Strong Tea

Well this is all a little emotional isn’t it?!  This is the final episode (FOR NOW) in the current instalment of Strong Tea & Quick Brews.  With a lot happening in our personal lives right now, we’ve decided to take a break until 2024 to give us chance to focus on other areas and also to plan ahead to Strong Tea 2.0! We want to come back with a BANG!  We’ve been so lucky that we grew the Stron...

Now, you know we love a fan girl moment and this is the ultimate for our Katie. The incredible Naomi Channell from the brilliant true crime podcast Real joins us today to chat all things true crime and we can’t get enough! As a follow up to our Quick Brew episode (Why Are We Obsessed With True Crime - Quick Brew, ep 20), we wanted to chat to someone who produces one of the best loved podcasts in t...

Trigger Warning: This episode and description contains details of suicide, eating disorders and depression. This episode features a truly inspiring guest. Sandeep Saib is a lived experience mental health advocate, Rethink Mental Health Charity committee member, Time to Change London champion, Samaritans volunteer, South Asian Health Action Mental Health ambassador ....and so much more. Basically s...

Valen Vain. The Filth Wizard. What can we say about the incredible Valen?!   Valen is the founder and the face behind KEN - Kinky Erotic Nature events in Hull - Yorkshire's Largest Kinky Cabaret, he’s a compere, a singer, a pole & aerial hoop dancer, he’s the founder and presenter of the podcast Thirsty Work (see the link below) and he’s a sexual educator! Is there nothing this man can’t do?!...

Today we meet with the absolutely lovely Dr Ellie Birtley. You only need take a peek at her website, which you can do here , to see what a brilliantly talented woman this is.   Dr Ellie explains the top reasons that people come to sex therapy, we ask just how she helps her clients and delve into why sex is STILL (in 2023) a taboo topic!   If you'd like to find out more about Dr Ellie or the servic...

We are once again, extremely honoured to have the wonderful Finlay Games joining us, this time to get a little intimate to talk all about sex and trans.    One reoccurring theme that we seem to continue to trip over with our wonderful trans guests is that other people always seem to be obsessed with what’s in their pants. You wouldn’t ask a cis person about their junk, so why do people feel its ok...

Sex Toys. Gone are the days of skulking into a seedy back alley shop to purchase them. Sex toys are now more readily available than ever and the number of companies and distributors in the UK is growing all the time.   And so, we came across the wonderful Sam Evans from Jo Divine (see the links below), the most wonderful and customer centred toy shop we could have teamed up with!   Sam and her hus...

When we first interviewed our wonderful friend of the show, Dom Smith (episode 24 if you haven’t listened - you really should!), we were stunned as he talked about his journey with Cerebral Palsy and the questions he gets asked - so many of those questions are extremely personal and normally about sex.   Dom is the first person to put his hands up and be open and honest about this kind of stuff an...

Trigger Warning: This episode contains details of addiction, depression and other mental health issues. Bella Goode is the very definition of the term strong woman. Bella has tackled many hard times and traumas in her life and it’s never once stopped her.  For years, after suffering with depression, addiction and PND amongst damaging relationships, raising children and work, Bella was finally diag...

Katie Neeves calls herself the gobby trans woman and we love her for that.   Katie is a woman on a mission - but not just any woman and not just any mission!  She lived for 48 years as a man while struggling with her gender from the age of 3 and hiding her big secret to the World.  She was thrown into turmoil when her gender dysphoria increased dramatically, causing her to go on a voyage of discov...

The history of witchcraft is a long and harrowing one. Witchcraft was not made a capital offence in Britain until 1563 although it was deemed heresy and was denounced as such by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. From 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe.   Brett, know as the Witch of Salopia grew up surrounded by stories of spirits and witches, and...

Trigger Warning: Episode discusses mental health disorders, intrusive thoughts and self harm.   Brooke Miller joins us all the way from Wisconsin for this episode to discuss her mental health advocacy journey.   Brooke discusses her own journey and experiences of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, eating disorders, panic attacks, panic disorder and Bipolar disorder to help educate and inform others.  ...

Jennie is an award-winning freelance health journalist, writing features for national newspapers and magazines. Her work has appeared in The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail,  the i paper, Red magazine, Women’s Health, Grazia, ELLE UK, the Guardian, and the Observer, among others.   Jennie's first book,  Life, Almost: Miscarriage, misconceptions, and a search for answers from the brink o...

Madeleine Black is the courage cultivator. And my goodness, there couldn't be a more appropriate phrase for her if we'd come up with it ourselves!   Madeleine Black grew up in London in the late 1970’s and she was brutally raped at the age of 13 by two American teenagers.   In 2014, having come to terms with how the trauma had shaped her life, she decided to share her story to help others and wrot...

Today’s episode is with a fantastic human, author of the book OCDad: Learning to be a Parent with a Mental Health Disorder, Jason Adams. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is something we should all know more about as it is frequently mis-referenced when people say they are “a little bit OCD” because they like cleaning or symmetry. Miseducation is sadly rife. OCD is a mental health condition where a pe...

Trigger Warning: Episode contains descriptions of childhood sexual abuse.   Strong Tea podcast is all about talking about issues which people find difficult to discuss, the things that people shy away from talking about and this was one of the hardest topics to talk about.   Our guest "Sam" has asked to remain anonymous as she tells her story of childhood sexual abuse by family members and her jou...

Bisexual Erasure.  A pervasive problem in which the existence or legitimacy of bisexuality (either in general or in regard to an individual) is questioned or denied outright. In this episode, we chat with our own fabulous Vikki and our fantastic, returning Strong Tea family favourite April Kelley, all about their own experiences of bisexual erasure and overall bisexual representation.  We chat and...

Marianne Oakes is an extraordinary woman, not only has she been through her own transitional journey, she now dedicates her life to helping and supporting others in the LGBTQ+ community.  Assigned male at birth, Marianne grew up with a feeling of not fitting in her body, that something wasn’t quite right. She started presenting female in the privacy of her home in her teens, her journey from meeti...

Welcome to the third episode in our 2023 Pride series!  This is a hugely important episode for us. Terminology and what you can and can't say these days can be incredibly confusing in an ever changing culture so, as part of our Pride series, we've decided to round up an extensive (but not exhaustive) list of LGBTQ+ terminology to help you understand what it's ok to say.

We are so lucky to be bringing you the second episode in our Pride series with the incredible Tom Hayes-Isaacs who is a passionate HIV activist and advocate. Working across the UK and Europe he aims to both help reduce the number of new diagnoses, and improve life for those living with HIV.   Born in October 1985, Tom grew up in the the Midlands. Tom was diagnosed HIV positive on August 4th 2011,...

Welcome to our first episode of our Pride series, 2023!! Finn is transgender which means he was assigned female at birth but is, in fact, male. Finn came out as transgender in 2012 and began his medical transition in 2013. The medical side of his transition was completed in 2018, but the social aspect of transition is, and likely always will be, ongoing. Finn has been sharing his story since 2011,...

Trigger Warning: Child loss, mental health, traumatic birth, and pregnancy after loss.   Back in 2021, our very own Katie suffered unimaginable loss when her daughter died. What came next was a traumatic, emotional and grief stricken journey to have another baby.  Katie shares with us her journey, the feelings she experienced, the things that helped and the things that most definitely didn’t. This...

Sarah Wallace is supermum.   Today's episode is like no other, we talk to Sarah Wallace who talks us through her life parenting two children with special educational needs. Ollie has Down's syndrome and Alfie has autism.   Sarah talks us through what it's like parenting with these additional challenges and how she now supports others by sharing her story through a facebook page.   To check out Sar...

Living on the bipolar spectrum, with a side order of PTSD & ADHD, there are very few who command a room like Thomas. After growing up in difficult circumstances, Thomas successfully turned his life around to help other people, saving countless lives along the way.   Thomas Duncan Bell is often better known across the UK & Internationally as The Bipolar Businessman. A true enigma, living with a bip...

We are so pleased to have our friend and member of the Strong Tea family back with us today! George Mycock’s is the founder of Myominds, a company that works to shine a light on and unravel what mental health means in the exercising community.  Myominds lead on research projects alongside some of the UK’s top universities whilst also creating conversations through their social media and through th...