Pitfalls of The Pill
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Telling Everybody Everything. I do have a very husky, sexy voice today. I'm sick again. Those of you watching clips of the podcast might think, how about some makeup in that case, Catherine? But I was wearing makeup last night and I'm wearing makeup again this evening and I just feel like I can't be glammed twice in one day.

It will shock people to know that I prefer being without makeup. So I've done a light gloss to conceal the asymmetry in my lips and everything else. I've just gone for it. This is what it looks like when you have a two-year-old who has started nursery three mornings a week. You're just going to be infected with everything under the sun for the entirety of the winter. And you might get a season off if you're lucky. But last night, Bobby and I went to

to see Cruel Intentions the musical at New Wimbledon Theatre and it was so much fun. It's an unhinged production.

I have seen a lot of musical theater in my time. This is not one that I would place up with like, well, it was the most beautifully executed. You will see it at the Olivier's. The choreography was unparalleled. It was fun. It was camp. It was a real girls and gays night out. It was a collection of 90s music. So there is no original music. They take the 90s smash hit, Too Cool for School, Cruel Intentions, which was starring...

Ryan Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon. I think that's the movie they met on before they got married and he cheated on her like so many Hollywood men. Ugh. Imagine cheating on Reese Witherspoon. Like, what is your damage? But fine. Sarah Michelle Gellar. I forget who else was... Oh, Selma Blair. Oh, yeah.

Bobby incidentally looks like Selma Blair, which is weird, but it was an iconic film with iconic fashion. It was these aristocratic rich kids who were mean. If you are a tween or a teen who listens to this podcast, 90s fashion is coming back and you're missing out in your catalog of vintage nostalgia if you've not seen Cruel Intentions.

It was so much fun. Lots of really great music. My favorite character was Blaine, played by, ooh, is the actor called Luke Connor Hall? He's got like three names. Very Hollywood. His name's Luke. I'm going to go on my Instagram because we're Instagram friends.

Luke Connor Hall. Yeah. Oh, you see Luke? What a stage name. It is well remembered. He's very mysterious. He has a private profile. He has to accept you if you want to see. But he's an absolute star. And he played the gay lead who's out, right?

and in a relationship with a very much closeted footballer at the time. And that relationship is exploited by the evil popular boy. And it was, those were my favorite scenes. I mean, I have to say, I was so invested in that relationship. I thought both actors were really good. And I was reminded like back, oh my gosh, I think my ears are plugged. I can't hear myself. Oh, there we go. Oh, it feels like I'm on a plane. Fanna! Fanna!

this girl like breathe this illness straight into my mouth. She's at the age where she tells you a secret. She doesn't whisper it in your ear. She whispers it in your mouth and then coughs into your open mouth. But anyway, she's worth it. It was crazy to see this footballer, Greg, who is like publicly straight and,

is obviously falling for the gay character Blaine and they have different like trysts when he's drunk. And then the popular boy thinks that this straight Greg guy who's actually gay has done him wrong. So he takes photos of him. He like sets up a sting where Greg is having sex with Blaine. The popular boy photographs them and he's like, I'm going to show these all around the school. And he's like, no, you'll ruin my football career. He's like, your football career? What about your family? You will be a disgrace to everyone. And I just thought,

whoa, like it was a very moving, quite sobering moment in what is supposed to be a fluffy, fun 90s musical night out. I was like, Jesus Christ, like stuff like this would happen. Like kids would take their lives over internalized shame and like outward weaponized homophobia like this. Like it actually distracted me how evil that was. But I mean, that's what happened in the movie. Like the lead guy is evil. So

God. But these actors, they were my two favorites. Luke Connor Hall was so great. I would say like watch out for him in anything you see him in. His voice lends itself to different styles of music because 90s had different genres. He was great at the rock genre. He was great at the pop genre. His dancing was immaculate. He was living his best life up there. Call the musical Luke Intentions.

the musical or cruel intentions the luke sickle i loved him loved him i ran to instagram to follow him and luckily he accepted my request and then tonight in the theme of all things queer we are going to the first metro pride awards and i'm presenting an award of that and i just can't wait and i'm trying to encourage bobby to wear some like netting maybe a mesh tank top

But so far, he's not really going for it. I don't know why. Well, Bobby is certainly no homophobe. He is a treat for the gay community. And I was told that many times at the Cruel Intentions musical last night. But he does make a great point when he says, yeah, the Metro Pride Awards are an excuse to like,

you know, dress camp, like let your queer flag fly. But I know what will happen, Catherine. He said they will take a photo of me from the red carpet at the Metro Pride Awards and they'll use it for some unrelated story. So like, let's say Bobby's involved in like some scandal down the road or there's like some serious news piece about miscarriage or, you know, the things that we're attached to. And then they choose Bobby in like a bright neon orange mesh tank top. It's just not...

It's, you know, Bobby thinks ahead, which I don't. All right, this upset me a lot. I feel bamboozled. I feel confused and like pressurized to make the right decision. And I think that there's just a sea of medical information and medical misinformation now that we have all of the world's information available at our fingertips on our smartphones. I am not a doctor, but

But I have had firsthand experiences where doctors have been wrong. Doctors have been out of touch. Doctors have been lazy. Or doctors have been really, really professional and accurate and knowledgeable. But research kind of evolves past them too quickly. And I don't expect a doctor to know every single thing about every single thing. But basically, without giving anyone's identity away, there is a young woman close to me in my family who

Who is experiencing uncomfortable menstrual cycles? This can be down to a variety of reasons, especially when you're young. Your natural cycle is still establishing itself. I have read that your first few cycles, because I don't remember mine myself. I don't think that I really had cramps. I don't think that I have had heavy bleeding or nausea or headaches or diarrhea or anything that can come from

with prostaglands, forgive me if I'm pronouncing it wrong, but the hormone that gives you contractions when you have a baby, it's the hormone that contracts your uterus to expel its contents when you have your period. But that hormone also works on your intestines and on your bowel and on your stomach, so it can make you feel sick, it can give you diarrhea, it could do like terrible things. And your uterus contracting, sorry lads, like is painful, much more painful for some than others.

But I think that I'm at liberty to say my best friend, Caitlin, growing up, she had her period much earlier than I did, but she also had it painfully, like to the point that she was missing school and that she was just in debilitating pain. Disabilitating is a fun word, but debilitating pain at least one week of every month. And that's not fair. And we talk about period inequality, like period poverty, period injustice, debilitating

The fact that boys are not missing a week of every month of school because they don't have periods or sorry, 2025, people who don't have periods are not missing school. And some people who have periods are. And so how do we solve that? Well, we know that I think the average length of time it takes to diagnose endometriosis is something like 20 years. Fucking ridiculous. PCOS is another issue. A lot of these things can be

slightly modulated with diet and exercise and lifestyle changes people are cutting out dairy people are cutting out sugar all right how reasonable is that for a teenage girl I even know at 41 with an autoimmune disease it's very difficult for me to deprive myself of the food that I want to eat I do it pretty well actually because I know now it's not worth getting sick but I'm 41 I

So for a young woman, I just don't think it's reasonable. All right. So I jumped through hoops to get an appointment for this young woman with a pediatric gynecologist. I cannot tell you how hard it is to get gynecological care for someone under 18. And that is fair enough because cycles are still really unpredictable. They're still regulating. We don't really know what someone's cycle is. And you can't really do anything.

intimate investigations on someone that young. A lot of gynecological investigations would involve putting an ultrasound internally or taking a smear or putting different, who knows, cameras, whatever. You can't do that to a young person, fair enough. You can do a regular ultrasound on the tummy, but often that shows nothing anyway. Endometriosis, if that was an issue, is masked.

despite investigations, but even if your bowel is a little bit full, they can't really see such small organs. And sometimes you can have pain and cramping and all kinds of problems when there isn't even anything that's like visibly wrong. It's just your body trying to regulate these hormones properly. Fine. So we're turned down by like a number of gynecologists. So like, no, we don't see patients under 18. No, we don't see patients under 17. Okay. Okay. I'm going, I'm not going through the NHS. Obviously I'm asking private doctors,

finally, I'm referred to a woman who accepts children, like, you know, women under 18. She's retired. Okay. Then it takes me like another month to finally get a referral to a woman who is a pediatric gynecologist. Great. So I'm like, at this point, elated. I'm like, all right, great. I'm going to do these investigations. I found the right person. All my hard work has paid off. And we have a video call. No disrespect to this doctor.

I am absolutely sure because I had to jump through so many hoops that she is one of the very best in her field worldwide. And I sound like some idiot moon goddess because I haven't been to medical school and practicing for over 40 years. However, I jump on a Zoom call with this woman and the adolescent in my extended family girl is also on the Zoom call.

describing some symptoms, talking back and forth. Without any investigations, without an in-person appointment, two solutions were suggested. Like, yes, there is a drug that's an anti-spasm drug that can stop some of that cramping. I like the sound of that because I think often when we use just pain medication, we're putting out the smoke and not the fire. A spasm medication is another medication. Like it's not the ideal solution, but okay, I was all ears for that. I'm not like anti-medication.

And immediately the next option was, we can start taking the contraceptive pill. And I thought, well, isn't that a very extreme solution? Like taking control of a young woman's natural cycle is

I'm sure I've seen on TikTok and elsewhere that we're doing this less and less, that a lot of new studies and new doctors are saying, hang on, like 40-year-old women of today's generation with your little rainbow Louis Vuitton and your cruel intentions tickets. You were all put on the pill routinely at 15, whether that was because you were sexually active or because you wanted to regulate your periods or because you had bad skin or whatever.

And we're now finding that even though the pill was an absolute breakthrough in the 60s and offered so many women autonomy and full control over whether or not they had a pregnancy, and it has been useful for a load of other health issues, it's not without its risks and side effects. So why are we jumping straight to the pill, especially for an adolescent child? You can talk all day long about...

The controversy surrounding transgendered health care and people feel very against putting any young person on gender-affirming drugs or any hormones or anything else. But what about putting a young woman on these essentially hormones, gender-affirming drugs or whatever? How is it different? I don't think we should be just willy-nilly giving kids hormones. You have your whole life

to be taking medication and to look at your hormones and to be on HRT as an older woman, if that's what's right for you. But I just think it's jumping the gun too soon. And I wonder, because again, I'm not a medical professional, but my instinct was just like, oh my gosh, like I've wasted this call and 300 pounds.

Because now I'm talking to yet another doctor who's like, oh, put her on the pill. What? And so I'm searching it a little bit. Now, this source is menstruationresearch.org. This could be written by a psychopath, like a complete free bleeding, tree hugging, moon worshiping woo woo. I don't know.

I don't know, but it has .org and that makes me feel like it's very legit. So it says girls who take synthetic pseudo hormones via the pill lose the ability to produce their own hormones. Pseudo hormones have some similarities to real human hormones, but they also have many differences. For example, the progestin levonorgestrel causes hair loss.

but the body's own progesterone stimulates hair growth. The progestin dys... ugh... drospironon increases the risk of blood clots, but progesterone improves cardiovascular health.

Ethanlyl estradiol, the synthetic estrogen in the pill, impairs insulin sensitivity, but estradiol improves it. Synthetic hormones do not have the health benefits of the hormones they replace. And also, pill bleeds are not periods. Hormonal birth control is often prescribed to regulate periods, but that is nonsensical because a pill bleed is not the same as a real period.

A real period is the end result of a series of important hormonal events, including ovulation. In contrast, a pill bleed is a withdrawal bleed dictated by the dosing regimen of the drug manufacturer. Newly menstruating girls often have irregular or heavy periods. That can make it tempting for doctors to suggest and for mothers to agree to give them hormonal birth control to mask the problem.

but irregular and heavy periods are normal at that age. They occur because girls have not yet established regular ovulation. Hormonal birth control further suppresses ovulation, and that's why it's exactly the wrong thing to do. Hormonal birth control won't promote future ovulation or menstrual regularity. It would probably make it even harder to ovulate in the future. So that's not to say that I think teens should just get on with it and suffer. I think that's a very dangerous narrative too. If this is...

What you have to do to write your GCSEs, to function, to go to school, to hang out with your friends, to feel well in yourself, to not be vomiting and passing out and in excruciating pain every month, so be it. But for it to be the first solution just freaked me out. And...

It's also attributed to like a higher incidence of autoimmune disease and depression. I found this Danish study. Okay, first it says, puberty is a critical life stage that is marked by rapid growth and changes in the body and brain. In animals, sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone are known to affect how the brain develops during puberty. If the same is true for humans, taking synthetic estrogen and or progesterone, cortisol,

Core ingredients found in most formulations of the pill during this sensitive period could affect development in ways that have long-lasting consequences on mental health. So this is the largest study to date on this topic. It included over 1 million women living in Denmark. It concluded that women who are using the pill or other hormonal contraceptives are at an increased risk for depression. It also showed this relationship was strongest in teenage women. It talks about bone density. It talks about

The pill may cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, breast tenderness, weight gain, blood clots, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. I just, I just hate that there's no way to get to the bottom of anything anymore. Everyone will read stuff online. They'll go, do your research. Well, research is only research when it's been peer reviewed and like studied so intensely that you can even publish it. And now on the internet, I just feel bombarded with like, don't do this. You better do this. Don't do this for your kids. And I,

I do not even know how to source like what is the most up-to-date information, but I just instinctively feel like I would need more information before moving ahead with the pill. So this is why the podcast is always an absolute treasure trove of people who are smarter than me, better than me, faster than me, nicer than me, more thoughtful than I am. Do you think it was a mistake that a bunch of us were blatantly wrong?

just like handed over the pill. Now, I don't remember my exact consultation. I didn't do it with my family doctor. I know that at 15, before I was sexually active, I went to the sexual health clinic. It was a walk-in clinic in our town with one of my girlfriends. And we were like, oh yeah, we're having sex. We need to get on the pill. And I did it because I thought it would make my boobs grow, which it did not. In this case, I did not get that side effect. I did not gain weight.

My skin was already nice, didn't change my skin, but I do have autoimmune disease now. I ended up ovulating fine. I have loads of kids, but I was, I mean, I was kind of depressed as a teenager. You're depressed as a teenager anyway. I had a lot going on in my life, but I really regret that it was so easy for me to be on the pill. And I know it's important for young people to have access to contraceptives. I think it's so important, but I

If you are in a family that is supportive of you and you're thinking about taking this medication for health reasons alone and you're not sexually active, I just don't know if it should be the first answer. Are the young adult, young adolescent women in your extended family on the pill? Are they being prescribed the pill? Are they being suggested the pill? Are there other things that they're doing for their periods?

I've also read that adolescents today get periods earlier and get them heavier because of lack of nutrition, but because of additives in all of our food, human growth hormone in the meat, and different women in different countries, depending on the level of dairy consumption, experience all these things differently. I just felt so annoyed on that call because I was like, oh, I can't

Because the doctor said to me, well, what are your reservations about the pill? And I couldn't think of them right away. All I could think about was this podcast that talked about ovulation being important for your decision making when choosing a partner that

All of this stuff plays an important role on how you think and how you feel and your instincts. And you just need your natural hormones. You just need your natural hormones is what I said. And I bet this doctor is looking at me like, here we go. Why am I in private health care where I have to listen to

to these white women with too much time and money who scroll on TikTok all day and tell me I'm wrong. And then they have their teenage family members suffering because they won't properly medicate them. Have you encountered this with your adolescent female family members? Are the Gen Zs just more sensitive to pain and suffering than we are?

Because that is another theory, that the Gen Zs are like kicking back. We saw, if you watch the recent episode of The Kardashians, Scott Disick hired an absolutely incompetent Gen Z PA. But Scott Disick is probably one of the most incompetent people going and he needs kind of more of a nanny. But I mean, like, it's difficult to tell, like,

When someone is describing pain, you have to put your bias about them to one side. It's like, okay, if you say this is a 10 out of 10, I guess it's a 10 out of 10. So what do we do next? Anyone who has experience with this or who is a doctor, whether you're pro the pill or anti the pill, please write me a letter telling everybody everything at gmail.com. Should we put teenagers on oral contraceptive pills or not?

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Neo, who I met one time, I think on the Jonathan Ross show, he's basically practicing polygamy now, which is fun. The 45-year-old naughty hip-hop R&B star recently revealed that he has fully leaned into the lifestyle and he's completely transparent with his seven kids about it.

I feel like I wasted a lot of time just being dishonest about things to the point where I'd taken this approach initially. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and headache, he said. What he's referring to is a mortifying public Instagram post by his ex-wife, Crystal Renee, in 2022 that read, eight years, eight years of lies and deception, eight years of unknowingly sharing my life and my husband with numerous women who sell their bodies to him unprotected, every last one of them.

Addressing a recent photo that showed him standing with three women, the singer said, "There's four of them in total. There were just three there that particular night." It works. It works. Everybody's honest. Everybody's telling the truth. Everybody's consenting. When asked if his kids have any questions about his unconventional dating life, Ne-Yo said, "Of course they do. And I answer them honestly. Again, I'm not lying to nobody, not even my children. It's like, hey, this is daddy's girlfriend and so is that and so is that.

And so is that. The beautiful monster singer said that each of his partners has a role in the household. He continued to say, have his conversation with children. She going to make you some cereal. Oh my God. She going to cook you lunch and she going to wash your clothes. It's all good.

As for how he manages the relationships, he said, it's not about juggling. It ain't about juggling. The key ingredient to making it work is honesty. Everybody got to be telling the truth. You know what I mean? If you're telling the truth, this sounds a whole hell of a lot like sister wives. When I met Neo on the Jonathan Ross show, I thought he was great. He was not sexually interested in me whatsoever. That came across great.

Um, he is such a prolific songwriter. Like I had no idea just how many of my favorite songs Neo had written. He is super, super talented. But I remember on the show, he was either just about to have a baby or just had a baby. And I remember crying.

judging him for that, being like, pardon? Because he was in the UK for a while. I forget what he was doing here, if he had a residency or what was going on. But I think he was on some type of UK or European tour for something like 10 weeks. And he had just had a baby like two days before, if I'm remembering correctly. And I'm not far from what was actually announced. It was something like that. And Jonathan's like, oh, and you know, you just had a baby. And everyone's like, great. And everyone applauded. And I just sat there being like,

what like there's a newborn that's yours that exists in the world as of two days ago and you're gone for the next 12 weeks okay i thought that was very unconventional as it is and now that poor woman was being cheated on for eight years and that's good that he's found this lifestyle that a lot of people call uh enm ethical non-monogamy there have been some people in my stand-up shows who've asked me about it and who are in such relationships but a lot of them

find ENM from trauma. They're like, oh, well, actually, my husband was cheating on me for 12 years. And I just feel like every man's a liar. So I might as well, you know, you can't fire me, I quit. Like I'm in this game now of polygamy, polyamory, whatever ethical non monogamy, because I know that men can't be monogamous. So I don't want to be like scorned again. And that's how they get into it. But some people come to it from an authentic place. And I don't want to judge them. I just think

If it's polyamory, do these women have other partners? Are these women going home to seven kids being like, I gonna make your cereal. Like daddy number one is gonna pay your school fees. Daddy number two is gonna buy me the Birkin. Daddy number three is gonna pay for the gas. Daddy number four is paying for the house. I don't think so. It feels a lot of times like this is dressed up as ethical non-monogamy when really,

It's a man being very, very, very traditional and being like, I pay for bitches. And they can make babies of mine whom I barely know because I go on tour. And I can have my children over and explain to them that all of these women are glorified servants, basically. She gonna make your cereal. She gonna wash your clothes. All of them are gonna suck daddy's dick. I don't love it, but...

Last night, after Cruel Intentions the musical, Bobby and I went home to watch, not The White Lotus, though we are also watching The White Lotus, but I'm just so sick and tired. I keep falling asleep. So we just put on something nice, light, and fluffy. Meet the Baldwins, which we've been so excited about for so long. You will know Alec Baldwin from his incredible turn on Saturday Night Live. I think he's the very best guest actor they have ever had when he was Donald Trump. It was just awesome.

So well executed. So funny. I loved him. I loved him on 30 Rock. He is an excellent comedic actor. Whatever it is you think about him and his personal life, whether or not he's responsible for the accidental death of the woman on set of his film. And I mean, what a nightmare to accidentally shoot someone with a prop gun and then you find out they're dead. Like, what a harrowing time in anyone's life that would be. And that's got... That's marred in controversy anyway. But, um...

Also, his leaked voicemail to his daughter, Ireland Baldwin, whom he shares with Kim Basinger. I remember when that came out. I was like 20 years old. And he left a nine-year-old voicemail being like, you are a greedy little fucking pig. It was awful. But like, that's alcoholism for you. I hope he was drunk. Now he's got a reality show with his current wife, Hilaria, who fascinates me to no end because she's from Boston.

She's from Boston, but she loves to be like, I am a Spanish. And then she forgets the English word for onion. And she's like, oh, my Alec, Hila. She dips in and out of like quite an offensive accent if you're just putting it on like I just did. Her name's Hillary, but nope, Hilaria. And she's a yoga instructor or was a yoga instructor. Now she's basically a trad wife. She met Alec when she was something like 26. They were married at 27. And in the last decade, they've had seven kids, which

which God bless them, but they still live in the Manhattan apartment that they bought before they had any kids. And Bobby said watching it, like that just stressed him out. He was like, well, why do they still live in an apartment? And I was like, well, Bobby, they're not showing the whole apartment. Like I have been blessed to be in some of these beautiful, posh Manhattan apartments forever.

Some of you may already know I had a boyfriend at one point who was great. And I loved him and we're still very good friends, though we were not romantically suited for one another. In the end, we're better off friends. I had no idea that he came from this kind of wealth. I literally did not know. And I do not, I do not chase rich men, though I might, if I still have a chance when I'm older, meet like a sultan or something, maybe, who takes me on a trip.

But I dated this guy and he's like, "Oh yeah, we spent most of our time in London, but he lived in New York in LA." And he was like, "Oh, come to my flat in New York." And when I went to the flat in New York, I was like, "Pardon? Your neighbor's with Jeffrey Epstein." Like, what? And then all of a sudden I was like, "I need to marry this man or else." And it wasn't meant to be, but I still think about the flat. So these Manhattan apartments, don't feel sorry for a family who live in a Manhattan apartment. New York is their playground.

Central Park is their backyard. Like they're living the life and we don't see all of the flat in the series, but I'm sure it's multi-level. It's like supremely beautiful. But for the purpose of the reality show, they've got like seven kids crunched into one New York kitchen and it does feel a little bit claustrophobic. Here are some reviews from Meet the Baldwin's. You can watch it on Discovery Plus in the UK. It's on TLC, I believe in America, but that's how we access TLC in the UK on Discovery Plus.

New York Magazine says...

The pilot episode of The Baldwins, TLC's new reality show about actor Alec Baldwin and his family, is one of the darkest and most bizarre hours of television to appear in recent memory. In look and approach, it plays like a combination of The Osbournes and a TLC reality show from the 2010s, the heyday of the channel's, oh wow, these people have a lot of kids, programming, such as 16 Kids and Counting and John and Kate Plus 8. This alone makes The Baldwins

a concerning prospect. A brief browse through the history of families featured on these shows might suggest that choosing to be on one is akin to putting your foot in a wood chipper. Great review. Here's one from The Guardian who never holds back.

I think there are two options here that will allow ourselves to continue our lives without collapsing into total despair. The first is that a secret cell of revolutionary communists has successfully infiltrated the commissioning corridors of the Discovery Channel and created its new reality show, The Baldwins, as a weapon to bring down Western capitalism. It stars Alec and Hilaria Baldwin, their seven children and eight pets. I forgot to mention the eight fucking pets. Come on. Like, make seven people, sure.

The eight pets in that flat are unnecessary.

As they negotiate their chaotic family life, split between their Manhattan apartment and East Hampton summer home, with two nannies and a lot of talk about love and choosing to grow through problems. Within 20 minutes or so, I expect most of us will be prepared to man the barricades. The second is that The Baldwins is actually a covert addition to the Tina Fey universe. Perhaps The Baldwins is beyond parody, because it is a parody.

The show is being maligned as a blatant vehicle to rehabilitate their collective image with Alec's aforementioned involuntary manslaughter of a cinematographer and Hilaria's outed posturing as ESL. I love English, she says. I also love Spanish. And when I mix the two, that doesn't make me inauthentic. It makes me normal. Ponders Alec during a confessional at one point. Sometimes I say, why do we have seven kids?

And then I realize to help carry me and you through this situation. Oh, that seems very helpful and healthy. My review, I mean, I did fall asleep because I've got too many kids too, Alec. Game recognize game. It was a window into the potential future of At Home with Katherine Ryan. I'm going to have to like shoot a cinematographer first. Obviously, we're going to have to get Bobby like a culturally insensitive accent, but we could get there. We should do like a Meet the Baldwins.

episode on At Home with Katherine Ryan. I'm going to have to rewatch it again. I am fascinated by this couple and I'm excited by the prospect of this continuing because there just isn't enough right now of the television that I love.

And a lot of new things have been coming out, and that's been exciting for me. But when you're in a relationship like mine, it's difficult to find something that everyone loves. And Bobby is a huge Alec Baldwin fan, though he's horrified by the chaos that's unfolding in front of him in this series. I think that this will inspire people to watch old SNL episodes. This will inspire people to watch 30 Rock again. I really need to get to the bottom of Hilaria's whole thing, right?

I really don't understand this woman. And I think maybe they're done having the kids now. And I think maybe for me, it's been a wake up call of like, seven is too many. Like, is there enough love to go around? No. And what can I do to get an apartment in Manhattan?

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Alright, into the emails. Joanne has filtered through a lot of messages about Fred. I was talking about the way that he fixates on things and he always needs to know what's happening next and he's scared that a tiger's going to eat him in the woods now and I shouldn't have told him that, yes, a tiger in the jungle would eat you. Bobby has since listened to that episode and he's presented me with research that suggests, no, a tiger would not even eat Fred if he was in the jungle. Apparently,

Tigers, this has caused like a whole slew of arguments in our household, but tigers do not attack if they're not hungry unless they are threatened or startled or provoked. So if a little three-year-old boy is just like wandering in the jungle, the chances are high that a tiger would just leave him alone.

Bobby pointed me to an example of a postman who for some reason had a root that like went through a jungle every day for a number of years. And the tigers never ate him. But then one time he decided to ride his bicycle and then the tiger ate him because he provoked the tiger's natural instinct to chase. But I just feel like we live in the house with Willow. God bless her. She's like one of the most inbred like people.

No natural instinct cats of all time. She's soft. She's gray. She's still a kitten, but she hunts and stalks us and we do not scare her, provoke her. We don't do anything mean to her. She's well fed. She like pounces and finds us and scratches us.

Notwithstanding, because he has never been investigated or formally diagnosed with anything. So I don't mean to like assign anything to my son that isn't fair. But I can say that through this podcast, a lot of people talk about their own experiences with their own children. And no, they're not offending me when they suggest that either I or any of my kids might be like high masking, neurodiverse kids.

But there were a lot of messages like that. So there are people in my family who, Joanne reminds me, were diagnosed in their teens as like high masking something. And if you have natural intelligence, or a lot of times if you're a young woman, you're more likely to...

mask symptoms of things, be they like academic or social differences. And back then we weren't even diagnosing kids like we are now. Now we might have gone the other way. We might be over diagnosing kids. But this is kind of echoes what a lot of the emails said about Fred's personality.

Catherine, I've been listening to your podcast a while. I love it so much. Today I'm writing to you about Fred. I don't think I've ever written an email to a stranger like this before, but I wish someone had told me this when my kids were little.

The way you've described Fred reminds me so much of my sons, both physically and mentally. They were both diagnosed with high masking, ASD, and ADHD at the ages of 15 and 16. It sounds like you parent very similar to me. Everything you've said about him and his reactions to things sounds so familiar. Having the diagnoses has hugely helped me and my sons. They now get support that suits how their brains work rather than all of us just being a little confused as to why they were so unusually sensitive."

As a result of us all having greater understanding and making small changes to how we behave and communicate, their anxiety has hugely reduced and they are soaring. One is now at Goldsmiths and the other about to do a fashion degree. I wish someone had told me this earlier in their lives so that I would have had the tools to give them a much easier time at school and give them the right support in place rather than always having to manage their feelings and their anxiety alone."

Obviously, there's so much more to their ASD and ADHD, but the first signs were being highly sensitive and anxious. Hence, me focusing on that here. Since their diagnosis, I've also learned so much. And surprise, surprise, I am also neurodiverse. I hope this is useful. If not, please ignore. Yeah, I mean, it is so difficult for someone to get the balls to say to another mother like,

"Oh, my son is autistic. Your son might have autism." All right, like absolutely no offense taken because I don't feel that it's an offensive diagnosis at all. I think we are just hitting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we know about neurodivergence.

I think it's a lot like lupus actually, is that doctors have said, oh, you have autoimmune disease. It's called lupus. And then I know other people with lupus, their autoimmune disease is nothing like mine. They don't have the same symptoms. They don't have the same blood work. There are so many differences in our nuclear antibody readings and all these other factors that can come in. And I think lupus even is a blanket term for probably like 100 autoimmune diseases.

So I think autism, again, is a blanket term for like 150 ways of having your brain wired. So I really do appreciate this. Again, like I need to be careful how I speak about all my children. I don't want to...

and diagnose them with something that I'm not qualified to do. Fred is really smart. He's really articulate. He's really funny. He's getting less anxious as he gets older, but that is probably because of how we handle him. We tell him what's coming. He's got a lot of support from us. We're around a lot. He would not fare well in, let's say, a boarding school situation

scenario. He's got his routine that he likes and he can be flexible too. For example, we've been flying and we're looking at doing an Australian tour. No announcements made yet, but we're looking at doing that in the near future.

And we were mapping out what that looked like. We all decided like, oh, Fred would be the best suited to that. Like Fred's actually great traveling now and he likes holidays and he likes hotels. And when we recently went to Tenerife, he was fine with the beach and putting his feet in the sand. So like who the fuck knows? But I think it's wonderful to have conversations like,

about neurodivergence and what that looks like. And something I really loved that I received to my Instagram, which like it's kind of, it's not dangerous to send me a message to Instagram, but it's less likely to get read on the podcast because I am probably neurodivergent and I don't organize my DMs the way Joanne organizes my emails. But someone talked about the vagus nerve and how that is linked to neurodivergence, but it's also linked to digestion and

And the fact that Fred had reflux and eczema and all these things is vagus nerve related. And that, I mean, look, like I said from the beginning of this episode, I wish I was a doctor, but I am not. So I think all of us are navigating these kinds of things in this new brave world as parents. And like, it's annoying that there's so much information, but it's also really useful because then you can...

You can arm yourself and at least when you find the expert that you want, know what questions to ask and intervene as quickly as you can. Intervene quickly with the period cramps. Intervene quickly with the oversensitivity to being stalked by a tiger in the jungle. So thank you once again for listening to Telling Everybody Everything. I've had a lot of questions about how to stream At Home with Katherine Ryan. It's on UNW.com.

That is every Monday. There are only four episodes in series two. And a lot of people are surprised by that. I know in America you get like 30 episodes of a series, but here you kind of get six or eight or four. We have four. We'd love to do more. We want to have seven children and be the new Meet the Baldwins and get an amazing review like that in The Guardian.

that we are anti-capitalist propaganda, but you can stream it on you. There's so much on there that you can stream. I think that it's pretty sensitive to like VPN. It doesn't let you steal it from other countries, but there is chat about it being released soon in other countries. And I don't advocate stealing any television, but ExpressVPN or VPN Express is a really good one when I am out of the country and I want to watch a subscription episode.

from the UK. It even works with iPlayers, though. Stick that in your back pocket. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for reaching out. And please look after each other. Bye-bye.