Showy Ovaries with Penny Ashton.

Send us Fan Mail Hello 2026! Lovely to be in you AND lovely to welcome today's podcast star Dr Erin Harrington, Senior Lecturer Above Bar at Canterbury University. An academic at Penny's alma mater (which apparently means nourishing mother...) Erin is one of Showy Ovaries' cleverest interviewees yet, keeping Penny on her toes following her quicksilver brain.  Her specialist topics a...

Send us Fan Mail Global juggernaut for body positivity, US Slam Poet champ poet and zen mistress repping for the Scorpio Dragons, Sonya Renee Taylor invited Penny into her West Auckland Air BnB to chat all thing Body. Friends for 20 years they initially reminisced about the UK Poetry tour that brought them together, complete with Penny's diary comments from 2006 on Sonya's "delight&...

Send us Fan Mail Hoorah! Showy Ovarians, grab your bonnets and pop the kettle on because today, December 16th 2025, we’re throwing a literary birthday bash! Jane Austen turns a whopping 250 and what better excuse for a Showy Bonnets Special?  And who better to to spill the tea on all things Austen than NZ's other Janeite of notoriety, the head of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for 30 ye...

Send us Fan Mail Way back in March Penny performed this poem at WOMAD spurred on by some political bullshit by a well known "church" attacking a local LGBT+ superstar who was simply performing their show about the WEATHER to kids. The NZ leading coalition's current curriculum nonsense has spurred her again to upload this, in case any Showy Ovarians were missing hearing her be funny...

Send us Fan Mail 2021 New Zealander of the year, microbiologist and award winning science communicator, Siouxie Wiles cycled to Penny's west Auckland whare this week to chat about making the world a little pinker. They got the party started chatting about her lawsuit with her employer, the online abuse she suffered at the hands of internet AND parliamentary trolls during her promotion of the...

Send us Fan Mail It's another Showy Ovaries Live and this time from New Plymouth's beautiful Pukekura Park for WOMAD Aotearoa. Penny was delighted to chat to one of New Zealand's most prolific and talented actresses Morgana O'Reilly, fresh from her stint as "health butler" and cellphone thief in the global smash hit, The White Lotus .  Penny and Morgana discussed life...

Send us Fan Mail Wellington Theatre's 2024 Co-Actor of the year Bronwyn Turei (Ngāti Porou) drops into Penny's house to discuss all things fleshy. From being head girl at Gisborne Girls, to dealing with a lot of intense trauma as a teenager, to heading to London's Globe theatre to becoming a constantly jobbing professional actress, she and Penny covered how her body rode this roller...

Send us Fan Mail National Treasure Jodie Rimmer invited Penny to her whare to chat all things actorly. From her launching straight from school onto the screen via a saddle, to fun with Ryan Gosling, to chronic pain, HRT and mental health crises, they covered it all. Born in the same year she and Penny mused how long ago the millennium was, Jodie discussed her past as a cross country athlete in Flo...

Send us Fan Mail The Inimitable Pinky Agnew has been top of the Showy Ovarian pods ever since it was recorded as the first ever episode back in 2021. Her charm, wit, warmth and sparkle have entertained over 700 of you, so whilst Penny was performing The Tempestuous in Wellington for a month (which runs til December 1st), she decided to drop into Pinky's newly downsized pad to catch up with ou...

Send us Fan Mail With a husband catching the FLiRT variant and subsequent laying low, Penny decided to bust out an ovum with her WOMAD poem all about her Showy Ovaries epiphany.  Listen in as hubby shouts up the stairs from his isolation den for sandwiches, and Penny chats about what happened with HRT, what's coming up in her world and screeching about tampons in a petrol station.  As you do....

Send us Fan Mail To coincide with the launch of her new book today; The Everything Guide: Hormones, health and happiness in menopause, midlife and beyond , Niki Bezzant dropped in to Penny's house with almond croissants to talk life, hormones and her prodigious brain. In her third visit to Showy Ovary Town, Niki told Penny of her mission to educate women about how to feel good in the skin the...

Send us Fan Mail Writer, journalist, redhead advocate and PR specialist; Angela Barnett swung by Penny's house to discuss inter generational bodily shizzle in all its complicated glory. From her mother's traumatic birth, to her own struggles with bulimia, to making sure her daughter navigates the world aware of the ridiculous standards placed on women by the patriarchy and the diet indus...

Send us Fan Mail Waaaay back in August 2023 Penny dropped in on Amanda Kennedy's house in West Auckland to discuss her body, her dewy complexion and her adult onset epilepsy. One half of the comedy duo The Fan Brigade, the librettist couple behind NZ Opera's The Unruly Tourists , Amanda was dealing with her recent diagnoses of ADHD, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome AND epilepsy. But was still smil...

Send us Fan Mail The time has come, the research is in, the arse is too sore, the foot annoying, the new upper belly is sticking out too far... it is time for the HRT! Two days after her epic 50th birthday party Penelope Patchstart is slapping on some Estradot in the low dose of 25 somethings and seeing if it is the golden elixir of her dreams. Dreams can flounder on the rocks of reality of course...

Send us Fan Mail After her ballet teacher wouldn't let a very young Amy dance purely on on foot, she readjusted her life ambitions to being a pathologist. Inspired by forensic stories from her parents and from novels by Kathy Reichs, (the inspiration for the TV series Bones) she set her sights on dead people and being the last voice for those who can no longer speak.  Penny dropped in on her...

Send us Fan Mail Performer, director, side show starlet, writer and all round showbiz whiz Lizzie Tollemache may have been travelling the world hammering nails into her head and making thousands of people laugh, but underneath all that was a diagnosis lurking that would change her whole perspective on life. Penny visited her carnie friend's Christchurch home to learn all about the realisation...

Send us Fan Mail Hello lovely Showy Ovarians, Penny's back with another Showy Ovaries Live! This time with her comedy compatriot, fellow tenacious broad and Bette Midler lover; Justine Smith.  They rendezvoused onstage at Q Theatre in the 2023 NZ International Comedy Festival to discuss how their bodies have taken them through being a woman in comedy since the late 90's.  Justine had a t...

Send us Fan Mail Queen of Christchurch's Court Theatre stage, Eilish Moran took some time out of her packed schedule to chat to Penny about her body, her menopause and being in Penny's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility at the Court in February 2023 .  Penny was excited to get to know a woman she saw onstage all through her youth and adolescence in such plays as Little Shop of Horrors ,...

Send us Fan Mail Hello all you wondrous Showy Ovarians, Penny Ashton is back for Season Three! Yes release the fireworks and say huzzah Showy days are here again in a season where we will be pivoting away from focusing mainly on menopause and opening up to our bodies in all their glory! Kicking things off with The "O" Show from the Hamilton Arts Festival recorded on February 26th 2023. ...

Send us Fan Mail It's a surprise Xmas Special for Showy Ovaries! Tune in to hear Penny chat to her husband Matt from different rooms in their house. Why might that be???? Listen in and find out. Hear them pass some isolation time over the festive season by chatting the presents of Xmas past, hear some ukulele carols and find out what moves Matt to tears. No it's not Christmas Cracker Jok...

Send us Fan Mail In the very last little dribble of Showy Ovaries Season Two, here's one last ovum all about your hostess with the most chest's relationship and journey with HER body through her life. If it's good to gander at her guest's goose, so must she talk turkey and be honest about her own twisty tale of bodily acceptance. So Penny is here to talk about her epilepsy medi...

Send us Fan Mail To end Showy Ovaries Season Two we have the raucous, ribald, squirty and hilarious recording of Showy Ovaries Live taken at the Suter Theatre on Friday October 21st for the Nelson Arts Festival. Penny was like really really really excited to welcome back Nicky Pellegrino and Niki Bezzant, together with 140 cheering punters to discuss their books, their menopauses and women's...

Send us Fan Mail The deputy mayor of Nelson until a matter of weeks ago, Judene Edgar was happy to beam into Penny's office to celebrate no longer being a target for councilphobes and her relief at being released from the bondage of reading 1700 page agendas. A playwright, improviser, governance expert, former Councillor and loyal friend, Judene's perimenopause is at 6 years and running...

Send us Fan Mail It's World Menopause Day and what better guest to revisit than the very woman who told Penny that the day existed in the first place. Tusiata Avia was Showy Ovaries third ever guest, and in their conversation she alerted Penny to the fact World Menopause Day was just around the corner. So Penny leapt to action and launched the whole shebang on World Menopause Day.  A year lat...

Send us Fan Mail This week Penny is welcoming current Dominion Post and Stuff Wellington editor Anna Fifield, who moved back to NZ in 2020 after a glittering 20 year career as a globe-trotting foreign correspondent. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed biography of the North Korean leader; The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un.  Despite fe...