Standard Issue Podcast

If you've found the last few weeks stressful - and who hasn't? - we're here with some help. Mick talks to Katya Jezzard-Puyraud of Lighthearts UK to get some tips on dealing with anxiety, and long-time home edder Hazel Davies gives us some tips for coping now that schools have all been shut. We've also got Abortion Support Network’s Mara Clarke filling us in on what’s happening to women needing to...

Kate Isaacs is the founder of the #NotYourPorn campaign, whose mission is to hold porn companies to account. She believes revenge porn should not be a porn category, and consent should come before profit. Which you'd think would be hard to argue with. However, as you’re about to hear in this chat she had with our Mickey, Pornhub – very much the Johnny Big Balls of commercialised porn – isn’t makin...

This week's podcast comes straight from our respective self-isolation bunkers, because frankly, we can't sustain this rate of hand-washing. Joining us - and you - is our resident music guru Liz Buckley, who brings us some much needed joy by way of the Pet Shop Boys. Hannah goes to author Claire Allan for some advice on what to get our reading chops around during these most-long of days. We're herd...

The art world's not exactly been what you'd call welcoming to women over the years, as you can discover at London's Guildhall Art Gallery's latest exhibition Enchanted Interiors. In this week's Chops, Hannah chats to curator Katty Pearce about the gilded cages women have been kept in, the glass ceiling facing female artists and whether or not the Pre-Raphaelites deserve all the side-eye Hannah's b...

There's probably never been a better time to stay inside and watch some TV, so let us give you some pointers in March's Outside The Box. We talk Inside No 9, This Country, Bojack Horseman, Home, Last Tango in Halifax, Night on Earth, Rio and Kate: Becoming A Step Family, The Stranger, The Trials of Gabriel Fernadez and Locke and Key. Yes, that's a whole lot of telly.  * If you're looking for that...

With very clean hands, this week's podzine brings you Sex and Lies, as author Leila Slimani tells Jen all about her new book looking at the secret sex lives of women in Morocco, a country that still expects its women to be virgins or married. Part of the brilliant Vaults Festival, Miles Apart Together is a new play charting world-beating feats accomplished by women you've never heard of. But you'r...

It's the last in this year's International Women's Day series (although, in truth, every day is IWD at Standard Issue) and Hannah has been to chat to writer and photographer Samra Habib. They talk about her book We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir, and about what it's like both to be LGBT in Muslim communities and a Muslim in LGBT communities. Don't forget to listen to all our our IWD2...

For this, the International Women’s Day Eve episode in our series of IWD 2020 interviews, Mick caught up with fierce feminist, relentless activist and CEO of the Women’s Resource Centre, Vivienne Hayes. They chat challenging systemic sexism, class, the power of solidarity, the vital importance of women’s spaces and Pay Back The Tampon Tax – the Women’s Resource Centre’s excellent campaign for the...

In part five of our series for International Women's Day 2020, Jen and Mick talk to Helen Lewis, journalist and author of the new book Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights. They talk about speaking up, erasing history, cancel culture, and the #oneballcampaign, among many other things. Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights is available now, published by Jonathan Cape. S...

Smile Club, the new play from theatre-maker and actor Andrea Heaton, follows Lisa, an attendee of Smile Club – Smile Club being the government drive that exists to tame unruly women in Andrea’s imagined dystopian future. Although, as she and Mickey touch on, that dystopia feels closer than is comfortable.  Smile Club is a Red Ladder production and opens at Leeds Playhouse on March 5 before going o...

On day three of our International Women's Day 2020 series, we give you the gift of Su Pollard, actor and national treasure, best known as Hi-de-Hi's Peggy, and now starring in one-woman show Harpy. Jen chats to Su about mental health, ageing stars, wedding singers and upsetting passengers from the mighty Harwich Ferry. And parrots, obviously. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardis...

Inspiring force of nature and all-round top woman Sophie Walker chats to Mickey about: activism and how we can all get involved; being an optimistic feminist (and how we can all be one); how being the founding leader of the Women’s Equality Party changed her life; her recent appointment as CEO of The Young Women’s Trust, and her brilliant book, Five Rules For Rebellion: Let’s Change The World Ours...

In the first of our special interviews celebrating International Women's Day 2020, Hannah and Jen chatted to actor and writer Amelia Bullmore about her varied career. They talked about working with such excellent women as Sally Wainwright and Val McDermid, the joy of costumes, Coronation Street and - of course - I'm Alan Partridge, as well as how to write crime drama responsibly. Loads more bonus...

In this episode Jen catches up with author Molly Aitken to chat about her debut novel, The Island Child. They talk about motherhood, mental health, mythology, and why women don't ever seem to catch a break when it comes to complicated characters. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad...

At last year's Edinburgh Fringe, Mick, Hannah and Jen had a bloody lovely chat with comedian Laura Lexx and presenter and author Janet Ellis. They talked about finding a thing's peril (but doing it anyway!), the joy and revelation of napping, Goldie the dog, Goldie the musician, and the importance of the Night Stool Man. You’re probably going to have to listen if you want to know what that means....

From Marian Keyes to Jilly Cooper, Joanne Harris to Toni Morrison, Barbara Cartland to Gabriel Garcia Marquez: romantic novels are a broad church able to tackle a lot of big topics and hot potatoes. And yet a lot of people still get sniffy when it comes to romance.  We chatted to the bloody smashing Alison May, Chair of the Romantic Novelists’ Association – this year celebrating its 60th anniversa...

Ever wondered why some of the women around you just can't seem to catch a break in the workplace? In the fourth and final episode of our series on pregnancy, Jen catches up with Aceil Haddad, head of comms at the pregnancy and maternity rights charity Pregnant Then Screwed. They chat about the problems facing women in the workplace who are pregnant, on maternity leave or have returned to work afte...

FANFARE PLEASE. It's our 100th podzine and, woman oh woman, is it a bumper banger. (Yes. Yes it is.)  Kiran Millwood-Hargrave writes beautifully of women's experiences from history and The Mercies, her debut adult fiction (although don't think you're too old to read her children's and YA books), is no different, charting a 17th Century real-life devastating storm and imagining what happened in the...

We hear quite a lot about the joy and wonder of pregnancy, rather less about the stress of wondering if something's wrong or you just need to fart. In part three of our series on pregnancy, Jen talks to Anna Cook, team member at Mumsnet, about mental health in pregnancy, the anxiety around growing a human, and what you can do to help yourself and others experiencing it.    Support this show http:/...

Journalist Hazel Davis had The Best Time when we sent her to the British Library to chat with author and all-round hilarious woman Nina Stibbe. Chat veers delightfully wildly from Nina's first book, Love, Nina, to wayward mothers, prudish teens, being first published at 50, and when it's okay to risk pissing off your entire family. Nina's novel Reasons To Be Cheerful is out in paperback now.  Supp...

In the first of our new film podcast, Flicking *sniggers*, we're off to the Oscars where there is laughter, terror, some really old white dudes, and not a lot for anyone else. That's right, this month we watch the winners (Parasite, Joker, Jojo Rabbit), the losers (The Irishman) and the not-even-nominated (Just Mercy and Queen & Slim). Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespod...

Looking for a clever woman? Well, lucky you, we've four of them for you and that doesn't even include us. This week, Mick catches up with photographic artist Mandy Barker to talk about her exhibition Our Plastic Ocean, a retrospective of her work addressing the global crisis of marine plastic pollution. Jen talks to science journalist Ziya Tong about her book The Reality Bubble and society's blind...

QI Elf, Museum of Curiosities producer and our resident bookworm Anne Miller came round to Mick's to chat to the team about her new kids' book, Mickey And The Animal Spies. Talk covered spies, animals we’d like to live with, the joy of kids books, and that time Dunleavy worked in Harrods' swimwear section. It was delightful. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hoste...

The internet can be a nightmare for women trying to navigate the dos and myriad of don'ts for pregnant women, especially when it comes to staying active during pregnancy. Now that she is very much up the duff, Jen wanted to find out more about what she should be doing to stay fit, and fortunately Dr Marlize de Vevo and Sally Kettle of the Active Pregnancy Foundation were on hand to advise. Spoiler...

2020 has started with a bang on TV, so we've watched loads so you can get away with just watching the best bits. You are welcome. In this episode we chat Deadwater Fell, Killer Inside: The Mind Of Aaron Hernandez, Cobra, Sex Education, Messiah, The Outsider, You and Cheer. Plus Hannah wants us to make Lucy Worsley a National Treasure. The campaign starts here! Support this show http://supporter.ac...