In this episode, Judymay explores the concept of ‘rules’ – not restrictions, but the personal guidelines we develop based on our life experiences that shape how we interact with the world. She introduces the fascinating idea that many of our conflicts and misunderstandings actually stem from ‘rules disagreements’ rather than fundamental value differences. Through relatable examples, from supermarket encounters to family values around marriage, Judymay demonstrates how two people with identical underlying values can clash dramatically when their personal rules about how to achieve those values differ.
Arnie Wrong, musician and DJ, joins the conversation to share her timely perspective on navigating conflicting rules during lockdown. Having moved between Poland and Sweden while maintaining her UK-based career, Arnie describes the exhausting reality of living between two different rule systems – the strict UK lockdown protocols she’s internalized versus Sweden’s more relaxed approach. Her family members, particularly her grandmother, follow a rule that living fully while alive is paramount, while Arnie adheres to the rule that protecting elderly relatives from COVID is non-negotiable. This poignant example illustrates how the same situation can feel like either freedom or cruelty, depending on which rules guide your worldview.
Through their discussion, both hosts explore how understanding that people aren’t being ignorant or unloving – they’re simply operating from different rules – can transform our relationships and reduce unnecessary conflict. The conversation hints at how these rule differences extend across cultures, genders, and life circumstances, offering listeners a powerful framework for understanding the disagreements happening in their own lives.
Main Topics
Rules are internal guidelines developed through life experience that dictate our behavior and expectations, separate from our core values
Most disagreements and upsets stem from rules conflicts rather than from people being ignorant or unloving
Cultural and geographical differences create varying rule systems – what's normal in one place may seem ridiculous in another
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified and made visible the rules conflicts that exist constantly in our daily lives
Arnie Wrong's experience navigating UK lockdown rules versus Swedish family expectations demonstrates how the same protective instinct can create opposing rules
Understanding someone else's rules requires recognizing what they believe is most important, even when it differs from our own priorities
Changing deeply held rules typically requires significant evidence or consequences, making compromise and dialogue essential
Full TranscriptWelcome, everyone. Welcome to Judy Mae is Listening. You're listening to women's radio station. This is where we take ca...▼
Welcome, everyone. Welcome to Judy Mae is Listening. You're listening to women's radio station. This is where we take care of you. This is where we make sure that you get everything that you need. Are you missing my jingle? I'm really missing the jingle. The jingle will be back. We will be back in our lovely little studio in Covent Garden before too long. Keeping really safe, of course, and it's going to be so great to see the team again. But until then, we are making sure that we are taking care of your well being because that's what we do here on women's radio station. Not just with Judy Mae's listening. There's loads of other incredible shows all through the week. Any time of the day or night. You can just go to the women's radio station website, women's radio station.com. many of you already have the app. Some of you didn't know there was an app. There is. You can just download that and then you can listen to us and make sure that you really feel supported at this time, that you know that there are people who are here for you, that there are people who have answers for you as well as making sure that you feel like you're totally surrounded by tribe. We really do appreciate that there are some people for whom this is a more difficult time than for others. And please know that you are in our hearts and on our minds and this is what we are planning for you. So today's show is all about rules. Now you might be saying to yourself, hold on a second, Judy May. Haven't we got enough rules going on? Haven't we got more than enough rules? Why do we want to be talking about rules? We know what rules are. Rules. Those are the things that are curtailing us. Rules are the things that are stopping us from doing the things we'd otherwise be doing. Rules. Sounds like high school. I get it. In fact, you know what? When I learned what rules actually are, it really made things so much easier because I started to understand that a lot of the upsets and disagreements and misunderstandings that were happening in my life were in fact rules upsets. And this is a huge thing that's going on right now. Imagine this. Imagine that you're in the supermarket and you are standing there and someone is kind of just, you know, off in their head and they're not focusing. Happens to all of us. And they come and they stand much, much closer to you than you would like. They come and stand right beside you. Now you've got a rule that says during this Time. Everybody has to be super careful to stand two meters apart. Right. You're going to be upset with that person who just sort of drifts right into your personal space. Correct. Let's imagine that that person has a different rule going on. And their rule says, you know what, if someone makes a mistake, if someone is a little bit careless, accidentally. If someone just drifts into your space, hey, that just happens. The important thing is that we're really, really polite and nice to each other. That's their rule. Your major rule is the most important thing is that you don't step into my space. And their major rule is the most important thing is that you are kind to each other. So they step into your space and then you turn, you give them a dirty look and you just walk away without saying anything. They think you're the idiot. They think you're the not nice person, and you think they're the not nice person. The thing is, both of you are really nice people. Doing your best in that moment, Doing your perfect best in that moment. But you have a rules disagreement. Now, we can see how that can happen in a smaller way, but also happens in much, much larger ways. Let's imagine that somebody is very, very conservative and they have a rule. And their life rule says the family must be at the heart of every everything. And they have another rule that says marriage is the only thing that keeps a family strong enough to be able to stay together. Right. So they've got those two rules going on. Family is everything. Marriage is the only thing that can keep family together. So you come along and you've got a different set of rules. Or I come along, I've got a different set of rules. And my rules say that you create family from the people who are around you. And let's imagine that I have a rule. I don't necessarily have this rule, but imagine I have a rule that says marriage often gets in the way of people being able to get along with each other. Now, both of us are coming from the same point of view. Both of us are coming from the point of view of we want loving, stable relationships over time. We want to build with people. We want to really feel like we belong. We want that great sense of tribe. So our values are the same. Just our rules that dictate how those values are met are very, very different. So often we're thinking that other people are being ignorant or unloving, but it's just that they have developed a different set of rules based on their life circumstances. So we have invited along Someone who has the most extraordinary life. She comes from lots of different places. She started out as a very young child, Poland, and then grew up in Sweden and is back in Sweden at the moment, but for the last few years has been making her music and going on the BBC and she's been on our show before and she is Arnie Wrong now. Arnie is just so brilliant when it comes to just noticing what's going on because she also is a really in demand dj. She gets to perform a lot with her own music and with her DJing, and she gets to see a lot of what's happening between people. So, Arne, welcome back to the show. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. An absolute pleasure. So what is it that you notice when it comes to different people having different ideas about what's the best thing to be happening? Well, that's an interesting question considering my situation at the moment. So I. When the lockdown started in the uk, I of course lost all of my DJ sets straight away and I kind of lost my sense, my source of income. And so I ended up deciding to come back to Sweden for a while to kind of wait it out and come back to the UK when I could start earning money. And this is really interesting because the UK has very strict lockdown, or had anyways, and had quite clear rules. And coming to Sweden, Sweden is actually not in lockdown at all. And the rules are very different. And I'm finding myself in a very weird position where I've got the British lockdown set of rules drilled into me, but I'm in the country and I'm amongst family who don't have the same rules. And I'm actually finding myself really exhausted trying to kind of live, you know, according to the rules that sort of have been drilled into me in the UK and kind of really, like, I just feel like being like I'm being pulled by two kind of different forces of like, oh, but you haven't got any symptoms and you're with family, like, let's just all hang out. And then the other rule is like, no amongst elderly, like, don't even come close to elderly people, you know. So I think when you're kind of in a place where there are different rules and perhaps you haven't talked or agreed about, you know, accepting the fact that you have different rules than other people, it can become a little bit confusing and a little bit tiring. Yeah. For everyone, I imagine. So what is it that they believe about your rules? So if you have a rule that says there's elderly people around. We need to really socially distance. We need to be in lockdown. What do they believe about that rule? Do they believe that that rule is, you know, an exaggeration? Do they believe it's curtailing freedom? Do they believe it's unloving? What. What do you imagine they believe about that rule? Yeah. So my mom and my grandma. So I live with my grandma at the moment, which is obviously, I feel like I need to be quite careful because she is in the risk group. She's elderly. I live in a separate part of the house, so I don't come in contact with her. But she thinks that it's kind of quite cruel and horrible that she can't be close, you know, to people. Like, she just recently told me that she'd been hanging out with her friends, like, without social distancing. And I. I was shocked, and I was in horror, and I really. It really upset me that she was doing that. And, you know, for me, I'm like, you have to make sure that you don't come in contact with the virus because we want you to live. And my grandma, she feels like she is kind of. She said to me, she feels like she's dead while alive, which is very dramatic. She's a very dramatic woman. But, yeah, she thinks that that's too much and she's have it. She feels like her life is taken away from her. And my mom kind of also feels like being too careful and that everybody else here is kind of hanging out and sort of living like normal. But I am. I'm being too careful, and I feel, you know, bad that I am kind of causing my family, like, this pain. But for me, I can't allow myself to, like, become the person that, for instance, you know, infects my grandma. Like, I couldn't live with myself. So it's irregular. You're trying to prevent the ultimate pain. Yeah, exactly. And whereas, you know, the rest of my family are like, yeah, but, you know, we should still live while we're alive, you know, kind of thing, which I also understand because, you know, I mean, it's awful for elderly people to be. To be locked inside the house. And what do you think it would take for either you or them to change your rule? What would it take? I think, sadly, I think it would take something like someone that they know becomes ill and they kind of see the consequence of what happens. And for me to change the rule would be if I literally hadn't gone out to the outside world for two weeks and was just at home and then I could come close to my grandma, I feel like. But that's impossible because someone needs to go and do the shopping. Did you find growing up that you were feeling these rules differences, these cult, like culturally? Because, you know, as, you know, we don't just have like Covid rules differences, we have them all the time. And what's happening right now in the world is that, you know, people's differences right across the board are sort of being exaggerated and you know, really writ large so we can see them because we have sort of, you know, gender rules where, you know, just speaking very broadly, you know, if a man thinks that he has said, oh, I'll, you know, I'll call you on the weekend, if he calls you at, you know, 11:30 on a Sunday night, that he has, you know, stuck to his end of the bargain. Whereas most women would argue that, no, the understanding of that is that you will call early enough that we can do something on the weekend. And instead I've, you know, put my whole weekend aside and you didn't call. And the man would then say, oh, but you know, I didn't ask you to put the whole weekend aside. So we can tell that there are a lot of different, you know, gender roles that we can relate to and also culturally. So did you have that when. I forget how old you were when you first moved over, but I know when I moved from London, where we lived till I was eight, we moved over to Dublin. And as an eight year old, there was all kinds of things that I just thought were absolutely ridiculous. Like I didn't know that you could only hang out with your best friend friend at break time. That was kind of the rule in our class was you had your best friend and if you didn't hang out with your best during the, during the break time, that meant that they weren't best friends anymore. I mean, just stuff that seemed absolutely crazy to me. So what did you find growing up? What were the kind of cultural rules differences that were going on? So for me, one interesting thing is like, so I moved from Poland when I was 15 to Sweden. And for instance, in Poland, like educationally, you know, parents kind of expect you to go to university after, you know, after high school or that's like pretty much the only acceptable choice. Either university or you become, you know, some sort of, I don't know, a car mechanic or something, something good, something specialist. And you kind of, you can't lose any time. You have to know exactly what you want to do and you Just go straight to university and then your life begins. Whereas when. So I went to high school in Sweden and I was obviously stressing a lot about the fact that I'm going to have to decide what I want to do in my life. You know, I kind of feel like I'm creative. You know, I love music, but I don't, can't really think of like, how can I like go and study this. It doesn't seem like a valuable, like a valid choice, you know. And so I was kind of stressing and trying to like quickly find somewhere for me to fit in. Whereas my Swedish kind of friends and counterparts in Sweden, the rule is, oh, you just go and travel, you find yourself and you kind of live your life. And you know, after a while when you've done everything, then you, then you know what you want to do with the rest of your life and then you can go and pursue it, but don't worry about it. Like take a gap year, take five gap years, it's fine. Like, what are you stressing about? You know, So a lot of people, like, you know, I think a lot of people kind of had a different amount of stress than me, for instance, you know, about the future. Because culturally they were just like, oh, it's fine, you don't have to, you know, don't worry about it. Like life is going to be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I love about that is that it just so clearly shows, I mean, what rules are. Rules always follow the pattern. You know, if this, then this, that's what rules do. If this, then this. So in your head you had this pattern which went, you know, if you have finished high school, then you must start to study something in earnest. And they had a completely. If this, then this. And theirs was, you know, if you don't yet know, then you just go and explore. So yeah, those are two very, very different kind of rules. And would you say now that you would have a preference for one or the other or has it given you an appreciation for the strengths of the rules that each culture would have? I think those, like the contrast of these two just goes to show that we're all so different and you can't just apply a blanket rule to everybody because, you know, somebody could know from, you know, from the get go, from 5 years old exactly what they want it to be and they just can't wait to go and pursue it as soon as they can, as soon as they're out of high school, whereas somebody else is going to kind of needs A little bit more time or, you know, needs a little bit more encouragement to work out, work up the, like the courage or self confidence to actually go and pursue what they want to do. And so it just goes to show that, you know, like solid cultural rules like that can sometimes be a little bit hurtful for a minority or even for half, you know, of the population. Yeah. And that's obviously something that we're seeing a lot in the world right now is that, you know, the rules are getting very much in favor, they're getting more exact and they're getting more in favor of one group rather than another. And then the group that feels that their rules are being ignored or, you know, thrown back in their faces, they're getting very upset. As we do when we feel like our rules aren't being taken seriously. What's your, like, relationship wise or with friends? Do you have a time where you remember that you had a particular rule and somebody else had a rule? Let me think about that. Yeah, I guess I. So I'm a person when I say that I do something, you know, I definitely will do it. And for instance, like, my rule is that I will never talk about something like an idea that I kind of, I want to do this or I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. If I don't have like a clear, you know, if I, If I don't 100% know that I'm gonna do it. Like, if it's just, if it's, if you say that you're gonna do it, it's absolutely as good as done. Yeah, exactly. And I have a really tough time or have had with friends who kind of say, you know, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna become vegetarian. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give up drinking. I'm gonna go to Egypt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get off Facebook. I'm going to get off Instagram. I'm going to do this. I'm going to, I'm going to be practicing singing every day and you know, and you just kind of hear, every day you hear a different thing that they're going to do or whatever. And by the end of it you're just like, yeah, you're just wasting, you're just wasting your words because I know you're not going to do any of it. And it's just, for some reason it really bothers me because some people just kind of reject the whole idea of rules. But I think rules can be a really good way. Us holding ourselves to a Higher standard. So you've got that standard that says, you know, if I say I'm going to do this, then I'm going to complete. And it kind of encourages you to complete because you can't show up feeling your best self until it's done. Whereas if people just sort of can say, oh, yeah, I'm going to do this, and then they got no standard for, well, now it must be done, it's quite easy for them to just kind of like dodge responsibilities. And I feel that, you know, that for some people in the world, it has become so fluid that they just, you know, aren't. Aren't holding themselves to that higher standard. Exactly. I think that's. Yeah, that's very true. Okay, if you're just joining us, you're listening to women's radio station. This is Judy Mae Murphy, and this is Judy Mae is listening. And today our guest is Arnie Rong. Arnie Wrong is a Swedish musician who's normally based in London. And today we're talking all about rules. We're talking all about what it is gets people kind of upset. So rather than just arguing over, this is right, no, this is right, or I'm right, no. We often think that someone's coming from a wrong place. If we can just for a moment step back and say, well, what rule do they have around that? How are they saying in their brain if this, then this. And then we can start to understand why it is they're so upset or why it is that we are so upset with them. So, Arnie, when you are playing your music and you have lots of different people around you, I know that I've been at gigs, I'm not, as, you know, a great going out in the evening person. But I know that the last time I went to a gig, it was a small, intimate gig by someone who was kind of like legendary. And they were showing, they were kind of playing the stuff that was going to be coming out in an album. I guess they were trying. And my rules said if someone. If it's a small enough room, there was under 100 people. And it's somebody, you know that well respected. Of course, you keep completely quiet during their set. And the people beside me, they had a different rule. They were like, well, we're in a place where drinking happens. We're in a place where people socialize. And so, you know, we can, we can chat to each other and then listen a bit and then we don't have to keep silent. And expecting us to be silent would be, you Know, tantamount to, you know, putting us in prison. And so we spent the whole one hour of the. Of the gig of the showcase with me staring at them, them rolling their eyes at me, me a couple of times, leaning forward and asking them to be quiet. And it really wasn't a pleasant experience for any of us. Have you had similar things either in a studio or on stage with that going on where you're so sure that the other person is being really, really rude? Oh, that sounds like a really grueling experience. I have a very similar brawl to you in that sense. But yes, I guess, I mean, as a dj, you kind of encounter lots of little situations like that, like the funny. I mean, I don't think any DJ really loves getting requests, especially like lots of requests by the same person. But yeah, like, for instance, for me, you know, when somebody comes up to me and asks me for a track to play a track in my set that I kind of sort of want to play, but for technical reasons I can't play it right now because it's a different tempo, different genre or something. And I'll say something like, yeah, give me some time and I'll see if I can work it into my set. I say that for a reason, is because that's exactly what I need to do. I can't just like, drop in something completely, you know, unrelated. And then they just keep coming every five minutes to. To remind me so that I didn't forget because I still haven't dropped that track. And five minutes seems like enough time for them, but, you know, it isn't for me because I need to, like, go from genre to genre. They probably think that they're just being helpful. They probably don't realize that they're being bit annoying and they're, you know, getting in the way of you doing what you do. Would you imagine that's often the case? Yeah, I think so. And also they probably feel ignored. Their rule probably says if somebody hasn't done what I've asked them to do in the next five minutes, they're ignoring me and they're being rude. Right. And so then. So they're trying to correct that. Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, I told you I need some time and I might be able to get it done, but just let me do my thing. And, you know, my artist mind is like, don't tell me what to do. Like, if I want to, I will do it. Yeah, exactly. My set, my rules. Exactly. So that's. That's like a big. Yeah, big. Pet peeve. And what. What about when it comes to the music that you produce? Because you have something coming out quite soon, right? Yeah. I'm currently working on finishing my ep and that's. I'm really excited about that. And actually Lockdown has been quite good for this. I literally haven't got any distractions now. And do you have a name for the ep? No. Haven't you got a name for it? Something awesome by Arnie Wrong that we can listen out to. It's going to be four tracks. It might be named by one of the tracks, but I haven't decided which one yet. I kind of want to listen to them all for when they're mixed and mastered and kind of feel what comes to me. But I guess when it comes to the music that I produce, it's, you know, it's such a sensitive subject to me. But I had a kind of interesting situation with like, one of my old projects and an old bandmate of mine, where for me, for instance, when I'm involved in a project or I am in a band, for me that's like, that's my driving force and that's sacred because it's not just a relationship with another person in the band, but it's also a relationship to, you know, like, my dreams and, you know, my craft. And for me, like, having a commitment to, like a band is like the highest commitment. But the person that I was working with at the time, you know, like my. In my set of rules, I would like, stay where the band is and I would make sure that the band comes first and we kind of like reach our goals and stuff. But for that person that I worked with, you know, it was like, I want to do what I want to do in my life first, and then the band comes second as, you know, just like an extra thing that I do. Which I also understand because that's valid. But that's where we really, really clashed. Because for me, I was like, how can you, like, spend time going and doing somewhere, something else, traveling somewhere else, moving somewhere else where, like, for me, like, that's a no go. Whereas for that person it was like, why are you upset with me? I want to go and live my life. Like, music is supposed to be fun and, you know, both sides are kind of equally valid. But when you're trying to work together, it can become a little bit difficult. And how do you think that we can all get better at understanding each other's rules and, you know, either one person agreeing that, hey, yeah, you know what I Could live by your rule, or I could at least respect it, or saying, you know what? That's not how I see things. So it's probably best if we don't work together. How do you think that we can better proceed? That's also a really good question. I actually think in my case, if I come to work with someone else in the future, I think what I will try to do to kind of avoid situations like that is I'm going to lay my cards on the table and say, look, if I'm going in and, like, doing this thing, I go all in. You have to know that I'm really serious about this thing. And, you know, I struggle with these kind of situations or, you know, like, where are you at this? And do you think we can come to an understanding? I think if we. If we just lay our cards on the table straight away before it's too late, I think that's definitely a step in a good direction. Yeah, absolutely. A really fun thing that I'll do with clients often is supposing a client is about to get married. I'll sit down with them and their partner and run through a whole bunch of scenarios, such as, you know, if the woman says to her fiance, hey, supposing I was pregnant and your mother was seriously ill, you know, I was like nine months pregnant and your mother was seriously ill, where would you be? And often they, you know, get these amazing answers where they're like, well, you know, if you're pregnant, you know what? My mom's elderly, and so I'd probably be with my mom, and hopefully I wouldn't miss the birth. And my client will just go ballistic because they would have a thing that would say, no, you know, being there for the birth of your child is the most important thing in the world. And then it can look like things are getting much rockier. And they're like, oh, my God, why are we doing this? You know, we're suddenly having all these arguments, but it's better for people to get that jolt ahead of time before the thing actually happens. So people can kind of go, oh, my God, are you crazy? And even if it's something quite small, like, you know, are you insane? You think it's okay to have, you know, dessert every single night? Or, you know, just that those little things as we know, the little things, that people can annoy us just as much as those bigger life things. But I think that the sooner we know that those are things, the sooner we can either negotiate them or accept them. And right now, for A lot of us, all our life lessons are around negotiating and accepting and just getting much, much better at that. Absolutely. We have Elspeth here as well. Speaking of eps, we have Elspeth Pradlock, who is our associate professor. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Good to hear. Hi. Hi. So, yeah, tell us how we were just talking earlier how it's just. It's so tricky without. Without visual signals for us to not be jumping all over each other. So, Elspeth, tell us, what's your thinking about the whole idea of rules? And have you. Is that something that you see in different parts of life as well? Definitely. I have been annoyed with the odd person in the shop, kind of, oh, you shouldn't have done that, you shouldn't have done this. But that you can see a lot of examples with celebrities, such as the classic one, which I find quite interesting is Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. Martha Stewart, being a kind of life guru, you know, teaches you how to do cooking, how to make your bed really nice. And Gwyneth Paltrow in more recent years than Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart started out in the late 80s, early 90s, I think. Oh, she's been around for a long time. Long, long time. Whilst Gwyneth Paltrow kind of launched her healthy living and kind of life guru type thing in about 2010, 2014, kind of that time. And Martha Stewart was not happy. She was saying, you know, she's an actress, you should stay in her lane. Which Gwyneth Archer was very established. But I find it quite interesting because it. Should Martha Stewart be more acceptable in her mind? She's like, no, I should be the only one. But maybe she should be more accepting other gurus, wannabe gurus and whatnot. And she was stamping her foot down, saying no. But then you can also see how she is threatened at the same time. Absolutely. So I think that's really interesting because we see three sets of rules there. So like, it's kind of like. Or two sets of rules. It's like you and Gwyneth Paltrow would have a similar set of rules, would align with the rule that says if someone wants to become expert, if someone wants to change and assert themselves another aspect of themselves that's absolutely valid and nobody, no matter how established they are, should stop someone from developing and becoming something. So it's like you and Gwyneth are on that team. And then Martha Stewart maybe, because she's very precise, precise and very exact and she's very critical, which can be good for, you know, the perfectionism aspect of getting the cookies. Right? And then. So her. Her rule will be something like, you know. You know, unless you are really expert, unless you're really dedicated and you've been proving yourself for years, then you need to, you know, just butt out and leave it up to the experts. That's. That's. That's amazing. Are there any other examples of celebrities that you can think of that have. Have had a similar kind of rules spat? Oh, have we got. Oh, I think we've got. I think we've lost Elspeth. Okay. She's just a tiny little message. I think my mic died. That's all right, Arnie. Have you seen that in the music world in general? Have you heard about or seen or has it come to your notice where people have sort of fallen out for no good reason? I'm not great at following this, but I know that was it. Katy Perry and somebody else fell out for a long time. Was it, oh, gosh, I'm really not good at pop music stuff. But have you seen that in the music industry? You know, funnily enough, I don't really follow the gossip so much anymore, but I know, for instance, Taylor Swift had a big falling out with Kanye west where they'd supposedly agreed on him using, like, a diss lyric about her in one of the songs. And then her. I think her having a big problem with it on a kind of public forum, despite the fact that it's been kind of agreed. And so, you know, one set of rules was like, oh, yeah, we'd agreed over a phone call that we'd do this. And then the other set of rules was like, oh, actually, I know we agree. I officially signed off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's. That's a little, little thing. I've also, weirdly, Kanye is always in the center of all of this stuff, Weirdly. But I know there was, like, not so weirdly, because actually, people who are flamboyant narcissists, and I think we can safely call them that, that they will not adhere to their own rules. They see rules as a movable feast. There's only one rule, and the rule is that life must go the way that I want it to go in the moment, that I want it to go that way. And everybody else must agree that that's just. They have, like, one golden rule, and that's it. So everything else that is set up as a rule, you know, that they can just take it away and they can completely subvert it so they could say, you know, one day the rule is if you, if you interrupt somebody while they're speaking, you are rude and uneducated. And then they will two minutes later interrupt somebody else. You can go, hold on a second. I thought that only rude, uneducated people did that. And then they find a way to create another rule to make their breaking of the first rule okay. So they'll say something like, oh, well, that's the case unless, unless the person is talking absolute nonsense and needs to be corrected. And so basically it's like they constantly have this rule breaker key that makes it all okay because they are superior. And it's just, that's pretty much what gaslighting is. Gaslighting is where you have a reasonable expectation that someone will show up and they will at least keep their own rules. That if there's a rules disagreement, at least people will be consistent around keeping their own rules for what's okay, what's not okay, what needs to be done, what doesn't need to be done. But that's the maddening thing, is that narcissists will just change that up as it suits them. And that is where a lot of people are like, okay, I'm trying to find out what his or her rule is about that. But it seems to be changing. If you just remember that it's because there is only one rule and that rule is absolutely not okay. It's just, it's not acceptable. Nobody can expect everybody to just do what they want when they want it. And that's living on very, very shaky ground. So the good thing about rules is even if people seem to have crazy ass rules, at least if they're consistent with those rules, you can have a little bit of certainty on this planet. You can at least kind of know what it is that's going on. So what else have you thought about for Kanye and his crazy rule breaking or making? So I know there was a bit of a feud where Azealia Banks, I don't know if you know who she is, she's this amazing rapper who, she is kind of quite scandalous online because she has, she kind of speaks before she thinks. And she has offended very many people, many minorities. And you know, I think she's, she's been everything, she's been sexist, she's been racist, she's been homophobic, even though she's black. And you know, like a big part of her fan base is gay and stuff like that. Anyways, she has, she claimed that she has designed some sort of a logo For Kanye and Kim Kardashian for the brand, and they used that logo and they haven't given her credit. Now, like, for Kanye, you know, he's like, yeah, it's my brand. She probably wanted to do it. I'm just gonna use it because it's an honor for her to work on this logo. Whereas she kind of. I get the sense that she always feels like an underdog and she always feels, you know, I mean, you know, she's had a tough life. Like, she's disadvantaged, you know, she's a black female rapper in America, you know, like all sorts of hurdles along the way. So she probably feels like, you know, for good reasons, that people are out to get her and nothing's going to be easy for her. People are just going to take advantage of her, which is valid because that's, you know, that's fueled by her life experience. So she's like, he's taken advantage of me. He's not giving me credit and I've done something great and somebody's just using my work again and I'm not getting anything for it. And so she was livid, but he was like, oh, it's, you know, whatever. It's my brand. We didn't agree on anything. That's. Yeah, that's fascinating. I. I think that that's what a lot of celebrity so called culture is about, is about just watching the clash of entitled people. Exactly. And I mean, also, you know, if we're gonna talk about that, like, in terms of sampling in music, you know, like, there's a. There's, you know, a lot of artists will use samples of some old records, you know, like bits of drums, bits of, you know, like a guitar kind of, you know, some rhythm. I'm assuming that legally the rules are quite tight around that. I would think that. I mean, that's what, you know, laws are about. Are, you know, making sure that the rules are clear for everybody. Is that the case with sampling, that the rules are known or are they very bendy? Well, funnily enough, I, I kind of know the rules because I have worked in the music industry in the past, but if I hadn't and if I was, you know, just a producer, like making tracks, like, I'm not sure if I would know exactly what the rules are. And sadly, actually, like, the rule that kind of goes round and a lot of people kind of live by it is like, if nobody's. If nobody can figure out what sample this is, you can get away with it and you don't have to admit anything. But the official rule is if you use a sample, you have to clear that sample with the right sounds. Yeah. So that people can get paid. The whole genre of drum and bass in jungle, for instance, is based on this one drum break used in James Brown track called the Amen Beat. And funnily enough, the drummer that played that break, he. You can't copyright a drum part. So he only ever got paid his session fee for playing that drum part, whatever that might have been, $20 back in the day. You know, I don't know, I'm just saying that off the top of my head. And now there's an entire genre of music that is kind of based on this kind of like two second loop, two second drum sample that he kind of played and you know, like thousands and thousands of tracks, you know, people raving kind of to different configurations of that sample. And that poor man, like, he, you know, he's never got anything for it. And that's like, I guess what's going on. When you hear about these court cases that go back years, as people sort of say, you know, let's. Now sometimes I'm sure it's the case that it's like now that the rules are clearer, now that it's enshrined in law, I can actually say that this, you know, that this rule that I've had for a long time, maybe a moral rule, an emotional rule, now we can actually, you know, turn that into something. Something solid, so. Exactly. And there are cases where people get done for, you know, using uncleared samples. And it's a big deal because, you know, I mean, honestly, if you were that drummer in the 60s who just played that break, you'd be pretty heartbroken that you didn't get anything for the fact that, you know, like whole genres are being kind of created. Yeah. And then what happens if. Do you need to get the permission or do you just need to own up to it? So, you know, supposing there's a. Because you'll often hear like, you know, I was a teenager in the 80s, and you'll suddenly hear a song and you'll hear someone singing a bit that I remember from a song in the 80s. Do you have to actually get permission? How does that rule go? Does it the rule go that you don't have to get permission, but you do have to pay them, or you don't have to pay them, but you do have to acknowledge them? How does that work? So the official rule is that once you write the track that you've used a sample in. You have to go to the publisher and the record label where that sample comes from and you have to clear it. And then you have to agree to kind of split the income from that track and get the agreement ahead of time. Before the track's released, I presume. Yeah, exactly. And if you don't, that's when you know the other rights holders kind of are like, well, you should have cleared this. And you didn't. So now we're going to demand that you actually pay us 90% of the income. Those are really. Isn't that interesting? Because it seems like it's often for all of us with our rules, we often feel like it's too. We'll try and just get away with it. That actually sitting down and hammering it out ahead of time often feels like too much work. But then, of course, it becomes a whole lot of work if we don't do that. Exactly, yeah. I think a really, really famous case of that happening was the Verve with Bittersweet Symphony. Was it? Exactly, yeah. Stuff. Yes. Well done. Because I was actually struggling for the. For the first word, so well done for remembering. Yeah. The Rolling Stones. It's a sample of the Rolling Stones track. It's quite an obscure track, the strings. And so the Rolling Stones demanded that the Verve actually give them 100% of the royalties for that track. So the Verve never made a penny on that track because they hadn't cleared the sample. And, yeah, it cost them a lot. Yeah. Wow. That's a bit of a lesson, I think. We've got Elspeth back again. Do we, Elspeth, do we have you back? We do indeed. Can you hear me? Absolutely, yes. Loud and clear. Sorry, you had a bit of technical issue there. I've got one more example, and this is quite a famous one on the Internet. It's when Kim Kardashian was jokingly pushed into the. Into the sea by her then fiance, Chris Humphries, and she lost her diamond earring in the sea. Now, it's a very expensive diamond earring, but her sister Courtney, when she found out and Kim was crying, said, there's people dying in Africa. You know, have some perspective when you can look at it both ways, of. She's just lost a very, very expensive diamond earring that I think a lot of people would be upset they lost that. It'd be a lot of money to a lot of people. But at the same time, it is a materialistic thing. Yeah. That's a whole mess of rules, isn't it? Because That's a rule about timing, because, you know, if someone's lost something in the moment, you know, should the rule be that, you know, while right now they're the one that's lost something, they need to have their experience? Or is the rule that you immediately start thinking about things in a worldwide perspective, or do you start thinking about it in legal terms? The person who. What would you say? The name. The guy who did the pushing. He doesn't sound like a very nice man at all. Chris. Yeah. Chris Humphrey. That could be a different celebrity. I might be mixing up their names, but I'm pretty sure that's who she married. And so, like, you know, it could be that. All right, he needs to make good on that. He needs to either find or pay for that earring. So, yeah, very often when things get very loud and noisy and everybody ends up arguing and it just becomes a complete mess is because you've got all kinds of rules and of all kinds. All kinds of things that people believe. You know, I believe right now that this has priority. I believe that right now, this is the most important thing. The most important thing is that we find the earring. The most important thing is that we make sure that the girl who lost the earring is okay. The most important thing is that we don't look like, you know, ungrateful celebrities to the watching crowd. I mean, just everybody has their idea of what is the most important thing. What would you say, Elspeth, is the thing that would consistently upset you the most? I know the thing that upsets me the most is if people. If I feel people are being left out in a situation that's kind of like a rule that I have is that everybody. If you're invited, you're welcome. That nobody gets to feel like they're being sort of left outside the door. And so, you know, somebody might say something like, oh, but we don't have enough food, and that becomes a priority for them. What would you say is a priority for you in life? Yeah, mine's very similar. I mean, I don't like it when people are unnecessarily mean because of their own insecurities. You know, when you meet some people and they're like, they want to be the most kind of powerful person in the room, and they'll just start putting down people for no reason, and that person may not notice, or they're just picking on something that kind of defines the individuality that they find threatening because it might be slightly alien to them. I find that really, I just don't like the rule. Yeah. So your rule is that is not okay. Just being mean and thoughtless and making other people feel bad just to elevate yourself or just because you can't be bothered being polite. That is not okay. Arnie. I'm wondering how that's going to work out for how that does work out for you in the music industry, because you do get the feeling that there are a lot of people who just don't feel like it's necessary to be nice. Is that the case in the music industry at the moment? Would you say, or would you say that people are kind of copying on a bit? You know, I think there are two trends. I think there's the old school where there are a lot of people who kind of feel like they're better than other people. My best friend actually told me a. Is I'm gonna try and be really quick, told me a story. She's got this neighbor who hasn't said hello to her for three years, even though she's been trying to like say hello to him and you know, make friends because the neighbors and he just wouldn't. And then they had a bit of an incident where her dog ran into his house and he got really upset. And then, you know, they kind of got to talking and they introduced each other themselves, you know, and. And she was like, oh great, maybe he'll say hello to me now. And you know, the next day still, she'd say hello, he wouldn't respond. And another neighbor said to her, you know, he runs the successful record label in London. And she was like, oh my God, that's like such a classic music industry move to be like, I am better than you, I'm better than this situation. I don't need to say hello to you because you're not going to benefit me in any way. And there are a lot of people like that still. But I think there's a lot of like young blood coming into the industry now as well. And it's becoming a little bit more exclude inclusive where, you know, women are actually starting to get into like some, some positions of power and stuff. And I find like women in general kind of have that sort of sense of inclusivity in them a little bit more where they kind of want to include people a bit more. So I think, I think the industry is going in the right direct, but there's still a lot of that kind of old school arrogance knocking about. And I think a belief that a lot of us have over the last couple of years is that this kind of like crazy power struggle we've had for the last few years is really about us, you know, evolving into the next stage where we're sort of saying that no, we're not going to accept your rules anymore. If your rule says you have more money, you have more power, you have more connections, or you had more luck or whatever happened, and therefore you are untouchable. And therefore we have to just do as you say, or therefore we have to just accept the rules that you're handing on to us. I think people aren't willing to do that anymore. I think people have more of a voice. So you kind of see that happening in the music industry as well as in the world at large. Yeah, definitely. Exactly. And I find like, you know, perhaps the minorities who felt like weren't really seen before or didn't have a voice before now kind of starting to have the power to be like, well, if you don't see us and if you don't want to include us, we're gonna start our own thing. And you know, there's lots of queer labels now, lots of female only labels. Lots of like, there's this label called Immigrant Records which is kind of, you know, like. Yeah, that's what it is. Like immigrant artists being sent to the front. Yeah, yeah, you must have them on the show. Yeah, I think they're based in America. America, actually. But I'm sure they'll be easy to contact. Yeah. So I feel like there. Yeah, the minorities now are starting to have a little bit more power in being like, well, if according to your rules, we don't exist, we're going to exist according to our rules. And of course, as women, you know, we do things like have our own radio station, women's radio station, and say, well, you know what if we feel like the more traditional radio stations aren't going to give us platform to more specifically talk about what it is that we're going through. We're going to create our own platform and we're going to meet like this as women talking about these issues together and we're not going to waste for you to evolve. I think that's a really important thing with women's radio station and with a lot of the different publications, a lot of the different books, a lot of the different podcasts that are going on around the world is just as you were saying, we're not willing to wait anymore. But that's a thing that we just won't do if a rule isn't working for us or not on an individual, sulky kind of way. But just in terms of us as a large, large group of people, if we're sort of being left out of things that, you know, it used to be that I remember being told as a teenager that, you know, well, it's. Well, it's getting better. Just be patient. And so the rule that a lot of the women had around me when I was younger was, you know, that we should be grateful for the advances we have made and don't rock the boat too much because then it could start to go backwards. But I think a lot of women are like, now, now thinking, yeah, you know what? We're just not even angry enough. Let's get even angrier, let's get even stronger. Let's really create it on our own terms. And I gotta say, that's what I just love about the whole Arnie Wrong music project. And just the way that Arnie, that you show up in the world is that you're very much saying, yeah, you know what? I get to decide this for myself and I get to do this for myself. Is that something that comes naturally? Is that something that you can just carry with confidence or other times where you kind of dip and have to do a double think on it? No, you know, funnily enough, I think the. This whole solo project for me is like a way of convincing myself that I actually can do it. Because, you know, inside I really don't. I don't have the confidence and I'm constantly doubting myself. And for me, having a project where I kind of have an obligation to put music out and to keep the ball rolling, I have to just keep telling myself, you know, I know that I don't feel confident about this, or I know that there's probably better people out there, but I can do this. If other people can do it, then I can do this. And I'm just gonna try. I love the way you just said that because you just even phrased it like a rule. If they this, then this. If other people can do this, then I can do this. That's like a. There are so many rules that we have inside us that we don't even realize are rules our understandings. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, sometimes you just have to tell yourself, like, I. Inside of me, I know what I'm supposed to do. Because sometimes that insecurity is kind of muffle that voice that sort of, you know, get, like, leads us where we're supposed to be like, for instance, with me sometimes, you know, like, I'm doing Everything myself now I'm producing, like, kind of doing the mix downs on my own and stuff. And sometimes I'm like, oh, I wish I could just ask someone if this sounds right. Like I wish I could have someone who tells me like whether this is right or wrong or whether this sounds okay. And then I have to just be like, no, you know, if it sounds okay, if it doesn't sound okay, you will know like, and you just have to kind of tell yourself, you know my, I know how to do this, I'm doing this thing and no one else can do it better than me. But then what happens when you take that out into the world and you are meeting mostly men who have an idea that just because they're men that their ear, their technical ability, their decision, their preferences are superior. And you know, the whole thing about mansplaining is based on that. Is that something that you find yourself bracing for? I know I do. I know whenever I'm you know, about to go and do say one of those multi speaker weekends and there's going to be maybe seven, seven speakers and I'm the only woman, I kind of do brace myself for people explaining to me what was good about what I did and why it worked or to explaining to me that I need to go more in this direction. Is that something that you kind of armor yourself for going out into the world? Funnily enough, I think I'm quite a naive person and I kind of want to see the best in people. So I'm always like, no, everyone's gonna accept me and no one's gonna want to do this for me, to me. But it does happen. As you can imagine in the music business, it does happen a lot. I've had people trying to, to teach me how to DJ while I'm DJing, you know, stuff like that, DJing brilliantly. And they're, they're teaching you how to do it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it does happen. But I think you have to, you just have to educate, don't you? You do just, yeah, quietly, slowly, have to educate. And thank you so much, Arnie Wrong, for joining us and educating us beautifully, elegantly, entertainingly today. We really appreciate it. And so you're listening to Judy Mae is listening on WRS women's radio station. Thanks again to Arnie Wrong, who has an EP coming out. Check her out on Instagram, Facebook, I believe. Is it SoundCloud as well? We can find you on Arnie. Yeah, you can find my mixes on SoundCloud. It's just Arnie wrong. Lovely. And also thanks. Thanks to our technical producer Melis and our associate producer, Elspeth. Our whole team, we are a tribe and you're part of this tribe. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for being part of this. And remember that no matter what is going on for you right now, you've got this, you're safe. And if things are kind of irritating you a little bit, hopefully some of the things we've been talking about, different rules and different ways of coping, hopefully this will be very useful to you. So keep checking us out until next time.
