
Speaker 1:I think that that is a dangerous leader, or someone who has any pretensions to being a leader. That is a dangerous quality that they are more concerned at all times and you can see it in her more concerned with what funding bodies like AIPAC think about what she has to say than actually representative democracy. Than actually representative democracy. She is more concerned with wooing Republican voters and ensuring Republican endorsements than she is in speaking to her voter base. Naomi Klein gave a great interview on this where she criticized Harris for this. Naomi Klein, one of the great thinkers of our age, a Jewish woman who is in condemnation of Zionism and Israel, criticizing Kamala Harris for not just forgetting about her voter base but actively ignoring them, saying to them you are not important enough to me to try and win this election. It is more important to me to get the votes of Republicans than it is to get the Democrat voter base. And then you have online. You have furious and deranged blue no matter who voters who continuously shift the line further and further right.
Speaker 1:Every time, harris demonstrates that she is not prioritizing the needs of a progressive left. She's not prioritizing the needs of, certainly not prioritizing the needs of Palestinians and, by extension, arab Americans. She's not prioritizing the needs of trans people and soon enough that will be queer people in general. Every single opportunity she has been given to reiterate or to demonstrate or to even just uphold the arguments that are made in her favor, oh, she'll be pulled to the left. Oh, she's our best chance to end the genocide. Oh, she's the only one who'll protect the LGBTQIA community. It's almost like she says hold my beer and I'll demonstrate to you exactly why you're wrong. So the reason I say all that is because that interview that just played at the start of this segment was an interview in which Kamala Harris was questioned directly about whether or not she supports gender affirming care for trans people in America. That is a very simple question and, as the interviewer said back in March May whichever one it was, you know the Democrats said we love you. We love you to the trans community. That is a very long way away from that statement to say.
Speaker 1:I believe that we should follow the law Dangerous slippery slope as well, because guess what else the law in many parts of America says currently. Thanks to the Democrats refusal to codify Roe back in 2009, when they had the majority and the chance to do so, and Barack Obama, when asked about it, said it's not a priority for us right now, the Democrats have deliberately never codified Roe v Wade, which would enshrine in law the rights of pregnant people in America to access an abortion. It would enshrine in their constitutional rights their ability to do so. The Democrats have never done that because if they were to do that, they would no longer be allowed to use abortion as a stick and carrot measure. You've got to elect us because otherwise your abortion rights are on the line.
Speaker 1:People should really reflect very critically and seriously about that, that these reproductive rights that I believe are sacrosanct to everybody and that should certainly be seen as sacrosanct by a governing body, and that the Democrats pretend to believe are sacrosanct, they've never been important enough to them to actually codify them and enshrine them in the Constitution of America, because then they would not be able to use them as a bargaining chip. That is not a political team that can be trusted, and me saying that doesn't mean that I think that the Republicans are any better. But the Republicans at least are honest about how evil they are. The Republicans at least show you from the outset exactly what they plan to do. So it's almost like a devil that you can at least anticipate the moves of.
Speaker 1:So when Kamala Harris sits there in an interview and suddenly changes her tune from we love you to well, I believe that we should follow the law. Does that mean that the Democrats believe that? And does Kamala Harris mean that the law should be followed in regards to abortion? Because, as I said around a lot of America, the law says that women should not be able to access abortions. That is what the law says, because Republicans, empowered by Republican zealotry and misogyny and hatred of women, and also empowered by the Democrats' refusal to codify Roe have changed the law to say that. So if you're sitting there and saying, well, I think the law should be followed. In regards to gender affirming care, what does that mean for states? When states get to determine their own laws on this and states say, well, we don't want to provide gender affirming care, does that mean that Kamala Harris is okay with that? These are the little concessions that she is clearly willing to make and the little dog whistles that she's making to conservative Republican voters and that she is, I would say, and that she is, I would say, you know, reassuring the Republicans that she's very clearly made deals with to get their endorsements. Reagan administration. Republicans are not endorsing Kamala Harris just because they think that Trump has gone too far, or they've suddenly found a conscience, or suddenly they find themselves to be left wing. It's because the Democrats are suddenly indistinguishable from a republicanism that is represented by Cheneyism, and those republicans will be coming to cash in their fucking endorsements the moment she's elected. She's already made promises to them, I guarantee it, and I think that we're seeing that in her wishy-washy statement here on gender-affirming care, and there's not a very big leap between. I believe that we should follow the law. And well, this should be an issue really for parents to decide, or well, we need to listen to the experts on this. Kamala Harris is not your fucking hero. She is not the hero of the left and she will not work for a progressive future. The only thing she wants is to get elected, and that is a frightening prospect.
Speaker 1:Now, this next segment, this next news item, does come with a content note for sexual abuse and sex trafficking. I'm going to cover it in brief, because the story is only just broken and I don't know enough about it to go in depth. But only to say that the more and more I hear stories like this, the less surprised I am. But basically, abercrombie Fitch you've probably heard of that clothing brand. It was one of America's most recognizable brands. I think it's probably declined in popularity, but for a long time it was sort of associated with, kind of you know, a very preppy white all-American cheerleader football kind of vibe. You know, not my kind of thing, but I definitely knew of Abercrombie Fitch.
Speaker 1:Well, the former CEO of Abercrombie Fitch, michael Jeffries, has been charged now with sex trafficking in the United States. The 80-year-old and his partner, matthew Smith, and their former employee, james Jacobson, were arrested and charged with exploiting, abusing and silencing vulnerable men for their own sexual gratification. That arrest was made following an investigation by the BBC. That arrest was made following an investigation by the BBC and as part of that investigation it was alleged that the trio hosted parties seems to be a popular thing for sex traffickers not looking at you, p Diddy, but I am looking at you. They'd host parties in which young men were essentially forced into providing sexual gratification in exchange for quote unquote career opportunities. So fuck those guys.
Speaker 1:Abercrombie and Fitch, throughout its time has also been the recipient of accusations of racial discrimination, certainly physical discrimination. They were very clearly looking for a particular kind of person to represent Abercrombie Fitch. So the links there and the kind of layeredness between sexual abuse, white supremacy, exploitation, the depravity of the extremely wealthy all of that is sadly unsurprising, particularly given the number of similarly positioned people over the last 20 years who have been held to account for the exploitation and abuse that they believe that their position and their privilege and their money entitles them to extract from people. I hope that the victims, the alleged I have to say in quotation marks victims of these accused people are able to receive justice and I send love and respect to all victims victim survivors, I should say, but also victims because not everyone does survive of exploiters and abusers and soulless husks of giant sacks of shit. Fuck them.
Speaker 3:When I first heard my new voice, I cried solidly for five minutes, thinking about all the things I could do At the start of this journey. The aim was to sound like my dad, and I think I've achieved that. My mom, when she first heard it, she said say I love you, mom, and she told me to do that over and over. It's a dream come true.
Speaker 1:I'm ending on a positive story this week, and I think it's a really beautiful example of how technology, when made with and when driven by empathy and respect for the human condition and respect for the human right that we all have to individual expression and to be seen and feel recognized in our own lives, how, when those things conspire together, they produce truly amazing outcomes and they show the incredible capacity that we have to do humanity right to be good at being human. That is a story about a young man named Christian who has verbal dyspraxia. Christian has difficulty placing his muscles in the correct position to produce speech, so he's unable to talk verbally, and up until recently he's had a speech reader which he's described as being quite robotic and making him sound like a character from Star Wars. He worked with some tech boffins at a place called Speak Unique and they helped him create an entirely new voice that was blended from two different people who volunteered their time. He wanted an accent that was a mix of Warwickshire, someone from Warwickshire and someone from Birmingham, and he wanted to speak like that because he wanted to sound like his late dad. What you've heard in the audio there is the new voice that Christian was given to be able to express himself.
Speaker 1:And I thought, in sharing this, I thought about my beautiful, dearly departed friend, stella Young, who was so incredible and so important to the world and how much she did just by existing and how brilliantly smart she was and what she taught everyone about the risk of inspiration porn to not look at disabled people and I say disabled people deliberately, because Stella taught me about the social model of disability, which is to say that most disabled people are disabled by a society that does not make it accessible for them or does not work with disabled people to provide full human rights and inclusivity. But Stella was so amazing at, you know, warning against inspiration porn that we shouldn't particularly those of us who are able-bodied and we all carry a risk at some point of becoming disabled in our life but that disabled people don't exist for us to be inspired by them, how to do so. And to be really clear that I don't share it as a kind of oh isn't that amazing? Listen to him speak, because that's patronizing and condescending and that's not my intention. What I'm sharing it for is because I think it articulates the incredible importance, the deep importance that it is to all of us to be understood and to have our own unique way of expressing ourselves, and to be able to do that and to be able to be seen in that way, I think is an enormously important thing for our self-esteem and for our experience as individuals in this world.
Speaker 1:I remember seeing, many years ago, a documentary about speech readers, and there was a little girl in there who, similarly to Christian, had verbal dyspraxia and so couldn't verbally express herself in the way that most people take for granted, and she had a speech reader that provided her with that very robotic voice, but, you know, a voice that we would attribute to a man, the kind of, you know, sort of colloquially, the Stephen Hawking voice, and they discussed in this documentary how, you know, she had something similar process worked with her to create a unique individual voice for her that was based on the sounds she could make but that couldn't form words with, and the liberation that came to her and that I'm sure Christian has also felt and that he's clearly expressed there, in being able to hear themselves in the way that they feel themselves to be, is another form of, you know, speaking about affirming care. It's a form of affirmation For us to be able to use technology in such affirming ways, in such profoundly human ways, to liberate humans and to create spaces for people to fully participate and to feel themselves in that way, I think, makes it even more profoundly upsetting that we use technology for such terrible, devastating things. We see the capacity of human kindness and human innovation, and if only we could focus more of our efforts on creating and producing actual, beneficial things that expand our capacity as humans and as individuals and reflect our vision and imagination, then we could really change this world for the better. Well, I said that that was going to be a shorter episode than usual, but it's actually a bit of a longer episode than usual and I now have to race off to make it to the school. Fate to set up my tarot table and put my mum hat on. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Friday Five. I really love making them. I understand that they are quite often angry, but politics and the news is something that should rile us all up, and we must never stop fighting for a better world and we must never stop educating ourselves.
Speaker 1:If you enjoy the Friday Five, you can, of course, tune into it every Friday. You can subscribe so that you never miss an episode. It will be delivered straight to your podcast player of choice. Please rate and review it if you are enjoying it as well, because that really helps in terms of getting new listeners. Share it with a friend. And on Mondays I take a much more soft-hearted approach with Dear Clementine, my advice hotline. So that's where you get my maternal side coming through. So tune into that too.
Speaker 1:Wednesdays we have the conversations. This week we had a break on Wednesday, but next week we'll be back with Linda Cavendish, one of Australia's most famous witches. I've also got episodes coming up with Jen Robinson, the incredible international human rights lawyer, who you probably better know as Gillian Assange's lawyer, but who also was Amber Heard's lawyer in the UK trial, in which the Sun newspaper successfully defended a defamation claim made by John Depp and in which it was found that Amber Heard had spoken truthfully on at least 12 out of 14 allegations. So we have a conversation about that and about how the law in general treats women and denies justice. That's coming up in a couple of weeks, and Eve Rees as well. We discuss their new book Travelling to Tomorrow. There's so much here.
Speaker 1:If you would like to support Untethered, then please consider becoming a subscriber to my Substack. You can find me on Substack at Clementine F. It's seriously less than the price of a coffee a week, but it helps me to make shows like this that remain untethered, unfiltered, uncensored. You can also support me on Patreon for as little as $2 a month. That's at Clementine Ford on Patreon or you can become about a Buzzsprout direct subscriber, and I'll just let you know that if you do become a Substack subscriber, I'll be sharing the video of my discussion with Jen Robinson ahead of it dropping on the podcast apps, so you'll not only be able to access the actual video footage of us speaking, but you'll get that before anyone else.
Speaker 1:And that is what you get for a Substack subscription, which, as I said, is less than the price of one coffee per week. So if you think that my work is worth shouting me a coffee, then please consider becoming a subscriber. If you would like to submit a question to Dear Clementine, or even a suggestion for the Friday Five, you can contact me on untetheredpod at gmailcom, and if you would like to become a sponsor of an episode or a series of episodes, then you can also contact me there too, because I welcome sponsorship collaborations with people whose work I support and admire. For the week ending the 27th of October 2024, this has been the Friday Five with me, your host, clementine Ford. Until next time, stay informed and stay untethered.