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I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quikie. How are you feeling after a weekend of scrolling that might have served your social media feeds? Some funny cats, your favorite influencer's divorce announcement, and also the US bombing Iran. It's weird, right that, jumping from terrible tragedy to lolls in a single swipe. Our new Daily contributing editor Amy Ramikers has introduced us to a word to describe that. It's called hypernormalization. Before we find out what that means and how it exactly explains how we're feeling about the world right now, here's the letters from the Cookie Newsroom, Tuesday, June twenty four. In retaliation against the US bombing three of its nuclear weapons facilities over the weekend, Iran says they've carried out a devastating and powerful missile attack on a US air base in Katar. Qatar's defense minister says its air defenses had intercepted missiles directed at the air base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East, situated just across the Gulf from Iran. Katari and US authorities say there were no casualties, Katar condemning the attack and saying they reserve the right to respond. Meanwhile, Israel has kept up its assault on Iran, bombing a jail for political prisoners in Tehran in a demonstration they're expanding its targets beyond military and nuclear sites, potentially aiming to attack Iran's ruling system. The jury members who will decide the fate of accused triple murderer Aaron Patterson a due to return to court today where a judge will give them final directions. Just as Christopher Biale is set to begin his final directions to the jury, known as the judge's charge. This is expected to run for about two days. He will summarize the evidence in the trial and explain to jurors the relevant legal principles. They will then be balloted down to twelve who will be sent away to deliberate on whether Patterson is guilty or knock Giding guilty of three murders and one attempted murder. Jurors will be sequestered when they begin deliberations until they return with a unanimous verdict donald charges. The trial has entered week nine after hearing from more than fifty prosecution witnesses before Patterson herself entered the witness box for eight days. Patterson's barrister, Colin Mandy, said his client was innocent and accused prosecutors of trying to force pieces of evidence together to prove their theory. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers said Patterson was guilty of deliberately sourcing death cap mushrooms and serving them to her guests to either kill or seriously injure them, and cited Pattison's repeated lies. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges over the deaths of her former in laws, Don and Gale Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson. She also denies the attempted murder of sole surviving lunch guest, Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson. Two hundred and eighty five people, including one Australian, have been arrested in a two month drug crackdown in Indonesia. Authorities paraded thirds six of the suspects, including twenty one women in front of the press this week, standing them dressed in orange prison jumpsuits in front of the confiscated drugs. Police saying they've seized more than half a ton of various narcotics during the investigation, along with uncovering money laundering schemes and confiscating assets worth more than two point three million Australian dollars. The seven foreigners arrested included one yet to be identified Australian, one US citizen, two Kazakhs, two Malaysians, and one Indian. The majority of the women were housewives, the head of the National Narcotic Agency warning women to be more vigilant in establishing friendships both in the real world and in cyberspace. Nearly one hundred private jets are expected to land at Venice's Marco Polo Airport over the next few days, bringing around two hundred celebrity guests to the wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former TV presenter Lauren Sanchez. TV personalities Oprah Winfrey, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian are on the guest list, as are the billionaire owners of Google and Microsoft, Erica Schmidt and Bill gates, with the first of the guests expected to begin arriving today ahead of Friday's nuptials. It's not yet known when the bride and groom will arrive, but Italian media are reporting that Bezos's private yacht, the Koru, is currently sitting just off the Croatian coast. The couple have also reportedly booked into the same suite at the Aman in Venice where George and Amal Clooney stayed when they got married back in twenty fourteen. That's what's happening in the world today. Next, we find out what hypernormalization is and how it's shaping how we view our world. Journalist Amy Remiquez just wrote a piece for The New Daily describing how a lot of us are feeling right now. In it, she explains that our social media feeds might show us an ad for something we don't need, followed by a cat video aid workers talking about the devastation in Gaza, another cat, people screaming in Gaza, Influenzo talking about meal replaced, a Palestinian child's lust, satirical head, and add for waight, Israeli forces firing on and killing Palestinians as they search for aid. Sound familiar, except maybe you also had a few news stories added in this past weekend about the US entering the conflict between Israel and Iran by bombing nuclear weapons facilities. It's a lot. It's impacting our mental health, but it's also become our normal. And it doesn't just apply to war either. It also applies to how we view things like climate change and catastrophic natural disasters. It's how we feel about seeing yet another death in custody, or the outrageous tax breaks given to rich people while the poorest doeses he sink lower into financial prison. It's become normal. Normal to know that you may never be able to afford to buy your own home. Normal to watch our leaders tell lies and not be held accountable, domestic violence normal amy Where did the concept of hypernormalization start and how does it shape how we view the world around us?

I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quikie. How are you feeling after a weekend of scrolling that might have served your social media feeds? Some funny cats, your favorite influencer's divorce announcement, and also the US bombing Iran. It's weird, right that, jumping from terrible tragedy to lolls in a single swipe. Our new Daily contributing editor Amy Ramikers has introduced us to a word to describe that. It's called hypernormalization. Before we find out what that means and how it exactly explains how we're feeling about the world right now, here's the letters from the Cookie Newsroom, Tuesday, June twenty four. In retaliation against the US bombing three of its nuclear weapons facilities over the weekend, Iran says they've carried out a devastating and powerful missile attack on a US air base in Katar. Qatar's defense minister says its air defenses had intercepted missiles directed at the air base, the largest US military installation in the Middle East, situated just across the Gulf from Iran. Katari and US authorities say there were no casualties, Katar condemning the attack and saying they reserve the right to respond. Meanwhile, Israel has kept up its assault on Iran, bombing a jail for political prisoners in Tehran in a demonstration they're expanding its targets beyond military and nuclear sites, potentially aiming to attack Iran's ruling system. The jury members who will decide the fate of accused triple murderer Aaron Patterson a due to return to court today where a judge will give them final directions. Just as Christopher Biale is set to begin his final directions to the jury, known as the judge's charge. This is expected to run for about two days. He will summarize the evidence in the trial and explain to jurors the relevant legal principles. They will then be balloted down to twelve who will be sent away to deliberate on whether Patterson is guilty or knock Giding guilty of three murders and one attempted murder. Jurors will be sequestered when they begin deliberations until they return with a unanimous verdict donald charges. The trial has entered week nine after hearing from more than fifty prosecution witnesses before Patterson herself entered the witness box for eight days. Patterson's barrister, Colin Mandy, said his client was innocent and accused prosecutors of trying to force pieces of evidence together to prove their theory. Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers said Patterson was guilty of deliberately sourcing death cap mushrooms and serving them to her guests to either kill or seriously injure them, and cited Pattison's repeated lies. Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges over the deaths of her former in laws, Don and Gale Patterson, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson. She also denies the attempted murder of sole surviving lunch guest, Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson. Two hundred and eighty five people, including one Australian, have been arrested in a two month drug crackdown in Indonesia. Authorities paraded thirds six of the suspects, including twenty one women in front of the press this week, standing them dressed in orange prison jumpsuits in front of the confiscated drugs. Police saying they've seized more than half a ton of various narcotics during the investigation, along with uncovering money laundering schemes and confiscating assets worth more than two point three million Australian dollars. The seven foreigners arrested included one yet to be identified Australian, one US citizen, two Kazakhs, two Malaysians, and one Indian. The majority of the women were housewives, the head of the National Narcotic Agency warning women to be more vigilant in establishing friendships both in the real world and in cyberspace. Nearly one hundred private jets are expected to land at Venice's Marco Polo Airport over the next few days, bringing around two hundred celebrity guests to the wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former TV presenter Lauren Sanchez. TV personalities Oprah Winfrey, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian are on the guest list, as are the billionaire owners of Google and Microsoft, Erica Schmidt and Bill gates, with the first of the guests expected to begin arriving today ahead of Friday's nuptials. It's not yet known when the bride and groom will arrive, but Italian media are reporting that Bezos's private yacht, the Koru, is currently sitting just off the Croatian coast. The couple have also reportedly booked into the same suite at the Aman in Venice where George and Amal Clooney stayed when they got married back in twenty fourteen. That's what's happening in the world today. Next, we find out what hypernormalization is and how it's shaping how we view our world. Journalist Amy Remiquez just wrote a piece for The New Daily describing how a lot of us are feeling right now. In it, she explains that our social media feeds might show us an ad for something we don't need, followed by a cat video aid workers talking about the devastation in Gaza, another cat, people screaming in Gaza, Influenzo talking about meal replaced, a Palestinian child's lust, satirical head, and add for waight, Israeli forces firing on and killing Palestinians as they search for aid. Sound familiar, except maybe you also had a few news stories added in this past weekend about the US entering the conflict between Israel and Iran by bombing nuclear weapons facilities. It's a lot. It's impacting our mental health, but it's also become our normal. And it doesn't just apply to war either. It also applies to how we view things like climate change and catastrophic natural disasters. It's how we feel about seeing yet another death in custody, or the outrageous tax breaks given to rich people while the poorest doeses he sink lower into financial prison. It's become normal. Normal to know that you may never be able to afford to buy your own home. Normal to watch our leaders tell lies and not be held accountable, domestic violence normal amy Where did the concept of hypernormalization start and how does it shape how we view the world around us?

Well, it was actually influenced by the last years of the USSR so the Soviet Union. Where a Russian boor academic historian and somebody who basically just studies humanity, Alexi Yurchak, was trying to explain the last years of the Soviet Union in terms of what it did to people's minds, and the concept that he came up with was hyper normalization, and what he meant by that was everyone in the USSR knew that it was corrupt. Everyone knew that the systems were failing, everyone knew that there were only few people who were benefiting while most of the people within the system were suffering. But everyone was just told that this was normal, and so they just basically were forced to accept it. And he said it was essentially a case of it is what it is, where people knew that it wasn't working, but there was no alternative option that was put forward, so people basically just capitulated and said, well, what can we do? And so he described this in his book which he released in two thousand and six, which was called Everything Was Forever Until it was no more the Last Soviet Generation, and he was trying to reconcile the fact that everybody knew that the USSR was broken, that it wasn't working with the fact that everybody just kept going as if it was business as usual. And it was only after the USSR fell that people started going, Yeah, that was pretty weird, wasn't it. There turns out there was another way, and so that was the genesis of the term, but it was picked up again in twenty sixteen by a British filmmaker, a guy called Adam Curtis, who did a documentary called Hypernormalization where he was applying it to the West and Britain mostly, but also America and Canada and by default Australia, where he was looking at what was happening in terms of our economy, how we're all really struggling in this stage of capitalism, but we're all just walking around saying this is normal. There's no other way. And so hyper normalization is basically if you feel like you're insane because everything seems so awful and so overwhelming, but everyone around you is just getting on with it. You're not insane, you're just fighting against this hyper normalization concept where essentially people are trying to make the not normal normal.

Well, it was actually influenced by the last years of the USSR so the Soviet Union. Where a Russian boor academic historian and somebody who basically just studies humanity, Alexi Yurchak, was trying to explain the last years of the Soviet Union in terms of what it did to people's minds, and the concept that he came up with was hyper normalization, and what he meant by that was everyone in the USSR knew that it was corrupt. Everyone knew that the systems were failing, everyone knew that there were only few people who were benefiting while most of the people within the system were suffering. But everyone was just told that this was normal, and so they just basically were forced to accept it. And he said it was essentially a case of it is what it is, where people knew that it wasn't working, but there was no alternative option that was put forward, so people basically just capitulated and said, well, what can we do? And so he described this in his book which he released in two thousand and six, which was called Everything Was Forever Until it was no more the Last Soviet Generation, and he was trying to reconcile the fact that everybody knew that the USSR was broken, that it wasn't working with the fact that everybody just kept going as if it was business as usual. And it was only after the USSR fell that people started going, Yeah, that was pretty weird, wasn't it. There turns out there was another way, and so that was the genesis of the term, but it was picked up again in twenty sixteen by a British filmmaker, a guy called Adam Curtis, who did a documentary called Hypernormalization where he was applying it to the West and Britain mostly, but also America and Canada and by default Australia, where he was looking at what was happening in terms of our economy, how we're all really struggling in this stage of capitalism, but we're all just walking around saying this is normal. There's no other way. And so hyper normalization is basically if you feel like you're insane because everything seems so awful and so overwhelming, but everyone around you is just getting on with it. You're not insane, you're just fighting against this hyper normalization concept where essentially people are trying to make the not normal normal.

And this is something you really tied into something that we all do, which is doom scrolling. So you might in one sitting laugh at funny cat videos. You might also be influenced by somebody to purchase something. You might see if someone's fit check, and then you'll look at pictures of children dying in Gaza and then you might see a bomb falling on Irun and then you might go back to seeing funny dog videos. And that has become like a normal day for us.

And this is something you really tied into something that we all do, which is doom scrolling. So you might in one sitting laugh at funny cat videos. You might also be influenced by somebody to purchase something. You might see if someone's fit check, and then you'll look at pictures of children dying in Gaza and then you might see a bomb falling on Irun and then you might go back to seeing funny dog videos. And that has become like a normal day for us.

Yeah, and it's no good for anybody. It really is not good for your mental health. We are not meant to be consuming information and you know, frankly, despair and grief and terror in these little clips that are intersected with cat videos. It's not good. We don't give ourselves time to sit with what we've seen, to sit with our grief, to sit with our horror, just our hope for humanity. We're not made to sit there and see the worst thing that you've ever seen and then see a weight loss pill. It's just not the way that it's supposed to work. But hypernormalization basically feeds into this because it's a way of making the absolute abhorrent normal. And while it is really important to stay connected to what is happening to humanity, the way that basically social media algorithms are doing it is intersecting it with all of this light, fluffy, meaningless entertainment or ads, in which case it means that people are just basically switching off. But they're also not taking in the full impact of what we are seeing across the world, particularly the Middle East, because we're just flipping, We're just using our thumb to disco. That is the worst thing I've ever seen. Oh look, here is a cat doing something funny. Oh look, here's a get ready with me today. And it actually, I think is making people sick. And everybody that I talk to is experiencing the same thing that they feel like they're going crazy because they don't know what to do and they're seeing all of these things, but at the same time, they're just being bombarded with normal life, and a lot of people I know are feeling like it's starting to create this sort of alternate world in their head where nothing actually feels real, and they're actually, I think is a positive to that, because if you're experiencing that, it means that you are still sane and you are still feeling you're just fighting against the hyper normalization of some of the worst atrocities that we've ever seen.

Yeah, and it's no good for anybody. It really is not good for your mental health. We are not meant to be consuming information and you know, frankly, despair and grief and terror in these little clips that are intersected with cat videos. It's not good. We don't give ourselves time to sit with what we've seen, to sit with our grief, to sit with our horror, just our hope for humanity. We're not made to sit there and see the worst thing that you've ever seen and then see a weight loss pill. It's just not the way that it's supposed to work. But hypernormalization basically feeds into this because it's a way of making the absolute abhorrent normal. And while it is really important to stay connected to what is happening to humanity, the way that basically social media algorithms are doing it is intersecting it with all of this light, fluffy, meaningless entertainment or ads, in which case it means that people are just basically switching off. But they're also not taking in the full impact of what we are seeing across the world, particularly the Middle East, because we're just flipping, We're just using our thumb to disco. That is the worst thing I've ever seen. Oh look, here is a cat doing something funny. Oh look, here's a get ready with me today. And it actually, I think is making people sick. And everybody that I talk to is experiencing the same thing that they feel like they're going crazy because they don't know what to do and they're seeing all of these things, but at the same time, they're just being bombarded with normal life, and a lot of people I know are feeling like it's starting to create this sort of alternate world in their head where nothing actually feels real, and they're actually, I think is a positive to that, because if you're experiencing that, it means that you are still sane and you are still feeling you're just fighting against the hyper normalization of some of the worst atrocities that we've ever seen.

You kind of touched on this before about refusing to accept this normality, and in fact, especially when we're talking about the Soviet Union and how you don't know that there is a better option until it arrives and you realize all along that there was was when Donald Trump was reelected and everyone was in a state of despair, and Alexandra Cortez was being interviewed about it and she said something which I thought was really poignant, and when she said, maybe this is the moment we realize this system doesn't work anymore, the capitalism is not serving us, that their version of democracy is not working. Maybe this is the moment where we realize that and things will change because our time is over. And that's I think something that maybe we struggle to think about is that maybe our form of government isn't working. Maybe our form of democracy isn't working. Maybe our form our systems are not serving us. And so maybe these are the moments that we have to start looking at what might.

You kind of touched on this before about refusing to accept this normality, and in fact, especially when we're talking about the Soviet Union and how you don't know that there is a better option until it arrives and you realize all along that there was was when Donald Trump was reelected and everyone was in a state of despair, and Alexandra Cortez was being interviewed about it and she said something which I thought was really poignant, and when she said, maybe this is the moment we realize this system doesn't work anymore, the capitalism is not serving us, that their version of democracy is not working. Maybe this is the moment where we realize that and things will change because our time is over. And that's I think something that maybe we struggle to think about is that maybe our form of government isn't working. Maybe our form of democracy isn't working. Maybe our form our systems are not serving us. And so maybe these are the moments that we have to start looking at what might.

Absolutely And I think that as people watch tech giants take more and more power over us, you know, take more of our identities, as AI steps into the workplace, and you know, make some people's jobs obsolete, make learning obsolete in some cases, I think this is where people start to go, oh, I'm not sure if this system is serving us. If it ever did. You can go back to twenty fifteen, where people were writing definitively that the end of capitalism has begun. And if you might remember, that was when we were having a lot of trouble with the banking systems and inequality was rising. We started seeing housing prices increase, not just in Australia too, like this is happening in the majority of the Western world. And it's important to remember that capitalism hasn't always been in place. There was a system before this, and the system of capitalism that we experienced really started in the nineteen seventies with a thing called neoliberalism, where you had a bunch of world leaders say we're going to give them markets control. We're going to let the markets decide, and we're going to have governments take a more of a handoff approach to what they do for people in terms of housing, in terms of welfare, in terms of healthcare, and this is how we will get the most efficient system. So neoliberalism has essentially been running the market since the nineteen seventies, and for most of us, that's all we have ever known. But there has been another time. Within a few years after World War two ending, most of the Western world governments basically got together and created a system of government assistance. It's why most of our grandparents, if you were white in Australia were able to purchase a home. They had a Commonwealth employment services that helped people train and get jobs. You were able to live on one income because the government put in place safeguards around basic necessities like healthcare and housing and food and education that ensured entire populations got ahead. But what we've been doing since then is essentially putting the market in place, and that's what we are all feeling like. If you're an elder, millennial or older, you must be exhausted at this point because you've hit basically every terrible point of endpoint capitalism that there is to hit. And currently we're watching a reinvasion of the Middle East, which we all saw as teenagers just saying, but I thought we'd learned from this. So if our governments aren't going to learn from it, the best thing that you can do is basically force them to learn from it, to learn from history, and to say that you want something else that you don't have to accept what is happening that your kids don't have to accept. Further inequality being entrenched into society that we can lift all boats. And the way that you do that is to become active. People often think that hope is going to to get you there, but hope is nothing without action, and the flip side of hope is despair, and that's what happens when you don't actually act. And so the point of understanding hypernormalization is to see that this is part of an effort to make that everybody feel hopeless, to make everybody feel like so overwhelmed that there is nothing that they can actually do to change things, when it's not true. We do have power to change things. It does involve actually putting down the phone and not doom scrolling and actually doing something, and there's plenty of ways to do that. You can get involved in many different ways. You don't have to go to a protest if you're unable to do that, but you can help organize. You can help write to your elected officials. You can help make sure that your friends are talking about this and that we all start to talk about what we can do in response, rather than how we just feel in terms of looking at all of this and feeling like we can't do anything.

Absolutely And I think that as people watch tech giants take more and more power over us, you know, take more of our identities, as AI steps into the workplace, and you know, make some people's jobs obsolete, make learning obsolete in some cases, I think this is where people start to go, oh, I'm not sure if this system is serving us. If it ever did. You can go back to twenty fifteen, where people were writing definitively that the end of capitalism has begun. And if you might remember, that was when we were having a lot of trouble with the banking systems and inequality was rising. We started seeing housing prices increase, not just in Australia too, like this is happening in the majority of the Western world. And it's important to remember that capitalism hasn't always been in place. There was a system before this, and the system of capitalism that we experienced really started in the nineteen seventies with a thing called neoliberalism, where you had a bunch of world leaders say we're going to give them markets control. We're going to let the markets decide, and we're going to have governments take a more of a handoff approach to what they do for people in terms of housing, in terms of welfare, in terms of healthcare, and this is how we will get the most efficient system. So neoliberalism has essentially been running the market since the nineteen seventies, and for most of us, that's all we have ever known. But there has been another time. Within a few years after World War two ending, most of the Western world governments basically got together and created a system of government assistance. It's why most of our grandparents, if you were white in Australia were able to purchase a home. They had a Commonwealth employment services that helped people train and get jobs. You were able to live on one income because the government put in place safeguards around basic necessities like healthcare and housing and food and education that ensured entire populations got ahead. But what we've been doing since then is essentially putting the market in place, and that's what we are all feeling like. If you're an elder, millennial or older, you must be exhausted at this point because you've hit basically every terrible point of endpoint capitalism that there is to hit. And currently we're watching a reinvasion of the Middle East, which we all saw as teenagers just saying, but I thought we'd learned from this. So if our governments aren't going to learn from it, the best thing that you can do is basically force them to learn from it, to learn from history, and to say that you want something else that you don't have to accept what is happening that your kids don't have to accept. Further inequality being entrenched into society that we can lift all boats. And the way that you do that is to become active. People often think that hope is going to to get you there, but hope is nothing without action, and the flip side of hope is despair, and that's what happens when you don't actually act. And so the point of understanding hypernormalization is to see that this is part of an effort to make that everybody feel hopeless, to make everybody feel like so overwhelmed that there is nothing that they can actually do to change things, when it's not true. We do have power to change things. It does involve actually putting down the phone and not doom scrolling and actually doing something, and there's plenty of ways to do that. You can get involved in many different ways. You don't have to go to a protest if you're unable to do that, but you can help organize. You can help write to your elected officials. You can help make sure that your friends are talking about this and that we all start to talk about what we can do in response, rather than how we just feel in terms of looking at all of this and feeling like we can't do anything.

Taking the time to feed your mind with us today will Pop a link to both Amy's new Daily article and Adam Curtis's documentary in the show notes if you want to look into hyperenomalization a little more. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by Lou Hill. The MoMA MEA Studios are start with furniture from Fenton and Fenton. Visit Fenton and Fenton dot com dot au

Taking the time to feed your mind with us today will Pop a link to both Amy's new Daily article and Adam Curtis's documentary in the show notes if you want to look into hyperenomalization a little more. The quickie is produced by me Claire Murphy executive producer Taylor Strano, with audio production by Lou Hill. The MoMA MEA Studios are start with furniture from Fenton and Fenton. Visit Fenton and Fenton dot com dot au