Standard Issue Podcast

It’s just one week from the General Election and we’re assuming you’re as sick of the pantomime as us, so instead Hannah and Mick are talking: vandals at least having the courage of their convictions, a lorra lorra cash from our Taylor, the uptick in talking Kernewek, that twat Hannah’s dad fired, and why Manchester United need to do better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc...

Does falling in acid turn your hair green? Who's the worst person Jerry Hall's found on her sofa? And is Michael Keaton, star of Tim Burton's first take on the Batman film franchise, really the fourth best to have graced the Batsuit? We're asking all this and more as we revisit 1989's Batman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What a treat for our Mick to get on the Zoom with excellent comedian and total smasher, Jen Brister. They’re chatting optimism in the face of the news, the upcoming general election, hang-gliding dogs, and All Our Relations, which is Jen’s non-profit, raising money to help Palestinian families stuck in Rafah.  You can and should follow Jen on the socials, where she’s @jenbristercomedy, listen to h...

Surrender, a new play at the Arcola Theatre Dalston, is the story of a mother in prison, meeting her estranged daughter for the first time in many years. Mother wants to put her side of the story across about how she came to be there – but is everything as it seems? Jen caught up with playwright Sophie Swithinbank, who wrote the play in collaboration with Phoebe Ladenburg, the actor playing Mother...

Merry Christmas one and all! That’s right, Hannah’s picked 2023’s The Holdovers, Alexander Payne’s dramedy set in a posh boys’ boarding school in the 1970s over the festive period. It bagged an Oscar for the glorious Da’Vine Joy Randolph and features equally stellar performances from Paul Giamatti and newcomer Dominic Sessa. Are we giving too much away in this write-up? Nah, Hannah, Yosra and Mick...

This week, we're watching one of the most successful low-budget films ever, 2004's Napoleon Dynamite. Hannah and Jen chat about ligers (pretty much their favourite animals), why Jen's got her hair in a side ponytail and whether we'd enjoy seeing our siblings hit in the face by a steak.  Here's the interview that Hannah promises: https://magazine.byu.edu/article/its-still-dynamite/#:~:text=That%20t...

After a rapturously received debut album, folk star Katherine Priddy had to tackle the infamous "difficult second album". In this podcast she talks to journalist Hazel Davis about The Pendulum Swing, her upcoming appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival, supporting Elbow, being judged by McFly, and what a folk way to die would be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back in the 1970s, a group of Bristolian idealists dreamed of a nation stitched together by safe cycling paths, which would make us less reliant on our cars. They founded what would become Britain's 13,000 miles long National Cycle Network. Cycling journalist Laura Laker wondered what had gone right and, indeed, wrong, with a network once described by the CEO of the charity that runs it as “a bit...

In this month's Outside The Box, Hannah and Jen are talking about Rebus, Eric, Bodkin, Insomnia, Alaska Daily, The Gathering, Dark Matter and Bay of Fires. Plus, it turns out Hannah was right about Colin Farrell being a BEEEEEP in Sugar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world has gone election-crazy, but fortunately Hannah and Jen have mostly swerved it in this week’s Bush Telegraph. There’s some real human hardship to talk about, beyond poor ickle Rishi’s lack of Sky TV, as well as some mental imagery you’re likely never to forget around microplastics and human testicle samples. In sport, we’re looking at the European Athletics Championships, as well as sayi...

Journalist Ellen Atlanta fell into a career in the beauty industry. Like many of us who subscribe to westernised beauty ideals and an online-culture, it was fine until it wasn’t. For Ellen, that was when she began to question whether or not she was part of the problem herself, and so began her work on her debut book, Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women. In this episode, she chats to...

Fans of the Star Wars universe will no doubt recognise Ireland’s Denise Gough as steely Andor villain Dedra Meero. But it was back in 2015 that she was catapulted to stardom with her role as Emma in Duncan Macmillan’s existential addiction drama, People, Places & Things. Almost ten years on, People, Places & Things is back and so is Denise with a proper barnstormer of a performance in a play that’...

Fun times for football enthusiasts approach us, as the Euros kick off in Germany next week. Both England and Scotland are through to the tournament, with Scotland up first, against the host nation, before England take on Serbia – but how will the home nations fare? Jen caught up with Caoimhe O’Neill – journalist at The Athletic, Liverpool FC fan, and the proud owner of two Scotland shirts – to fin...

What a week! Trump is guilty, Farage is milkshaked, Owen Jones is Owen Jones-ing and some of the four horses of the apocalypse are having a nice time in a field. At least concrete is still concrete. Mickey and Hannah manage to fit all this in and still find time for a horrific sexism of the week, in which we get to see how one judge's mind works and really don't like it. Learn more about your ad c...

This week, Jen’s getting philosophical with high on drama, easy on the acting, ‘90s runaway hit, Speed. But can Mick and Hannah get on board? Der dum tsssssshhhhhh. Cue maniacal laughter, and a shedload of plot holes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Scattered, award-winning journalist and former child refugee Aamna Mohdin has written a warm, candid and surprisingly funny memoir about her family’s experiences fleeing the Somali civil war in the 1990s. She chats to our Mick about survivor’s guilt, people not 'migrants', the joys in interviewing your parents, and her relationship with Somalia today. Scattered is published by Bloomsbury, out...

When she was 11, Genevieve Kingston's mother died, leaving her a box of gifts and letters, designed to see her through the big events of her life. In her new memoir, Genevieve, now a writer and actor, explores the loss of her mother and the joys of refinding her through her letters from the past. Hannah chats to her about that memoir - Did I Ever Tell You? - being on Oprah's 'to read' list, and ho...

Rosie Garland is a poet, an author and the front woman, since the 1980s, of punk band The March Violets. In this podcast, Hannah chats to her about her latest novel, The Fates, which is about, you've guessed it, the Fates, about how mythology treats women and why Zeus was an absolute dick. They're also talking about Rosie's recovery from cancer, how that affected her writing and performing and abo...

Mickey, Hannah and Jen are asking all the big questions this week. Such as, when a film's plot is so famous its title is now a verb, how's that going to affect three first-time viewers? And what would 1940s audiences have thought was going on? Also, were any Victorians called Paula and Brian?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A cursed wedding, a honeymoon meltdown, a gaslighting hotelier, and some pretty dodgy goings on: Scarlett Thomas’s latest novel, The Sleepwalkers, is a gripping tale of catastrophe from the contents page on.  Scarlett chats to Mick about finding inspiration on a holiday from hell, the chain of blame in Big Patriarchy, trusting women, judging women, a love of wrong things, and big lash action. The...

Hot on the heels of Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain is hosting another huge exhibition dedicated to professional women artists, spanning 400 years from the early 16th Century. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Great Britain, 1520-1920 puts paid to the notion that women couldn’t make a living from art, and only ever pursued it as a cute leisure activity. Jen caught up with Tabitha Barber, Tate Britai...

This mockumentary comedy flew under the radar when it was released last year. But our Yosra’s excited to make a song and dance about Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s big-hearted tale of a musical theatre camp, struggling to save itself after its beloved founder falls into a coma. It’s well charted that we love a mockumentary, but will there be enough gags for Hannah? Or too much singing for Mick?...

Jen and Hannah are on Bush Telegraph duty this Thursday 23 May. They’re talking about how the only thing the UK doesn’t seem to be in short supply of these days, is court rulings against its own Government. Meanwhile the wait for a wheelchair hits frankly ludicrous levels. Harrison Butker (you heard) has his say on a woman’s worth, and with any luck it’s his balls Serena will be hitting in the nea...

Jeff Goldblum, people! Turns out, the big fella isn’t necessarily a lure for Hannah and Jen, so will they find anything else to like in Julien Temple’s American-science-fiction-musical-romantic comedy? And yes, of course it was Mick who picked it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New drama series The Gathering is making waves on Channel 4 as we speak, so Hannah leapt at the chance to chat to one of its stars, Vinette Robinson. They talk about teenage ambition, playing real women with real problems, social media, teenage girls, working with Mike Leigh, the single-take logistics of Boiling Point, giving birth dozens of times in The Lazarus Project, and her upcoming appearanc...