Standard Issue Podcast

Is Jordan Peele's directorial debut a horror film, a satire or both? We find out, as Yosra brings 2017's Get Out to the court of Flicking. We chat about race (obvs), class (natch) and Daniel Kaluuya's iconic tears (because of course).  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. V...

In this week’s podzine, the glorious Laura Bates joins our Mick to rage against the sexism machine. The feminist writer, activist, founder of Everyday Sexism and author has written another book – Fix The System, Not The Women – and it’s both vital and full of righteous fury.  Hannah’s been chatting to Julie Owen Moylan about her debut novel That Green-Eyed Girl, about getting her first break in pu...

Marys Seacole is Jackie Sibblies Drury's new play exploring the life of the Scottish-Jamaican nurse who treated British soldiers during the Crimean War, and of other ‘Marys’, those in the caring professions. Hannah catches up with Kayla Meikle and Olivia Williams, who play Seacole and Florence Nightingale respectively, to chat about in what – and indeed whom – society places value. In Jenny Off Th...

Frances Scott is the woman behind 50:50 Parliament, a brilliant campaign working with all the UK’s political parties to help women progress in politics in order to build a better democracy. We can all agree it needs to be better, right? Right. She talks to our Mick about how it all started, why it’s so damn important to have women’s voices in Parliament, and how we can all help make it happen.  Pl...

At home this Bank Holiday Monday? If you're looking for some TV to watch then you've come to the right place. This time, we've talking about Julia, Gentleman Jack, The Witchfinder, Inside No 9, Russian Doll and Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your...

Comedian Isy Suttie just announced her first stand-up tour in six years, so Hannah got on the Zoom with her to find out more and reminisce about childhood trips to Center Parcs. Because why not? In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen's chatting to Leah McDerment of the London Lions about the team’s fantastic season and the growth of basketball in the UK. We're back in 1997 in Rated or Dated, as we watch rom...

Clearly what’s happening in Ukraine is horrific for everyone there, but women and girls are particularly at risk during conflict, whether they’re fleeing the country or staying put in Ukraine.  Suzy Madigan, senior humanitarian advisor on gender and protection at CARE International, has 20+ years experience in humanitarian work, with a focus on helping women and girls, and in this Chops, she expla...

Back in October at the Newcastle Stand, Mickey was tasked with herding the following brilliant comedy cats: Sarah Millican, Louise Young and Sally-Anne Hayward. As ever during In Conversations, the gamut of topics is vast, but with a healthy focus on cats, chocolate and periods. However, the real issue is clearly how the hell Sally-Anne Hayward still walks among us given her unsanitary sanitary pr...

Louise Kennedy’s short story collection The End of the World is a Cul-de-sac garnered her all sorts of well-deserved plaudits. Her debut novel, Trespasses, is a page-turning story of love and loss set in Belfast during The Troubles, in which Louise’s spare, lyrical writing brings to uneasy life the reality of people getting on with their lives in a time and place where the unspeakable is just ever...

Comedian Lucy Beaumont is a busy woman, starring as a fictionalised version of herself in Dave’s Meet The Richardsons and being the co-writer of new Channel 4 sitcom, Hullraisers. In this week’s podzine, she chats to our Hannah about why Hull is no longer the butt of a national joke and that time she wet herself before 8 Out of 10 Cats.  For Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen’s been on the Zoom with multi-...

A life-threatening ectopic pregnancy at 37 caused writer Georgina Scull to re-evaluate her lot. Having not lived the life she’d “planned”, she set about talking to people facing their own mortality to find out what they wished they'd done differently. Her new book, The Regrets of The Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live, is the result. She chats to Jen about common themes of regret...

The love for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo's 2011 comedy brimming with women is flowing out of Mickey like lava, in the latest episode of Flicking. But what do Yosra and Hannah make of Bridesmaids? The cast? The plot? The outrageous opulence? The weird American tradition of having 27 big days before The Big Day? Find out!  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted...

Times are tough, financially speaking, and Makala Green knows a thing or two about looking after the pennies, having worked her way up from a 16-year-old cashier at Nationwide bank to being a chartered financial planner. In this week’s podzine, she chats to Jen about her new book, The Money Edit, and what we can do to keep on top of our finances.   When do you think the first woman was paid to wor...

Journalist and writer Lucy Ward tells Hannah how she turned a tale of family history she heard in a school playground into the cracking new non-fiction book The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great defied a deadly virus. They talk about how Catherine The Great's bold decision to be inoculated - and talk about it publicly - helped the fight against smallpox, about writing that bo...

Areej Osman is a senior placement coordinator at Refugees At Home, and this week, she’s explaining the realities of hosting a displaced person. She and Jen chat pros, cons, vulnerabilities and responsibilities.  Victorian girl power is the foundation of author Liz Hyder’s latest fiction, The Gifts, and she’s talking to Mick about fierce women, unscrupulous surgeons, surprise wings and the joyful p...

The stage version of The Life of Pi is currently pulling in the crowds and snaffling all the Olivier nominations, so Hannah got on the Zoom with the woman responsible for adapting the book: Lolita Chakrabarti. They talk about the highs and lows of tackling such a well-loved novel and its themes of storytelling and faith, as well as chatting about some of Lolita's other recent projects, including A...

How do you turn a book of short stories into a cohesive play? This week, Mickey finds out as she chats Angela Carter, feminism, wolves and circus skills with Mary Swan, director of Proteus Theatre’s adaptation of The Bloody Chamber. Jen's been on the Zoom with US writer Kimberly Jones about her book, How We Can Win, and the economics of racial inequality in the US, and in Jenny Off The Blocks, she...

Professor Jane Monckton Smith is a criminologist specialising in domestic homicide, a former police officer, a professor of public protection at the University of Gloucestershire, and responsible for groundbreaking work on coercive control and stalking. Too right we love her. In this Chops, she chats with Mick about her latest book, In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder, i...

Comedian and Standard Issue fave Rachel Parris has been soliciting advice from strangers for her new book, which is called... Advice From Strangers. She chats to Hannah, from the back of a cab, about the joy and madness of actual advice from strangers, being on tour, and her candid writing about late miscarriage.  Our resident music buff Liz Buckley is back and she's in a shiny hat, because this t...

Aaron Sorkin's award-winning adaptation of much-loved Harper Lee novel To Kill A Mockingbird, is finally coming to London's Gielgud Theatre. In this week's Chops, Jen catches up with Pamela Nomvete and Gwyneth Keyworth, who play Calpurnia and Scout in the new production, to find out what it's like to play such beloved roles, how Sorkin has brought the play into the 21st century, and whether or not...

It's Hannah's Flicking pick and she chose the third film of a trilogy set in a time of pandemic AND war. So, is Matt Reeves' 2017 sci-fi, dystopian, performance capture, ape-tastic blockbuster good enough for Yosra and Mick to forgive her? All hail Caesar is all we're saying.  Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inform...

Jessica Turner and Amara Karan are stars of Tim Walker’s new play Bloody Difficult Women, in which they play Theresa May and Gina Miller respectively, in a storyline that charts the events behind the court case Miller brought against May in 2016 and what’s happened since. They chat to our Jen about being powerful women – and making Theresa May sympathetic. Sorrywhatnow? Hannah’s been on the Zoom w...

Psychologist and working-class feminist author Dr Jessica Taylor’s new book, Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them, is an uncompromising challenge to the psychiatric labelling and medicalisation of women and girls. And blimey, what a book: huge food for thought and a push for seismic change, engagingly written. In this Chops, she chats to our Mick (fresh from having...

Why is everyone in Iceland so happy? Might it be that they are closer to gender equality than most? In this week's podcast, Hannah chats to writer, journalist and First Lady of Iceland, Eliza Reid, about life for women in a country with the same number of residents as Nottingham, and her new book Secrets of The Sprakkar. With the Winter Paralympics just a few days away, Jen's been on the blower to...

My Pen is The Wing of a Bird is an excellent new book - on sale now -  featuring short stories by 18 new female writers in Afghanistan. It exists thanks to the hard work of the people behind the writers' development programme Untold, and exists despite the not insubstantial obstacles of a global pandemic and the disaster that befell Afghanistan last summer. In this week's Chops, Hannah talks to th...