Jodi Lee: Hello and welcome to Covered, a podcast that helps you figure out what's going on in the news and how you feel about it.

Annie Pullar: Here to guide you through the biggest stories of the week, we are your hosts, journalists Annie Puller and Jodie Lee.

Jodi Lee: On this week's episode we dive into

Annie Pullar: The federal government's migration crackdown finally outlined. We unpack what's on the table and how it differs to the coalition and One Nation's policies.

Jodi Lee: Could AI really wipe out the human race? That is the doomsday warning from a former anthropic worker that has rattled the entire world.

Annie Pullar: And the serious backlash over Sidney Sweeney's new sports betting ad, is smart marketing or demeaning to women in sport? But first let's go to our honourable mentions. These are the stories that don't quite warrant a deep dive, but are worth getting your head across this week.

Jodi Lee: And our very first one is that influencer extraordinaire Kim Kardashian has been awarded just one euro, that's little more than a single Australian dollar, by a French court as compensation for a jewelry robbery she endured in Paris almost 10 years ago. Back in 2016, eight robbers were dubbed the Grandpa Thieves. Some of them were in their 60s and 70s, when they broke into Kardashian's hotel room and stole more than $15 million worth of her jewellery. but on this occasion, Kardashian says the court didn't shortchange her. She actually asked for only a nominal amount of compensation as proof of recognition and the robbers taking accountability.

Annie Pullar: God, she certainly doesn't need the cash for a way to prove a point. Moving to our next honourable mention now, and there's been a pretty significant update in the case of one of Britain's worst child serial killers. Her name is Lucy Letby. You might recognise the name. She's that neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven others. And she was recently the subject of a really popular Netflix documentary. Now, a major public inquiry in the UK has essentially found. That at least two of these babies, it's so heartbreaking, could have been saved if the hospital staff had actually acted sooner. So doctors had repeatedly raised concerns about Lepbe's behaviour. They were suspicious that she was connected to this string of deaths, but managers actually failed to remove her from that newborn unit and delayed calling police. Letby is currently serving 15 whole life sentences and remarkably still maintains her innocence. This inquiry that sort of came to a head this week wasn't really about reconsidering her guilt. There's a separate process underway actually challenging her convictions at the moment.

Jodi Lee: Well, our third and final honorable mention has been all over the internet this week, and no doubt you've seen the pictures. It they are, of course, at that Hyrux race in Beijing, where an Australian world record holder by the name of Joanna Whiterazek lost control of her bowels. She was suffering from incontinence during the race, but she managed to soldier on and actually go on to win. there was obviously a lot of footage of her soiling herself during the competition, having pushed herself to her absolute limits. and she's copped a lot of criticism online. At one point on social media, she was called Spray Gun. Yeah, not great. But it's also ignited a conversation about hygiene in sports. Obviously, things like this do happen during endurance races like marathons and ultra marathons. But this is a little bit different because HyROX athletes share equipment. As a result of what took place, HyROX actually released a statement. They said HyROX made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race. The rules have now been changed, essentially allowing officials to pull an athlete off the court. course if blood, vomit, urine or feces create a contamination risk for other competitors.

Annie Pullar: I mean all I can say is when you gotta go, you gotta go. And rrrr respect to her for powering on. But let's move to our first story this week and it is all about migration. After six weeks of delays, what felt like actually a couple of months, Labour has finally unveiled its plan to overhaul Australia's migration system. Now you might remember we covered this in an honourable mention a couple of weeks ago, but this was a speech actually pulled at the 11th hour back in August when the government was essentially working through how far it wanted to go. It was rumoured that Albo had stepped in and actually blocked the speech from going ahead because he wasn't Happy with what was laid out, but yes, plenty of anticipation, and today we saw Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stand up at the National Press Club and he finally delivered an answer. In the title of his speech, it was Who Arrives, Who Stays and Who Leaves?

Jodi Lee: Nice and succinct for people with ADHD like me. but I found the time Yeah. Three things you

Annie Pullar: Compartmentalizing.

Jodi Lee: need to remember about this. Some of you can stay, some of you are going. What was the other one? I've already forgotten. Yeah. But

Annie Pullar: Some of you can leave.

Jodi Lee: The I thought the timing of this speech was really interesting because less than an hour before Burt got up at the National Press Club, the Australian Bureau of Statistics actually released the latest migration data, which gave us a really clear picture of where migration is sitting currently, which is interesting given it is such a hot topic that it's likely to shape the next election. around 557,000 people arrived in Australia in the year to March 2026, and 265,000 people left. So that includes Australians that fly abroad and also migrants that then leave. That difference between those numbers is what we call net migration, net overseas migration. And it came in at just over 292,000. So that's the net

Annie Pullar: Yeah.

Jodi Lee: migration figure.

Annie Pullar: And if you're a girly like me that struggles with maths, really all you need to know about Nom is that that is the number of immigrants to our country that are adding to Australia's population. And it's not just permanent migrants, there's a lot of groups that this encompasses international students, temporary workers, backpackers, but also Aussies moving overseas and coming home. And I think it's fair to say that we really saw this number surge straight after COVID. Our borders essentially flew open. And people just wanted to travel. Australia struck this trade agreement with the UK. Many Brits couldn't wait to get to Australia. So we saw this influx of travelers. Interesting stats that have been levelled today. Net migration peaked at almost 550,000 in 2023. So Labour want Yes.

Jodi Lee: That's twice where we are now.

Annie Pullar: Yes, so Labor wants to bring that number down to 225,000. So that really puts into perspective that surge post-COVID. Thank you.

Jodi Lee: Yeah, wow. There are so many massive changes in Burke's plan that you could honestly just bury yourself in the detail. But I think for the purpose of our episode today, we'll kind of break it down into the key categories or the key changes that Labor is proposing. The biggest one is with temporary visa holders finding a way to stay more permanently. So an example of that is an international student that comes to Australia to study, let's for argument's sake, say a bachelor's degree and then simply applies to another bachelor's course so that they can extend their student visa.

Annie Pullar: and it's important to note that that hasn't been illegal. Like i that that's totally fair play on. Labour's argument is that the system that's been in place has made it far too easy for these temporary visa holders to just sort of stay and stretch on and on and on at their own convenience. So students will now generally have to move up what they're calling a qualification ladder rather than sort of moving sideways or backwards. So if you're studying an undergraduate degree, then you can move to an honours or a masters. You can't then go and you know, ping-pong to another undergraduate nursing degree. and then visitor visas will also carry a no-further stay condition. But then there's a whole other separate side to this, which is I just insane to hear, but international students actually bringing family out to Australia. And this figure is really wild. Almost 46,000 student visas last year went to what the government calls dependents. So that's partners, children, relatives of the person studying here. So for most of these students, what Labour is now saying is, well, if you come here to study, you can't bring your whole family with you. You're doing it alone.

Jodi Lee: Sorry. know that that was happening. Not that I'd ever stopped to think about it, but it is quite interesting when you think about they are here temporarily and they're able to bring their families out. There are permanent residents in Australia. Like people who have come here from abroad, received their PR Who struggle for years to get their partners over here. I just never and whereas if you come as an international student until now, it was happening really quickly. I didn't know that. But the other hole that Labor is trying to p plug is overstayers. So people who

Annie Pullar: Mm.

Jodi Lee: were essentially due to leave but haven't. And apparently there are 77,000 visa overstayers in Australia. Seventy-seven thousand. Again, hadn't ever really considered that. So another hundred compliance officers are being brought in to find people who no longer have a legal right to stay and get them to leave. it's giving ice in the US.

Annie Pullar: Well, you you wouldn't be forgiven for thinking that that has really been the the criticism that we've seen today. But Tony Burke has come out and said that this is not gonna be anything like what we've seen in the US, that it's gonna be done in a much more respectful, controlled manner. But yeah, on the surface, that was my first thought as well. but I yeah.

Jodi Lee: Interesting. the other thing I should say, the other change as well is for backpackers, which has also ignited a lot of anger from regional communities and regional MPs. Basically, people in the second and third year of their stay here as backpackers will have to go into a ballot to control whether or not they can stay or need to leave.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, and I know we've hit everyone with a lot of stats, so bear with me, and and this really should stay with you. For every one Australian that goes and lives in the UK, that is the equivalent to eight Brits coming and living here. So it gives you an indication of how much these kinds of visas are inflating our migration numbers. But we've we've sort of spoken through what Labour is proposing. I think it's important to look at this holistically and look at what the other parties are doing too, because we know that migration has been such a hotbed issue, not just here in Australia but right around the world, in Europe, in the US. Most recently we spoke about what was happening in Morocco. So it it really is an election priority, for the parties. To show that they have control over what's happening in this country. If you listen to the coalition, well, Labour isn't going far enough. It essentially wants migration brought down even further. The leader of the Liberal Party, Angus Taylor, has been very careful, I might add, not to put a number on what the Liberal Party wants here. They have indicated that they want it below 200,000, so that's lower than what Labour is proposing. But it they've also sort of proposed this idea of tying migration to housing in this country. So the basic idea is that if Australia isn't building enough homes to keep up, then it shouldn't actually let more people in than what it can house.

Jodi Lee: And then, of course, there's what One Nation wants to do. Obviously, One Nation is the party that ignited this conversation about migration from the very start and has forced the hand of both Labour and the coalition into responding. It no surprises, it wants to go further than both the major parties. One Nation over the next three years wants to slash our temporary migrant visas by 750,000 over three years. Basically, it wants to see more people leaving Australia than actually. arriving here, it's calling that three-year period a kind of reset. And then it says net migration should eventually settle at around 130,000. So just to go back to those numbers, you said after the peak of COVID we had close to 500,000 net migrants.

Annie Pullar: Yeah.

Jodi Lee: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data, in the year to March, we've had around 290,000 net migrants. One nation is saying let's drop that down to around 130,000 every year. And it's obviously been very explicit about who it would like to cut. The biggest group is international students. Again, family dependents. That's people who come out with a family member that has a temporary visa. And OneNation's also said if you don't have a valid visa, You will have three months to get out.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, and I think it raises a really good question in how far is too far, because One Nation has been really slammed over this policy with the many economists coming out and essentially saying that if if we were to do this, if that was enacted across the country, that would damage and hurt our economy so badly and lead to extreme worker shortages. I mean, you touched on it earlier, but this particularly hits hard our regional communities, you know, the farmers that rely on the backpackers to do the cherry picking, the the pubs in North. North Queensland that need the workers to pour the beers, even the construction companies that need workers to start at 4am in the morning and pull 14-hour days. Like, what is gonna happen to these industries if you just keep slashing?

Jodi Lee: Yeah. And it's not just a matter of those small businesses in regional towns saying, okay, well, we'll just increase wages so that we can attract local Australians to do those jobs. They don't have the capacity to do that. And it o doesn't only cause flow-on effects for the economy. but what I find really interesting is that you kind of can't have this migration conversation without talking about housing. They are separate issues. Migration aside, we have a housing problem. We haven't been constructing enough new homes. We speak about that on the podcast a lot. It's not because of migrants. We simply haven't done enough. We've been complacent. But add to the mix the fact that we've been taking re-in record record numbers of new people, and it you obviously have the perfect storm. So interestingly, the coalition has linked its migration policy to housing, but I found it fascinating that Tony Burke, obviously the immigration minister in the Labour government, has been clear about the fact that while migration may need to be curbed, it's not the reason for the housing crisis.

Annie Pullar: and I think it's the crux of this issue. we hear housing and migration often used interchangeably, but really that they're just both exacerbated by each other. And we want fewer people competing for homes, but we also need the people to build them, which is why, you know, who comes into our country is really important. So the argument here, I I don't think it's it's more than whether migration should just come down. I think everyone agrees on that. The much harder question is. Who do you take out of that number and also who do you prioritize? And it will no doubt be the number one issue on voters' minds when we come to the federal election. But should we move to our second story? Once again, I've had to do a fair bit of convincing to get Jody to buy into this one, but it's really felt like a bit of a doomsday week for artificial intelligence. If you haven't been following along here, the people building it, regulating it, investing billions in it are kind of increasingly splitting into camps. On the one side, you have people warning that AI is advancing too fast than we can control. and it really needs to slow down. And then on the other side you have people saying that slowing down is the bigger risk and we should be racing to the top here.

Jodi Lee: Obviously, there's been one dire warning that has sort of spearheaded all of this fear mongering over the last week. So somebody who knows the AI industry intimately, this 27-year-old guy by the name of Jacob Coxon has come out with a doomsday warning of sorts. So he worked at OpenAI, which obviously built ChatGPT. And then more recently, he's gone over to Anthropic that owns and builds Claude. And then when he quit his job, he basically took to social media and said this, and I'll read it. To you, the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible. But I hear these same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger. So he's become a whistleblower, essentially.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, and it's fairly frightening. For context, this guy actually worked in pre-training. So he was essentially the person, you know, helping train these models and build these chatbots. So he was very familiar with what he was dealing with. And when he posted a series of of words to social media, several former colleagues and current colleagues actually publicly backed him. One said that he personally puts the chance of future AI killing humanity within the next decade. At greater than 10%. Coxon actually went on CNN this week to explain what they're all so frightened of.

Jodi Lee: Okay, so just to break it down for the layman, what he's saying is that there was an incident a couple of months ago where they were testing a number of AI agents. There was more than a thousand of them, and they were all basically basically kept separate from one another. So they couldn't interact, but they are obviously designed to carry out tasks on their own. That's the artificial intelligence piece. What happened was these thousands of AI agents found a way to actually communicate with each other. They started sharing. information, they effectively joined forces. Hundreds of them ended up breaking into systems belonging to another platform that was used by AI developers. They basically found security weaknesses. They accessed servers they accessed private information without any instruction from human operators. So they they kind of got together and they went roads.

Annie Pullar: They went rogue. They went wrong. And this, I mean, to be fair, this was a controlled test, but I think the bigger question that it leads to is if AI that exists can actually do that and and you know spring into a life of its own, then what real systems could it actually hack into? Like, what could more powerful versions be capable of? And that's when you hear them speak about the critical infrastructure and the biological weapons. But what's interesting is when I sort of went on a deep dive into This issue, I kept hearing this term super intelligence. Can you please inform our listeners what that means, Jody?

Jodi Lee: Yeah, so it basically sounds very complex, but it's actually very simple. At the moment, humans build and train AI. So they are pulling the puppet strings, if you like, and the AI is behaving accordingly. But increasingly, AI is starting to help with even that work as well. So it's things like writing code, diagnosing problems, helping researchers build more capable models. So AI and the human puppeteers are kind of on the same even playing field. Field. The concern is that eventually AI is going to become so powerful that it will become better and more efficient and more proficient than the humans who had initially programmed it. It's no, it's sci-fi shit.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, so it's literally it doesn't need any it doesn't need any instruction and that is well, it's the exact scenario that the CEO of Anthropic, a guy by the name of Dario. Is also warning about. So, in the wake of this anthropic ex-staffer coming out and and raising the alarm, he actually published an essay this week and it was titled We Must Pace the Frontier. And the whole thing is essentially arguing that AI's ability to help develop even more powerful AI, just what Jody was alluding to, is advancing so much faster than expected. And he's pretty much calling for it to slow down. He wants sort of independent experts. testing these systems, common safety standards universally across the industry, and also international governments working together to try and regulate this industry further.

Jodi Lee: What's interesting is while it is such a competitive and lucrative industry, the people at the forefront of the AI world are kind of all in agreement about this. So Elon Musk obviously runs his own AI platform. He also agrees that we should kind of slow down. Sam Altman, who runs open AI, has also come out and backed the slower pace of development. there's only one person who's kind of come out and said, no, let it rip, and that's obviously Donald Trump.

Annie Pullar: Let it rip.

Jodi Lee: You know, he's let it rip. There those obviously that's paraphrasing. That would be Donald Trump if he was Australian. but obviously he has very different motives because he's framed the AI race as s squarely in geopolitical terms. So he says we need to be fast, we need to get there first, because if we don't, China will.

Annie Pullar: But what it really comes down to, I think, is a much bigger argument about what risk, the US or China fear more. You know, are they more scared of AI becoming too powerful to control, or are they more intimidated by falling behind everyone else trying to build it? It's like, would you rather be the winner at the top and potentially destroy humanity, or would you rather go slower and potentially lose out billions of dollars and not be the first to claim AI?

Jodi Lee: yeah, I don't have an answer for that. It's a really interesting question. But there are obviously cynics among us who are basically saying that these warnings about the end of the world are entirely self-serving from the AI companies themselves. So anthropic and open AI, who are arguably the two biggest players in this sort of ecos ecosystem. Have both filed papers to eventually list on the stock exchange to go public, which basically means that now it is absolutely critical that they can prove to the public the value of their businesses. So basically a lot of critics are saying, well, it makes perfect sense to tell people that you're that what you've built is so powerful it could override humans, so that people look at it as an incredible investment opportunity.

Annie Pullar: I mean, makes sense. I'm no AI expert, but I'm sure we heard lots of predictions about the internet, Google, and social media, and plenty were rotten. No? No. I've

Jodi Lee: What do you mean? Don't you remember why the Y two you're too young. The Y2K bug. Everyone said Are you joking you haven't heard about the Y2K bug?

Annie Pullar: never heard about the Y2K bug. I have no idea what the Y2K bug is. Should that be another story?

Jodi Lee: my god, my god, how old were you how old were you in the year two thousand?

Annie Pullar: I was like four years old.

Jodi Lee: Okay, well in the year 2000, when I was not four years old, just before the turn, so when we went obviously from ninety-nine to two thousand, there was this big panic that computers wouldn't be able to compute the idea that we were moving from the nineteens to the twenties, and that there was this thing called the Y2K bug and systems would collapse.

Annie Pullar: There you go. See, we're always warned of the worst case scenario and look at us now. We've got TikTok, we've got Instagram.

Jodi Lee: I don't know. I feel like this is a little different. Also, I want to I okay that I just need to like compartmentalize the fact that you'd never heard about that. This millennial in me is freaking out. My other

Annie Pullar: Okay, Dol, will you just keep letting that simmer in your brain? Shall we move on to a story that I would way prefer to talk about?

Jodi Lee: Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay, fine. All right, so moving on from Y2K. if you've been living under a rock, you might have missed that Hollywood actress Sidney Sweeney has gone absolutely viral again, in the most controversial of ways. So essentially she's posed nude for an advertisement where she strategically covers up her private bits using sports paraphernalia It has upset A lot of people, namely women, and you kinda have to see it to believe it. Roll the tape. You don't know what to watch it, K Vogue.

Annie Pullar: I mean, I just find this whole thing so cringe. It's hard not to watch that and just automatically verbal vomit my entire opinion, but we'll get to that really soon. I want to layer this with the context. So Nobig is obviously the name of the company, and it allows people in the US to predict the outcome of sports games in both the men's and women's league. So you can bet on both. The interesting thing here is Sweeney isn't just hired as, you know, the pin-up poster girl for this commercial. She's not just a pretty face, she's actually a strategic partner. partner in this company, an equity holder So she has skin in the game and I think there was a lot of strategy behind sitting naked on a basketball hoop saying sports.

Jodi Lee: For What I will say is that in case you missed it, the blowback was swift and it was a tidal wave of anger, particularly from female athletes. So four-time Olympic gold medalist Australian Ariane Titmus came out, said it was a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft. The female athlete project, which we are huge fans of here at COVID, called it, in one word, a shitstorm. But they were just Two voices in a chorus of critics.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, you've probably seen all those reels of Dua Leepa's training season song and just shots of women, you know, in various sports showing what female athletes actually look like. But the response from Sydney Sweeney was was quite telling as well. She took to social media, she didn't actually say anything, but she posted a series of photos of female athletes in the nude. One was female boxer Rhonda Rousey, the other was tennis superstar Serena Williams. So my guess is that she sort of did this as a defense against the criticism, but we can kind of unpack why that was a fairly dumb decision a little bit later.

Jodi Lee: Incredibly dumb. The last piece of the context puzzle worth noting is that Sydney Sweeney has sort of made a side hustle out of creating controversy. So I think it was just over a year ago she featured in that American Eagle ad. It's a denim company in the United States. The ad was titled Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans. Obviously, a play on the word of like your genetics versus your denim jeans that you wear. But in the ad, she talks a lot about how genes are passed down from genes. Generation to generation and how her genes are blue. She was accused of being racist, because obviously, obviously, she's a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman at a time when racial tensions are particularly high. So she's kind of got this history of kind of like. you know, igniting a fuse and just seeing what happens.

Annie Pullar: Yeah, I think to be completely honest, I underestimated Sydney Sweeney when that jeans campaign initially came out. I almost felt sorry for her because she copped so much backlash, and I thought, hang on, this is just like a pretty girl posing in a pair of jeans. Are we just reading too deep into this? But now you see what she's done here, and it's hard not to see the pattern. This is an actress that is getting heavily politicized and clearly has an agenda. It's also been revealed that Sweeney is a registered Republican voter in the state of Florida, which has ignited its own firestorm. And you might remember Donald Trump was a key supporter of Sidney Sweeney when that jeans ad came out and defended her on multiple occasions.

Jodi Lee: Okay, so with all of that context in mind, which I think is really critical and very helpful, let's just come back to this Novig ad, which I've really struggled with. So the premise of the criticism is that for her as a woman to stand there without her clothes on and talk about sport diminishes the efforts of every single female athlete who has fought not only to be the best at what they do, but also to fight for parity and recognition in the same way that male athletes do. And I think even here in Australia, We see it firsthand. You only have to look at like the chasm in pay and conditions between the AFLW and the AFL. To put it in some numbers for you, to so it's really clear, a listed male AFL player makes on average about half a million dollars a season. The best players like Harley Reid are on $2 million a season. The average wage for an AFLW player is around $80,000, and at least 62% of them have. side hustle. So they have to have a job outside footy to be able to live off that salary.

Annie Pullar: And that number has, increased a lot in the last couple of years. Like women have fought really, really hard to get there. I think the point to make as well, it's not like Sydney Sweeney in this ad is trying to pose as a sports star. There's no mistake about who she is and what she is. But the context here is really important. This is a sports betting company. They have actively chosen to put this hot chick in the center of this campaign, you know, with her tits out, sitting on a basketball. Hoop with a ball, you know, covering her hoo hoo, whatever we want to call it.

Jodi Lee: A bit

Annie Pullar: Her bits. And I It's it's more what it's saying to the male viewer. It's saying that this is what women in sport look like. Their bodies are to be gawked at, they can they're they're judged on their physical appearance as opposed to their performance. And I think that is why this has just lit such a fuse in people, because the women's sporting industry, even here in Australia, it it's it's been hard fought. in so many different codes in terms of the crowds, the numbers they get, the pay, the recognition, even media coverage. So to see something like this, it almost feels like it sets us back, you know,

Jodi Lee: Mm.

Annie Pullar: 40 years.

Jodi Lee: It shifts the conversation when we're trying to encourage people to focus on the athleticism and the prowess of female athletes. It's saying,

Annie Pullar: Mm.

Jodi Lee: hey, look, they're just object. Well, women and women and sport can only coexist when the woman is the object of sexual desire. Hang on, I just want to go back to the social media posts that Sydney Sweeney posted to her story. Those pictures of Rhonda Rousey in the nude, of Serena Williams in the nude. That was dumb and entirely different. So Rhonda Rousey and Serena Williams are elite athletes, and part of them posing nude was to say, look at my body and what it has enabled me to achieve. Sidney Sweeney's not an athlete, so for her to sit there and have basketballs in front of her cans is entirely different. She is posing as a sex symbol. Rousey and Serena were empowered by their own physical form. I'll

Annie Pullar: Mm.

Jodi Lee: just say that. What I'll say about Sidney Sweeney, I totally get the criticism, and I agree that it is it's moved the conversation backwards. I agree. It's definitely not an empowering use of her platform. It's also rage-bait marketing. It's

Annie Pullar: Mm.

Jodi Lee: highly successful. I also think, and I haven't really heard this discussed, that it's men who should be offended. Because essentially what the advertisers are saying is, men are so simple and they think with their nether regions so much that all we need to do is get a hot chick to take off her take off her clothes to get them to use our betting app. Like

Annie Pullar: I mean, sex sells every time. And and you know, I'm the first to say Sydney Sweeney has a hot body. No one's telling Sydney Sweeney that she can't flaunt that. But my issue with Sydney Sweeney is that she is a woman. She is a woman in an age where she knows the history of how far We have come on all areas of of life, in the workplace, in sport. And so why why project this image? It's got nothing to do with me saying put your bits away, be more conservative. And it has everything to do with why can't you empower more women? But I guess the other

Jodi Lee: I'll tell you why.

Annie Pullar: side of that argument is a lot of people would say, well, this is empowering. But again, it comes back to context for me.

Jodi Lee: Well, having had this whole conversation, I've just also managed to think about this from an entirely different point of view. So Sweeney's obviously an investor in this. and she's clearly put her own personal profit over purpose, right? Over the female empowerment movement. And I hate to say this, but that's like a really male move.

Annie Pullar: Well, she's actually lost more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, but one thing that we can all agree on is that we now all know the name of this random sports betting company, Novig, and I don't think it's a name we're forgetting anytime soon.

Jodi Lee: But it's not the only thing I won't forget anytime soon. but I think that brings us to the end

Annie Pullar: Yeah.

Jodi Lee: of this week's episode. I've learned so much about Sydney Sweeney and so much about you too, Annie Puller. I hope that

Annie Pullar: Mm-hmm.

Jodi Lee: this motivates you to go away and learn about the Y2K bug. But to all about

Annie Pullar: We'll do a deep dive next week for anyone in my shoes who was four years old when this happened.

Jodi Lee: I'm not that much older, but I am across the detail. but thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Covered. We can't wait to keep you updated with the week's biggest news next week.

Annie Pullar: Bye.