How's It Going?

Speaker 1 00:00:00
Hey.

Speaker 2 00:00:00
Hey, Marina. How are you?

Speaker 1 00:00:01
I'm good. How's it going?

Speaker 2 00:00:03
Well, I'm glad you asked. This is a big moment. This is our like, this is a pivotal point in our podcast, whether it's rated for you. We've got some announcements to make.

Speaker 1 00:00:12
Yes, we do. This is episode twelve. Not that anybody's counting, but wow, I'm counting.

Speaker 2 00:00:18
If you recall, at the very beginning, we said we were going to do six to eight episodes, and now we're like, this is twelve.

Speaker 1 00:00:24
Oh, we said a lot of things. I remember this. It was the night before New Year's 2021, no wine involved. And you said, let's do a podcast. It was your idea. You had the title Women of the Repute. We were going to get all sorts of guests. You said it shouldn't be any problem between the two of us. And then you said, hey, you know what? People will pay us handsome amounts of money. And it won't take that much time. It will leave time for you to go, you know, windsurfing, and for me to do whatever I do. And that it wouldn't affect our friendship. That's what you said would happen.

Speaker 2 00:01:00
Well, yeah, because for everybody else, podcasts don't make any money and there are a lot of work, but for us.

Speaker 1 00:01:06
It'S going to be different.

Speaker 2 00:01:09
So, I mean, you talk about it's affected things. Has it affected things?

Speaker 1 00:01:13
Okay, well, first of all, Wendy, it's a good thing I love you because I've spent more time with you either online or on the phone or on Zoom and sometimes face to face than I have with any other living creature in the past year. So there's that. So this is why we're doing this. We have a long way to go. We have a lot to discuss, and we have a lot of ideas to kick around, and we have a lot.

Speaker 2 00:01:34
Of guests to get money to make.

Speaker 1 00:01:37
Well, there's that too. And money to make. And I think it's important to point out that we have not made any money. Not a penny. We have not made a penny.

Speaker 2 00:01:46
And we've been saving ourselves.

Speaker 1 00:01:48
That's right. We've been waiting for marriage. No, we haven't tried to make any money because we didn't really know how. And now we've decided that we're going to sully ourselves because we are the women of Ill Repute, and nobody expects us to be pure.

Speaker 2 00:02:03
So we're not pure. We're not pure anymore. So now what?

Speaker 1 00:02:06
So I thought we'd take a moment to talk about how it started and what has happened and how it's going. And it's just us.

Speaker 2 00:02:13
It's just us. Okay, well, that's cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:02:15
And if you stick with us, at the end of this episode, we have a little announcement for you.

Speaker 2 00:02:21
Do I know what it is?

Speaker 1 00:02:22
Yes, of course I know what it.

Speaker 2 00:02:24
Is, but I've forgotten.

Speaker 1 00:02:25
Stick around, Wendy, and you'll be surprised. We'll have a treat for you in the end.

Speaker 2 00:02:29
Oh, I love treats surprises.

Speaker 1 00:02:31
So I need to tell you right out of the gate that I'm still having a little trouble with the title of this podcast, the Women of Veil Repute. It's a good one, but I think it's confusing to some. It might have been easier if we'd just gone with sapphire old women.

Speaker 2 00:02:46
I'm not old.

Speaker 1 00:02:48
No. And what was it that Romeo suggested we call ourselves?

Speaker 2 00:02:52
I'm not going with the two Karens.

Speaker 1 00:02:54
The two Karens. No, he said we should start a band to call The Two Karens, and our first hit could be I Want to Talk to the Manager.

Speaker 2 00:03:03
So guess what? We're not calling it the two Karen.

Speaker 1 00:03:06
No. So we're sticking with women of ill repute. And as we've mentioned often that it is a compliment. I think we've had a couple of people who did not take it that way, like the royal experts that we tried to retain as a guest before the queen died. And we wanted her to tell us about badass women in the royal family, like, historically. And she was dreadfully insulted and snooping in repute.

Speaker 2 00:03:31
Yeah, well, as Jane Arden would say, like, screw her. Like, so many people that we reached out, including to your point, that not everyone wants to be called a woman of ill repute, but everyone that we've reached out to say, I am a woman of ill repute. And, yeah, it is a badge of honor. And I think we're in this time where nobody's got a sense of humor and no one's daring to say anything. I think if we're going to be sassy and if we're going to have some fun and deep thoughts and laugh or whatever in opposite order, perhaps, for you, we need to stick with what we got.

Speaker 1 00:04:01
We need to label ourselves as such. Now we have to tell you, and you probably figured it out that Wendy and I started on this without having any idea what podcasting is like. No idea. We were babies.

Speaker 2 00:04:14
We were neophytes mid rolls, prerolls hospitals, CBMs downloads. I know what a download was. That was about it.

Speaker 1 00:04:23
Oh, yeah. We use a platform to record called Squad Cast, which hilariously, I was put.

Speaker 2 00:04:29
In charge of you're the technical wizard. Between the two of us, not doing.

Speaker 1 00:04:34
Much, but we have learned so much. And one of the things that we had no idea, we thought it would be really easy to get guests. You told me it would be easy.

Speaker 2 00:04:44
Yeah, well, it's funny because you get upset when someone says no. I expect people to say no, and when they say yes, I'm in. I'm like, wow, that's so great. They're so cool. Because I was a political reporter where.

Speaker 1 00:04:57
Nobody wanted to talk to you.

Speaker 2 00:04:59
Yeah. And you asked rude questions or what they thought were rude questions. We thought they were pretty normal. Or I was at Marketplace, where it seemed like everything was going to kill you. Or you had the stacks to show that somebody was going to kill you. So I was used to jumping out from behind bushes and being told, no, go away, you're an evil person, but you're not.

Speaker 1 00:05:16
But I wasn't. No, I wasn't. And I took it personally and I asked a few people to be on the show, to be on the podcast who were friends, or certainly people that I was friendly with, and a couple of them said no. And I took it really personally and I've never spoken to them again.

Speaker 2 00:05:34
But that's very grown up.

Speaker 1 00:05:36
But it's been it's been tough and not that tough. And then we also we've had some guests who were rude to us. Wendy we're not going to name names.

Speaker 2 00:05:45
But without naming names, there was one in particular that really hurt because we both loved her and the thing that she'd written was like, perfect for our show, which is about bad women, sassy women. Yeah, but her publicist maybe I'm acting too grown up here, but her publicist reached out and there was a PR reason, like, you've been in trouble before. Why would we want you to take a chance on anything and have real opinions about anything or a real conversation with anybody? Just publish your words and then you'll be fine.

Speaker 1 00:06:16
But you see, I'm still pissed off about it, as you can tell, because it happened the night before. We had booked this amazing author and she was like, totally on board. And just for the record, just so you know, wendy and I do all the research. If someone's written a book or two or three, we both read them. We try to find out everything that we can about our guests so that we can have an informed conversation. And so when somebody pulls out on you the night before, after all the excitement, and this was very early on, I'm sorry, I took it personally. And that's just the way it is.

Speaker 2 00:06:47
Well, it's funny because some people say that we should include in our podcast the moments when we disagree. So there haven't been a lot of comedians, journalists, different backgrounds and whatever.

Speaker 1 00:06:57
Oh, yes. Well, now it can be told that the day before our very first episode, which was with Mary Walsh and you and I had done, I guess, our intro episode, but we never really worked together before, so we thought that we would rehearse doing an interview. Do we have Ronan playing Mary Walsh at that? No, it was just the two of us.

Speaker 2 00:07:18
No, I think it's just the two of us and we're figuring out, because we have the intro, where we chat and then we chat with the person and then they say goodbye and we trash them afterwards. Although we always end up saying, oh, we love to.

Speaker 1 00:07:28
Well, because we usually do.

Speaker 2 00:07:31
But we were trying out and you had this joke which I didn't think was funny, and we hated each other for the next 20 minutes.

Speaker 1 00:07:38
Oh my God, the wheels fell off. It was awful. I told you that something was boring and you told me I wasn't funny and wow, it just completely imploded. And so we agreed to walk away for 4 hours and reconvene later that day. And in the 4 hours we were texting each other going, how do you feel about this? I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 2 00:07:59
It was funny though. It was pretty central. I mean, it was heartbreaking and I think it was good for both of us. And I think that's sort of what I most love about doing this podcast with you and with other smart women that we get to choose, is that we keep learning. I don't know, I think I learned from that. I'm sure you learn way more because I'm so profound.

Speaker 1 00:08:19
I did learn something. So I asked you to be more open minded and you asked me to be more gentle.

Speaker 2 00:08:25
Both of us could do both. But it was interesting because it speaks so much to where we both come from. So what started it all off was a joke about you wanted to tell a joke about a politician. And I was like, I'm not making a joke about a politician, I'm a very serious journalist.

Speaker 1 00:08:40
No, no, no. I wanted you and Mary because Mary had played Mark Delahante, her character on the Hill, for years. So I was going to say, why don't you guys talk about what politicians you think are sexy? And you were like, There are no sexy politicians.

Speaker 2 00:08:54
Not very funny, but that's a journalist training. Like you're not allowed. You just can't see them as sexy.

Speaker 1 00:09:01
I was thinking, well, maybe Wilfred Laurie.

Speaker 2 00:09:03
Or somebody wrote that it's still not happening.

Speaker 1 00:09:07
So that's where we are. We're at this intersection between comedy and journalism and we still find ourselves there.

Speaker 2 00:09:13
Which is a good thing.

Speaker 1 00:09:15
Okay, so a lot has happened in the world since we started this podcast.

Speaker 2 00:09:18
Roe versus Wade, you mean?

Speaker 1 00:09:20
No, well, the invasion of Ukraine. I mean huge and mostly awful things. But let's talk about a couple of things that happened in the smaller world and the broadcasting world that are quite relevant. So for me, well, for both of us, because it doesn't affect both of us. We started the podcast in June and at the end of May, Jennifer Valentine, whose broadcaster went public with a video where she accused a man that she used to work with at Q 107, she didn't name him, but it's John Deringer we know that now, of being a bully. And it became a big story. And because I worked with him for 15 years, of course a lot of people wanted to have my take on it and I supported her absolutely as I do.

Speaker 2 00:10:01
It was a big deal. Like, sorry to blow your horn, as they say, but blow away. But it was a big deal. Because a lot of people either didn't know Jen Valentine that well, or they sort of knew Darn. Sure. And they didn't know what to think. Like, he seemed like such a great guy, and here was this woman saying that maybe he wasn't, even though she didn't identify him, but when you came out and said, well, actually, I worked with that guy for a long time and there are issues, and people were like, a lot of people said, I really believe Maureen. Like, I used to listen to her, and if she says that there was an issue, there's an issue. So it was a huge deal, and you were a big part of that.

Speaker 1 00:10:38
Well, thank you. It was unpleasant, but the timing on it was kind of serendipitous because it happened just as we were launching our podcast. And people wanted to hear from you because you hadn't spoken publicly since leaving the CBC.

Speaker 2 00:10:51
Well, I couldn't speak just a minute. That's a long story. But back to darringer. It was a big deal.

Speaker 1 00:10:56
Back to darringer. So those things, even though they were kind of horrible experiences, gave us a bit of a boost out of the gate. And then there was La Sara Lee Flam.

Speaker 2 00:11:06
That was such a huge deal. Yeah, she was basically let go. She was talking about prime Time, the Hanker who was successful and who fought for stuff and had been in the field and done everything. And there are a lot of journalists that I respect, but she's for real. She's one of the top stars. And very quickly the PR machine went into gear, and it was about how she was a woman and she was an aging woman, and she wasn't dying her hair anymore, and it was because she'd let her hair go gray and this whole thing exploded. And I thought it's way more complicated than that. I mean, you and I come from the mainstream media world, and we know the terrors that have descended in the last decade. And she stood up for journalism, and it was more about the suits winning, I thought. And so I wrote a couple of pieces, and anyway, it became a huge deal, and everyone was saying, hey, you got to get Lisa Le Flam on your podcast. Are we? Well, I ended up speaking to her because I've obviously known her over the years, and turns out she's like a regular listener to our podcast. Hi, Lisa, I hope you're listening. So, yeah, I mean, she's been very careful with what she's saying at the moment, and I don't want to push her into an uncomfortable situation, and she's not going to push herself into that, obviously. So it'll be a while, but we would love to have her on the podcast. And obviously what happened to her became such a huge deal because there are so many women who identify with the idea of not being able to age in place, not being able. You hit 50 and you're no longer of value anymore.

Speaker 1 00:12:38
Agent out? Yeah, prematurely. Well, I think we're far more likely to get Lisa Leflam on the show than John Darren. Sure.

Speaker 2 00:12:44
He's not returning your call.

Speaker 1 00:12:47
I'm not placing any. Let's go back over the last eleven guests that we've had in this first series. We have a bunch more that we're going to do. Obviously, our announcement is not goodbye, but out of the dozen or so women that we have, who are your high points?

Speaker 2 00:13:02
Well, it's funny, I'm thinking of Marie Hannah just because of the criminal defense lawyer. She was one of my favorites. I don't agree with everything that she defended Gianga Meshi, and of course, Giangameshi and every other person who's done women wrong deserves to get a proper defense. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with the justice system and how it treats women who have been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 1 00:13:25
And so, anyway, we had listeners who tweeted us or emailed us and said that they wouldn't listen to that particular podcast because Maria Hannon defended Gianco Meshi, which is like she's a defense lawyer.

Speaker 2 00:13:38
Yeah, that's what they do.

Speaker 1 00:13:39
They don't get to defend only innocent people. And she didn't talk about it with us because you don't you don't talk about your cases.

Speaker 2 00:13:46
Would be fun, though, to talk to her about Lisa LaFlam, though, because at some point I said, at some point, you refuse to answer the question, are you a feminist? And you have to just read your book. You're obviously a feminist. And yet she writes about things like turning 50, like Lisa LaFlam 58 and gray hair and whatever. I don't think it was that. I think it was way more complicated, but turning 50, and that even if you're a successful lawyer, you become invisible, whereas if you're 50 year old male lawyer, you're like, whoa, it's he hot. Like, he's dignified. He's got white hair and he's got a 30 year old girlfriend. So it's just different. So I think she was one of my favorites.

Speaker 1 00:14:22
Marilyn Dennis is an old friend of mine, and she was so forthcoming about aging and all those things. And it was interesting because we had her on both she and she works for bell, she works at Chumfam and CTV, and Lisa Lil Flam, of course, work for CTV. But Marilyn couldn't talk about it because that's one of the reasons she's been around for 40 years, because she knows her to keep her mouth shut, which is maybe more than I can say for myself. But anyway, she was great. Jane Arden, who was the most generous of souls, became our life counselor, if you recall.

Speaker 2 00:14:53
Well, yeah, because we spoke to her right after we sort of got dumped by the publicist of the person that we thought was going to be so wonderful. She didn't know who it was, but she basically said, well, screw that. Screw that.

Speaker 1 00:15:03
Yeah, screw that. Jenna dropped the C word, which we acted like a couple of old minis were like, oh, she was interesting. She's, of course, a feisty restaurant owner. And I wish we had talked to her more recently because the restaurant scene right now, specifically in Toronto, I would say, is not doing that well. And I'm sure she has a lot to say about that.

Speaker 2 00:15:24
Yeah, I love talking to her and, well, I guess I took away two things. One was drink gin, not vodka, because vodka is over marketed. And the other thing was that she's so successful, but no one's ever tried to buy out a business, whereas all kinds of times you go to restaurants that are fabulously successful and then they're bought out and they're like, terrible afterwards. She never had that opportunity.

Speaker 1 00:15:44
No, she's never had that opportunity. So Jack's Irwin moved me to tears talking about her dad, Hannah Alper, who's 19, who's an activist born in this century. Born in this century. Oh, my God. So we've had all sorts of people, and we have a lot more. I was going to say the best is still to come, but they're all great. Your old friend Louise Penny coming up. Phenomenal author.

Speaker 2 00:16:07
We were in grade nine together and yeah, and she wasn't writing mystery novels back in grade nine, but she's like, it's been a huge success. It's kind of fun. We have her and we have Ann Marie McDonald coming up with Aaron Davis.

Speaker 1 00:16:19
Coming up, comedian Alison Door. I don't want to give it all away. Wendy still wants to get she still thinks we're going to get Dolly Parton and Katie Lang and Jane Fonda.

Speaker 2 00:16:30
I love Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda. I don't know. And, yeah, I was really hoping to get Katie Kirk and Kathy Griffin, but they've got cancer, so it's kind of difficult to approach them. But I think we both love Pamela Adlon. I didn't even know who she was, but I've been watching better things. She's both meaner and more loving than I see myself as I'm like.

Speaker 1 00:16:55
So we've got big plans, we've got big dreams. And we saw that big announcement that's coming up next. It's funny, we've been approached a couple of times. We're going to talk about money in a second and the fact that we don't have any. But Wendy responded saying, oh, yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting with you. We're staffing up right now.

Speaker 2 00:17:10
Well, we are. Yeah. I don't know. We got, like, three people. We used to say we had no people. We have three people. They're not really ours, but they're not really staff.

Speaker 1 00:17:19
They're not really the help. So in case you haven't figured it out by the sheer rawness of this podcast, wendy and I do this ourselves. We produce it ourselves. We chase down the guests, we do the research. We technically record it ourselves and we send it off to Matt Cundill at Sound off Productions end.

Speaker 2 00:17:37
And he's great. He's given us advice, too, because we had no idea what we were doing and we were like, Matt, was this a preroll?

Speaker 1 00:17:43
So he cleans it up, he does a little bit of the editing, very little taken out. It's usually just pops and cracks and sounds like that. So Matt does that for us. We have a web designer, Tory Chippendale, who designed our Women of Illegal repute.com.

Speaker 2 00:17:58
Website, which we love.

Speaker 1 00:18:00
Which we love. And she came up with a logo, which is like lipstick on a mirror. And we're getting into some merch somewhere down the line.

Speaker 2 00:18:07
Tote Bags. Tote Bags.

Speaker 1 00:18:09
And we welcome Yet Belgraver, who is our photographer.

Speaker 2 00:18:12
Yes. She took all the pictures that are on the website and she's fantastic. She was a producer at CDC and then she went to Al Jazeera and she just moved to the sort of the West Coast but interior BC. And she's a big brain and got lots of experience and she knows how to operate a camera, which is a good thing.

Speaker 1 00:18:31
She's going to be our Chase producer. So if you hear from us, it's Spelt Jet, but yet she's Dutch. Chances are she's coming to get you to talk to us. So we are now on Substance, if you're not following us there, which has.

Speaker 2 00:18:45
Been fun, actually, because at first we thought it would be a way of getting people to check out our podcast and then we both had so much fun writing. Like, I think your last one, you talked about all the guys who had hit on you, like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin. Was he the eighties rock god without the shirt, or is that he's the lead singer. Yeah, without the shirt. Right?

Speaker 1 00:19:05
With the shirt and the hair. But, I mean, it was later. He was a decrepit old man of 40, I think, when he hit on me. But didn't Gila FLIR hit on you?

Speaker 2 00:19:14
Well, nobody ever followed through, but there was certainly an invitation there. And I was like, you're a sports person, I'm a journalist. Politicians never have sex or can never be sexy. It was like when you're 21 years old, journalists would never be interested in sports people. And I always had a crush, which may explain why we're together. I always had a crush on comedians. But they're not known for their fantastic good looks.

Speaker 1 00:19:39
No, but they're known for their horrible basement apartments that are a mess.

Speaker 2 00:19:43
I'm fine with that.

Speaker 1 00:19:45
Well, maybe we can make that wish come true so you can find us on substat. We're writing for substance. You just go to Women of Illegal, go to Substant.com and look up Women of Bill Repeat, or you can find us under our names.

Speaker 2 00:19:56
You're doing a plug right now. Check us out. Substate.

Speaker 1 00:20:00
Yeah, check us out. It's right. We are going to monetize this little project. We have invited sponsors, we're going to talk. And so there may be some commercials down the line. Just letting you know. We kind of need to pay our staff.

Speaker 2 00:20:14
Yeah, no, we need the odd dollars. But you're going to bring out antimo or something, aren't you?

Speaker 1 00:20:19
I think I might do an advice column called Ask Antimo. It could be Afghano and anti. Wendy, we can work something out.

Speaker 2 00:20:27
I don't know. I'll come up with something. I think when we did the Italian, the Godmother thing, you were like, what were you?

Speaker 1 00:20:33
We were trying to figure out what our mafia, our mob names were. And I was like, Mow the chin. Because I think I have a big chin.

Speaker 2 00:20:41
Oh, yeah, that's right. And I was Wendy Beforehand. So it'll be something like that. Advice just a little bit more useful.

Speaker 1 00:20:49
Something like that. So yes, the announcement, it may not seem like a big deal, but it is to us because we are doubling up. We've been going every two weeks of dropping an episode, every two weeks of Women of Alleviate. We're going to start next week and we're going to go weekly.

Speaker 2 00:21:03
Weekly. That's a big deal. That's like a lot of books.

Speaker 1 00:21:06
It's a lot of books. It's a lot of people, actually. Speaking of which, we're talking to Ann Marie McDonald. Her new book, Fane is out now. F-A-Y-N-E. It's about seven or 800 pages long.

Speaker 2 00:21:19
Yeah, when you told me that, I was like, I'm not reading it. And you said, you need to read it. And I was like, okay. And then it was really good.

Speaker 1 00:21:26
And she's fantastic.

Speaker 2 00:21:27
You are intimidated by her because she does everything. She's like an activist, playwright, author because she's so brilliant.

Speaker 1 00:21:34
I'm easily intimidated. People find that hard to believe, but I'm easily intimidated and you're not. So Emery is going to join us next week and then we'll be on every week after that. Oh, and one more thing. Thank you, listener, for following us. We started with nothing, obviously. We've had well over 50,000 downloads since we started. We're averaging about 5000 listeners per episode, which in podcast terms is huge. And so obviously if we didn't have you, we'd be sitting in a basement pretending to talk to you comedians.

Speaker 2 00:22:06
No one else would be listening. I'd be thrilled that there'd be no viewers. Yeah, this is very exciting. It's the next step. So yeah. Thank you for sharing this. And thanks for being with us.

Speaker 1 00:22:17
Thank you, Wendy.

Speaker 2 00:22:18
Bye. Talk soon. Bye.