Standard Issue Podcast

With “cosy crime” making waves in the literary world right now, journalist Hazel Davis jumped on the Zoom to chat to writer Flic Everett about why we’re forgoing gritty reality, and her new series of novels.   In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen chats to Rebecca Achieng Ajulu-Bushell, former Great British swimming champion and host of the Physical Capital podcast, about representation, mental health, and...

Susannah Walker and Imogen Clark are the two (very excellent) women behind Make Space For Girls, and you may remember Mick had a chat with them a couple of years ago when the charity was just nine months old. Two years on and its campaign to make our parks and public spaces more friendly and accommodating for tween and teenaged girls continues apace, so Mick caught up with Susannah to talk about t...

Indiana Jones: one of cinema’s greatest characters. It’s big talk from our Mick, who’s in charge of this month’s Flicking and has chosen her favourite (note: not the ‘best’) of the trilogy. Yes, trilogy; you read that right and we’ll be taking no further questions on this matter.  1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a high energy, tall tale of derring-do, ancient knights, a big ol’ religiou...

Private investigation isn't like it is on TV. Take that from Caitlin Davies, journalist, author and newly-minted PI, who's been on the Zoom with Mickey to talk about the history of women in the trade and her new book Private Inquiries: The Secret History of Female Sleuths. There's also some history (and science and comedy) in Kiri Pritchard-McLean's new Radio 4 Show The Best Medicine. She chats to...

Through her own experience of becoming a single parent, Zoe Desmond wanted to change the often isolated picture for people in similar situations. So she set up the Frolo app, aimed at helping to foster a community focussed on the joy of solo parenting, rather than the negative stereotypes often perpetuated by society and the media. It was through the app that Zoe met journalist Rebecca Cox, hersel...

What do you get the person who has everything? A home DNA testing kit seems to be the present du jour and in the UK alone, more than 4.7million of us have spit into a vial to find out more about our ancestry. Journalist Jenny Kleeman’s new BBC Sounds series, The Gift, explores what happens when technology, genealogy and identity collide, and our Mick got on the Zoom with her to chat crimes solved,...

When journalist Moya Lothian-McLean was asked whether she’d be interested in exploring the truth about Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and what that means to and for modern Britons, she didn’t need asking twice.  The resulting podcast, Human Resources, is a smart, nuanced, meticulously researched look at the realities and effects of the slave trade, the capitalist system it...

Why is “sorry” so often the easiest word for women? It’s a question author and mental health campaigner Lucy Nichol found herself asking on a regular basis, and a topic she covers in her latest novel, No Worries If Not!. She and Mick chat about apologies, how empowered we really were back in the ‘90s, and what they'd like to see on a T-shirt.   In Jenny Off The Blocks, Dr Carrie Dunn makes a welco...

If you don't know a huge amount about the English Civil War, join the club. Also, perhaps get your hands on a copy of Francesca Peacock's excellent new book Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. Hannah got on the Zoom with Francesca to learn about how the war affected Margaret's life, and what that life can tell us about marriage, infertility, literature, fashion and feminism in...

It's September, the nights are drawing in and do we have some TV recommendations for you? Yes, we do. In this episode, we're chatting Winning Time*, The Woman in the Wall, Only Murders In The Building, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Painkiller and Beef.  Since we recorded this, Winning Time has, indeed, been cancelled. *sobs* Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hos...

Who wants to live forever? That's the question Hannah puts to Dr Aleks Krotoski, tech journalist and podcaster, whose latest series, The Immortals, looks at the tech millionaires searching for the key to eternal life. And if they are looking forward, Jen's looking backwards with Donna Freed, whose search for answers about her birth parents led her to a well-publicised crime. In Jenny Off The Block...

Actor, comedian and writer Doon Mackichan has written an incredibly to-the-point memoir, My Lady Parts, and so, OBVIOUSLY, Hannah leapt at the chance to talk to her. They chat about ageing, Smack The Pony, Paedogeddon, telling off Mamet, and dead naked women on TV.  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Lear...

Raising Arizona, The Coen Brothers’ second film, is a screwball comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter, as a loved-up couple who can’t have kids of their own and so decide to steal a baby. It’s also a Dunleavy family favourite, hence our Hannah choosing it for this month’s Flicking.  Will Raising Arizona raise Mick and Yosra’s spirits as high as Cage’s hair? Or will it sink like two prisone...

Dating: it’s weird, isn’t it? Two strangers having contrived chat in a lost-forever pocket of time. Which all makes it excellent fodder for playwright Miriam Battye, who’s chatting to Hannah about her latest stage offering, Strategic Love Play. Miriam also spent some time in the Succession writers’ room, but Hannah wasn’t interested in talking about that. LOLZ. There is also Succession content, in...

Preventable deaths by suicide remain the biggest killer of young people under the age of 35 in the UK and continue to rise across the population. Though men account for 75% all suicides, the biggest increase in 2021, according to the most up-to-date Government statistics, was in women and girls aged 24 and under. Keen to bring these numbers down, is the suicide prevention charity, Samaritans*, and...

ITV crime drama The Tower is back on our screens for a second series, presenting our Hannah with an excellent opportunity to jump on the Zoom with Gemma Whelan, who plays DS Sarah Collins. They chat about the reputation of the Met, telling women’s stories, Gentleman Jack, Upstart Crow and what exactly Gemma was doing with that fox. Jen's chatting to poet Maggie Smith about how when her career took...

Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life is, ostensibly, a biography of Eileen Blair, nee Eileen O’Shaughnessy, aka the first Mrs George Orwell. And indeed, Anna tells Eileen’s story beautifully, using Eileen’s own words from letters to friends and to her husband, with added judicious fiction, as she imagines scenes from the Orwells’ lives, and from Eileen’s life.  Turns out, Eileen play...

Nina Sosanya has been a regular presence on TV screens since the nineties, quite often portraying hard-working and so seen as “difficult” women, including Jenny in Teachers and now Leigh in Screw. Screw is back for season two, so our Hannah took the chance to get Nina on the Zoom to chat about, well, being on the Zoom, putting the prison uniform back on, those ‘difficult’ women and the strikes in...

The British Empire has been a hot topic for centuries, but debates around its impact have reignited in recent years. In trying to explain these debates to her children, writer, podcaster and advertising executive, Shelina Janmohamed, was struck by how few resources there were available to help inform that conversation.  And so, Shelina wrote The Story Of Now: Why We Need To Talk About The British...

How much can a person's name tell us about them? Almost everything, says journalist Sheela Banerjee and in this week's podcast, she's chatting to Mickey about her book, What's In A Name? and how she’s used what we call ourselves and our kids to examine the history of modern, multicultural Britain. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen talks to Team GB triathlete Jess Learmonth, about being a gold medallist...

Henpocalypse! hit our screens this week, so Hannah's been on the phone with its writer and creator, Caroline Moran, to talk about the end of the world, hen parties and why hen parties sometimes feel like the end of the world. They also chat about big families, babysitting, working class characters on TV and why sometimes Danny Dyer is the only man for the job. Support this show http://supporter.ac...

It’s our Yosra’s turn picking Flicking and she’s been a bit nervous about making Hannah and Mick watch Enchanted, 2007’s live-action/animated musical fantasy romantic comedy film from the House of Mouse, starring Amy Adams as would-be princess Giselle transported from her cartoon world to actual New York City for a reality check and, potentially, true love’s first kiss.  That’s right: Yosra’s chos...

When it comes to creative partnerships, Standard Issue fave Helen Lewis is more interested in The Krankies than Beyoncé and Jay Z. In this week’s podzine, she got on the Zoom with Hannah to talk about the second series of her Radio 4 show Great Wives, as well as the upcoming 2024 US election.   Meanwhile, Mick chats to theatremaker Elisabeth Gunawan about dark clowning, mail order brides, cultural...

Kayla Feldman is directing The Arc, a trilogy of brand new short plays, of which Amy Rosenthal’s Birth is one. It’s joined by Marriage written by Alexis Zegerman and Death penned by Ryan Craig for a story of hatches, matches and dispatches told through a Jewish lens, as The Arc as a whole shines a contemporary light on the cycle of Jewish life, and what it means to live as a Jew in 2023. In the fi...

Winning Time is back on our tellyboxes! How excited are Hannah and Mick? That's just one of many questions we're asking in this month's Outside The Box. See also: What's going on with the Writers'/Actors' strikes? Is Packham the new Attenborough? Why didn't Stephen Root get an Emmy nod? Are Mickey and Jen still watching And Just Like That? Is The Bear style over substance? Why does Idris Elba make...