Bring Your Own Opinion Podcast

It's episode 20 and as Elijah is away this week we welcome back a good friend of the podcast on co-hosting duties. You may remember Macey from episode 4: BYOO on Legalising Weed and this time she's back with Mims to discuss all things egg freezing. With companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook now offering female employees the option to freeze their eggs as a part of their benefits package, the idea has become much more mainstream. Does it work? Is it worth it? Is egg freezing really empowering for women? These are just some of the questions we try to tackle this week. We also try to interrogate our videographer extraordinaire Akil to get a male perspective on the whole issue. We focused on a recent Broadly documentary 'Egg Freezing, Career Women, & the Future of Fertility' for this episode. Check out bringyourownopinion.com to watch the documentary in full ahead of listening and we'd love you to bring your own opinion over on Instagram, @bringyourownopinion.

The UK is set to be the first country to introduce a law whereby anyone accessing porn online will need to verify that they are over 18 years of age. Due to come into effect on July 15th, it has been postponed yet again as there have not been sufficient measures put in place to manage this law change properly. The purpose of this "porn ban" is to further protect children online but what will the implications be from a privacy and data collection point of view? Can we really monitor and police what people watch online and how effective can this be? This week's episode focuses on a recent BBC Newsbeat documentary 'Turning Off Porn'. Check out bringyourownopinion.com to watch the documentary in full ahead of listening to the episode and we'd love you to bring your own opinion over on Instagram, @bringyourownopinion.

Episode 18 focuses on the recent Sky News documentary 'Harvey Weinstein: Fall of the King of Hollywood' in which victims and previous co-workers are interviewed about their experiences with the now disgraced film producer. From there being a system in place to lure in women to it being an open secret in Hollywood, we try to understand how and why the abuse continued for so long? We also consider whether witnesses of abuses of power should be held more accountable and what we would do if we were caught in a similar situation. Check out bringyourownopinion.com to watch the documentary in full ahead of listening to the episode and we'd love you to bring your own opinion over on instagram, @bringyourownopinion.

British broadcaster ITV has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after the death of a guest on the long running reality show, Jeremy Kyle. Steve Dymond committed suicide after failing a lie detector test on the show about cheating on his partner. After 14 years, the Jeremy Kyle show has now been cancelled and there have been questions raised around the ethics of these type of shows and others including the extremely popular and profitable Love Island. How much responsibility should fall on the production companies creating these shows when it comes to contestant welfare before, during and post production? Should there be more regulation in the industry as currently there are no rules about whether shows should even follow the advice of psychologists commissioned to test contestants? These are just some of the questions we discuss on this week's episode with the conversation surrounding the recent Dispatches documentary, Jeremy Kyle: TV on Trial. Watch the documentary in full over on Channel 4.

Episode 16 of the podcast focuses on a recent BBC Three documentary, "Abused By My Girlfriend" which tells the story of 23-year-old Alex Skeel who survived an extremely abusive relationship with his ex-partner Jordan Worth. A recent Crime Survey for England and Wales found that 1.3 million women and 695,000 men experienced abuse in the past year. 1 in 6 men will be a victim in their lifetime but only 10% will tell the police. There are many reasons for this underreporting including fear of not being believed, judgement by police and also thinking that their partner can change. In this episode, we dig deeper into this topic and discuss the differences between male and female abusers and also try to understand the point of the view of the abuser and what motivates them to behave in this way. Watch the documentary in full over on the BBC iPlayer.

'Multi-Level Marketing' operates through direct selling, whereby individuals sell a company's products through their own networks. On the surface, it seems like an easy way to make money whilst working from home and being your own boss. The companies often promote the potential to earn five figures monthly and many target young mums who want to stay at home to raise their kids. However, what's really driving sales in these companies is recruitment whereby individuals earn commission through recruiting other people into the business, they then make money on every sale from every single person they recruit. This begs the question are these companies simply glorified pyramid schemes? And if so, how are they still allowed to operate? This episode focuses on a recent BBC Three documentary, "Secrets of the Multi-Level Millionaires" which follows Ellie Flynn as she digs deeper into the practices of these companies and uncovers how much earning potential there really is. Focusing on two of the biggest MLM beauty companies globally, Younique and Nuskin, Ellie meets numerous women who have worked for these companies to understand if and how their practices are exploitative in nature.

Evidence suggests that confidence plays a huge role in how we identify leaders. However, at what point does confidence become more important than competence? If overconfident men are being promoted into leadership positions, what does that mean for women in the workplace? Donald Trump is the epitome of male overconfidence. In this week's episode we use the documentary 'The Confidence Man' (a part of the Netflix docuseries 'Dirty Money') to explore this issue in greater detail and explore how Trump's unashamed confidence and total self- belief have gotten him to where he is today. Ultimately we try to unwrap the ongoing question of does confidence trump competence?

This week's episode is all about the unique world of sugaring; sugar babies, sugar daddies, sugar mommas and even sugar coaches! So what is sugaring? Typically it's a relationship between an older man and a younger woman in which there is a financial exchange involved. Why do younger women become sugar babies? Is it just another form of sex work? What's in it for the sugar daddies? How do negotiate sexual boundaries? These are just some of the questions we dive into and, needless to say, the conversation gets pretty heated. We watched a recent episode of Vice's Slutever series hosted by Karley Sciortino. As a former sugar baby herself, Karley explores how sugaring has changed and speaks to multiple sugar babies, a sugar daddy and even a sexologist to understand the motives behind these unique arrangements. Catch the documentary in full over on Viceland.

Recent reports have claimed that paedophilia is on the rise in the UK. This combined with government cuts to local police forces has led to the creation of over 75 paedophile hunter groups across the country. Are these vigilante groups helping to tackle the problem or becoming a threat themselves? Once paedohiles and sex offenders are caught and sentenced, can they or should they be rehabilitated back into society? These are just some of the questions we tackle in this episode of the podcast, where we also welcome our very own BYOO Producer, Dean Mundle- Smith onto the show as this week’s guest. As a parent and a secondary school teacher, Dean brings an interesting perspective to the conversation. The discussion focuses on two documentaries, “Paedophile Hunters: The Rise of the Vigilantes” and “Stacey Dooley Investigates: Second Chance Sex Offenders”, both by BBC Three. Watch the documentaries in full over on the BBC iPlayer.

The Miss Arc Broward pageant is specifically for girls with disabilities. Do these types of beauty pageants help remove the stigma attached to having a disability or do they further reinforce societal beauty norms? This is just one of the questions we try to tackle on this week’s episode of BYOO. We watched the documentary ‘The Beauty Pageant Just for Girls with Disabilities’ by Broadly and also Gaelynn Lea’s TED Talk ‘Sexuality and Disability: Forging Identity in a World that Leaves You Out’. With 1 in 5 people considered to have a disability, how can industries (beauty and fashion in particular) better accommodate and represent this group? Watch the documentary and TED Talk in full over on Youtube.

The teenage influencer market is already worth a billion dollars and this is set to double in the next year. What are the implications for these teens who shoot to internet stardom so quickly and how does the role of their parents change when money gets involved? These are just some of the questions we address on this week’s episode of BYOO. Before listening, check out the documentary Teen Boss which is part of the Follow This series on Netflix. Scaachi Koul, Culture Reporter for Buzzfeed News, follows the story of Danielle Kohn who rose to fame at only 14 years old through the lip- synching app Tiik Tok (formerly Musical.ly) and now has over 10 million followers and a budding pop career.

Who are the people that get so angry online and what drives them to use such abusive and threatening language? Episode 9 is all about these people, the ‘Internet Warriors’. We watched a documentary of the same name by The Guardian, in which Director Kyrre Lien meets people from all over the world who choose to share their strong opinions online. For this episode we are also joined by the wonderful Elliot from Top Corner to get his opinions on what this trend means for freedom of speech going forward.

2018 saw the launch of Harmony, the first ever commercially available AI- enabled sex doll. By using an app, the user can customise her personality to suit their taste. Is this the future of sex? For this episode we watched 'Follow This: Sexbots' from Netflix where we follow BuzzFeed News Culture Reporter Scaachi Koul as she tries to answer this question and many more.

BYOO on Botox: With the increase in Botox treatments in the UK and the average age of those receiving these treatments lowering, how safe are these procedures and would you ever consider getting them? On this week's episode, we focus on the recent BBC Three documentary by Ellie Fylnn 'The Botox Bust' in which she investigates illegal Botox procedures that are happening across the UK. We also discuss the postives and negatives of Botox and the implications it may have if administered incorrectly.

Should drill music be blamed for the increase in knife and gang crime in London recently? Are drill, and grime, artists glamorising violence or simply reflecting their reality? These are just some of the questions we try to untangle in this week's episode where we also welcome our special guest, Janelle Joseph, who researched the language used in grime music as part of her dissertation.

Episode 5 focuses around the highly anticipated new documentary from Louis Theroux and BBC TWO, ‘Altered States: Love Without Limits’. As polyamory becomes more prevalent in our society, Elijah and Mims discuss the different types of relationships that can be involved in practising non- monogamy and wthether they could be suitable for everyone. You can watch the documentary in full over on the BBC iPlayer.

For episode 4 we welcome our special guest Macey to discuss documentary maker Professor Green's BBC 3 Documentary on legalising weed. We examine the dark side of the weed industry as well as the changing attitudes toward the drug in the UK and across the world.

For episode 3 we watched two documentaries, giving us a glimpse into two very different worlds that live under a matriarchy: ‘The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya's Women-Only Village’ and ‘The Land Where Women Rule: Inside China's Last Matriarchy’, both by Broadly. The first documentary follows the story of Rebecca Lolosoli who founded the Umoja tribe to help protect the women of the region from abusive marriages. In the second documentary, we learn about the Mosuo tribe who have a unique family structure where the women are in charge. We give our opinions on the differences between the two and our thoughts in general on matriarchy vs patriarchy. You can watch the documentaries in full over on Broadly’s youtube channel.

For episode 2 we welcome our first guest to the podcast and discuss all things online dating in VICE’s documentary ‘The Mobile Love Industry’. We discuss the highs and lows of Tinder, whether it’s still possible to meet someone in the ‘real world’ and if and how online dating differs for the gay community. You can watch the documentary in full over on VICE’s youtube channel.

For our very first episode we watched the documentary ‘Inside America’s Billion Dollar Divorce Industry’ by VICE. With 50% of marriages in America now ending in divorce, the industry is estimated to be worth $50 billion annually. From divorce parties to divorce hotels and everything in between, we give our opinions on this growing industry and the reasons behind divorce in the first place.