Audio Stories by The Spill

As a child, I loved swimming – working my way up through the Duckling Awards, earning Kellogg’s patches to sew onto my Little Mermaid towel. I remember the echoes of the weekly school swimming lessons, the comfort in feeling my body thud to the bottom of the stillness as I expelled all the air out of my lungs. Incidentally, I’m terrified of swimming in the ocean, but bring me to any pool or lake a...

TW: Mentions of sexual assault, murder. Powered by Black people and racialised campaign groups throughout the world for decades, the police and prison abolition movements are finally getting mainstream recognition in the UK, and the system transformation they suggest is just what the country needs to keep our people safe. A uthor: Aara Syed Category: POLITICS Listen to the full story, or read it o...

LOVE is an unrequited love story told through the eyes of Oscar, an autistic man, and will be premiering at the BFI London’s Busting the Bias next month. “Can autistic people fall in love and get married?” is one of the searches that come up when you research autism and love, and Gemma Harvey has had enough of it. Through her first short film, entitled LOVE, writer and actress Harvey tells the unr...

When it comes to the meaning of a name, there is a lot to unpack, so please bear with me while I sort through my feelings here. My name, Chourouk, means sunrise in Arabic. Some of you might be thinking it’s a beautiful name (and it is). Who wouldn’t want their name to be linked to the sun, right? I love the meaning of my name: it encapsulates something beautiful, vibrant, and warm, which I like to...

With a whole lot of generational baggage and a complex heritage, I laughed at all the micro-aggressions thrown my way, and I wish I'd understood why earlier. Author: Jennifer Hakim Category: LIFE Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read . For more Life-related stories, head to https://www.thespillmag.com/life

In 2017, I was an undergraduate struggling to navigate my sexuality. I was wading through bouts of anxiety and depression so intense I was often rendered unable to do anything other than lie in bed and listen to music. The soundtrack to this difficult year was About U by American alt-pop group MUNA. Author: Eleanor Noyce Category: ARTS Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available i...

Content warning: Sexual assault - This article contains Sex Education season three spoilers. For a country that considers anything related to sex as ‘vulgar’ and ‘profane,’ we Pakistanis sure love consuming content about it. While there’s already a national ban on pornographic websites, recent measures by the Pakistani government to “curb vulgar content among the youth” include banning TikTok - fo...

What if a breakup, rather than being a world-ending experience, was a vital piece of the grand puzzle of discovering our sense of self? I believe that we should view recovery from heartbreak, however protracted, as a success at learning rather than a failure at love. Author: Rosie Wilby Category: LIFE Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read . For more Life-related...

Lights suddenly darken. Curtain slowly lifts. Twelve thousand screams crescendo as souls find their voices again. Bass notes echo through speakers, blurring the space between me and the crowd of buzzing bodies beside. A pulsing beat injects my veins with electric adrenaline, overtaking my chest until my arms have nowhere to go but up, bouncing on my feet like the ground beneath is lava. Author: Me...

As someone who has adopted, I have high hopes for the Government's new national adoption strategy, and what it means for LGBTQIA+ families Author: Damian Kerlin Category: LIFE Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read. For more Life-related stories, head to https://www.thespillmag.com/life

While there is no one right answer to the climate crisis, through faith based conversations, more people are willing to try and find what works, and that’s a start. Author: Anmol Irfan Category: ENVIRONMENT Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read. For more Environment-related stories, head to https://www.thespillmag.com/environment

This week we speak to Banseka Kayembe, the director and founder of Naked Politics, an organisation that engages and empowers young people in politics, amplifies their voices, and bridges the gap between politicians and young people. In celebration of Black History Month, Naked Politics has launched a new podcast on Spotify, called “Young, British and Black”. The podcast dropped in the first week o...

I’ve had a wild few months. I’ve reached spiritual enlightenment, sure, but what’s even more surprising than me ascending to the fifth dimension is that I’ve mended my relationship with my parents, and am now managing to maintain a healthy dynamic with them whilst living at home. Author: Sophie Lau Category: SELF Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read . For more...

In “Consumed. The Need For Collective Change: On Colonialism, Climate Change & Consumerism”, published by Octopus Books and Brazen, Aja Barber tells the story of how she found her way out of the never-ending cycle of overconsumption. Author: Jennifer Hakim Category: ENVIRONMENT Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read. For more Environment-related stories, head...

[This article contains spoilers.] In the penultimate episode of The Chair , one of the most watched shows on Netflix last month, Dr. Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah), a Black English professor at the fictional Pembroke University, tells her colleague and departmental chair Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), “you act like you owe them something. Like you’re here because they let you be here, not because you deser...

[TW: sexual assault, rape] "He did what??" I asked my friend, horrified. She was right in the middle of telling me how much her latest date sucked. While she listed the many ways in which the man she had been seeing was a jerk to her, I listened. But when she told me he secretly took off the condom while they were having sex, I had to say something. Because this wasn’t just a bad date: this was se...

There is a common misconception that adult social care is ‘just for old people’. This misnomer, mixed with Covid-era ableism, is allowing the government to revive the culture wars. By proposing a regressive National Insurance (NI) tax to finance adult social care, the Tories are looking to exploit generational resentments; pitting the younger, poorer, but more abled Gen Z and millennials against o...

TW: death, suicide, violence, drug use, sexual abuse. The Globe, Shakespeare’s world-renowned theatre, has always been a place of wonder to me. If I could spend all my free time in its atmosphere, hearing soliloquies from Hamlet in the historic venue after walking past the light-dappled water of The Thames, I would. From Tudor history to classic literature, there are thousands of other reasons to...

With Afghan refugees already numbering 2.2 million in the countries surrounding Afghanistan, and another 500,000 estimated to attempt escaping via land borders, Pakistan and Tajikistan have now declared that they simply don’t have the resources to host any more refugees. Author: Anmol Irfan Category: LIFE Listen to the full story, or read it online - also available in Easy Read . For more Life-rel...

As the world watched the Taliban take back control of Afghanistan, after being defeated by Western forces twenty years ago, we’ve also witnessed the last of the Western efforts, including the UK, in evacuating Afghans from their country - ahead of the then-31st August deadline for the Western allied forces to leave the country. The Taliban rule could mean instability and violence for so many Afgha...

Have you ever tried to discuss your mental health with your parents, or even grandparents? Or dared to ask about theirs? Being Nigerian, I knew for a fact that I could not go to my mum or dad when I started getting consecutive depressive episodes. How they handled mental health issues with my brother told me everything I needed to know about how they'd react.  Author: Edikan Umoh Category: LI...

We’re kicking off Heartbeats, our new music section, with an interview of Sleep Deez, Grammy nominated producer for BTS, Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna and Usher, to name a few. The multi-platinum hit maker shared his thoughts on his career and the music business – and his advice for aspiring artists from marginalised backgrounds. This interview was recorded on 13th August 2021. When we started what tur...

In less than a week, OnlyFans controversially banned, then quickly reinstated sexually explicit content - in a move that reeks of prejudice. When OnlyFans (sometimes shortened to OF) launched in 2016, it steadily became a startup that was synonymous with providing a safe and secure platform for sex workers to create various content. In a day and age where sex work still maintains the unfair taboo...

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’- who ever thought of that? It is terrible advice. Words can not only hurt you. They can make you feel small and insignificant and can completely derail you. I am not just talking about any old words, I am talking about ableist slurs that still get tossed around in 2021. Author: Meg Fozzard Category: CULTURE Listen to the full stor...

Following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021, news agencies, media organisations, and social media were quickly filled with stories regarding the horrors of the Taliban rule, and heartbreaking coverage showing Afghans trying to flee the country while they could. While people across all cultures have been crying for justice, in the midst of a humanitarian crisis that has shaken most of th...