Friday I'm in Bed

Is the 24/7 News Cycle Affecting Our Mental Health? This week, Kate is flying solo while Gemma is on holiday, talking about the constant stream of news, the negativity that comes with it and why she's decided something needs to change. From wars and world politics to social media outrage, why are we consuming bad news all day long? And why does switching off somehow make us feel ignorant, unin...

This week on Friday I’m In Bed , Gemma flies solo while Kate enjoys a wellness retreat in Malta, to ask a question that might be more complicated than it sounds: what actually defines a generation, and where do the Xennials fit in? From cassette tapes and house phones to social media and growing up online, Gemma explores the experiences that supposedly separate Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, and wh...

Henry Cavill has aged. Shock horror. At 43, with a new baby and no longer required to maintain Superman cheekbones, he’s acquired a softer jawline. But instead of the usual “what happened to his face?” reaction, the internet seems remarkably accepting: he’s a dad, he’s happy, of course he looks different. So why don’t women get the same generosity when they age? We’re talking Sarah Jessica Parker,...

It’s Menopause Awareness Month, so we’re talking about menopause, money, medical misogyny and why women are still expected to do the research themselves. We start with menopause supplements. Are they an overpriced pink tax, a useful shortcut, or somewhere in between? We talk about the wild west of the supplement industry, the mental load of figuring out what you actually need and why “just take a...

This week on Friday, I’m in Bed, we’re talking about the fallout between Ed Sheeran and Macklemore after Macklemore was dropped as a support act following his outspoken support for Palestine. But rather than debating the politics of Gaza, we’re asking a different question: what do you owe the people you work with? Should Ed Sheeran have stood by his friend and colleague? What does professional loy...

This week we're getting into a Telegraph column celebrating the return of slim, beautiful women, and Sydney Sweeney's naked ad for sports prediction app Novig. Sadie Sink's Calvin Klein campaign has been held up as a sign that thin is back, so we ask whether it ever left, why inclusion gets called political while thinness counts as normal, and whether women need to be beautiful at all....

This week on Friday I’m In Bed, we’re asking why everything in modern life seems to need a name. We're starting with friendship and loneliness, and the rise in the number of young people saying they have no close friends. Are we getting worse at friendship, or have we built a society that gives us fewer opportunities to make and maintain friends? We get into social media, the decline of youth...

What happens when women stop competing for the one seat at the table and start building their own tables? This week on Friday I’m in Bed, we’re talking feminism, female solidarity and the women who decided there was no point waiting for permission. First up, Daisy Chain Fields, the all-women music festival inspired by Lilith Fair, which brought together some of the biggest names in music and raise...

Why has “influencer” become such a dirty word? This week on Friday I’m in Bed, we’re talking about influencer misogyny, the backlash against women making money online, and why we seem so determined to decide whether someone is “authentic” or not. We look at teenage TikTok sensation Ellie Ellis, who gained 750,000 followers in her first week before the reaction quickly turned from who is this girl?...

Some people watch a murder trial the way other people watch Love Island. This week we're looking at what happens when a real criminal case becomes internet entertainment, and why the audience for all of it is overwhelmingly women. We get into forensic fandom, TikTok detectives and the postpartum psychosis story that's being drowned out by conspiracy theories about body doubles. Then someth...

Andy Burnham has been Prime Minister for about three weeks and appears to have spent most of that time on TikTok. The Guardian is calling him the UK's first TikTok PM. We're asking whether we actually want our politicians behaving like influencers, whether "authenticity" just means a good social media team, and whether social media has made us expect everyone to be entertaining,...

Why can't women over 50 get hired? This week we're on ageism at work, the AI CV screening filtering experienced women out before a human ever sees them, and what happened when former Elle fashion editor Stacey Duguid admitted to 16 months out of work and more than 150 applications with nothing to show for it. Before that, Jeremy Clarkson reckons benefit claimants should send weekly thank y...

Meta glasses look like an ordinary pair of Ray-Bans, which is exactly the problem. This week we're talking about voyeurism and what happens when being filmed becomes the default. Meta pushed an update stopping people tampering with the recording light, then two days later the FT reported they've prototyped glasses that record constantly with no light at all. We get into spy cameras hidden...

No episode this week. Gem lost her pug this week, and she's not in a place to record 45 minutes of chat and nonsense right now. Normal service resumes next Friday. Here's Peppa's audition for podcast co-host, demonstrating her sassiness. Back soon. Thanks for understanding. 🖤

This week we're asking why women who speak up always seem to end up under more scrutiny than the behaviour they're challenging. Inspired by Love Island's Jasmine, we unpack the idea of the "bad feminist", why women are expected to get feminism exactly right, and whether we've created impossible standards for ourselves. Then we swap the villa for the football pitch as we ask why Erling Haaland has...

Kate's on holiday, so Gemma welcomes a special guest Georgie Swallow. Most women are left in the dark about the true impact of medical menopause; by the time they realise the symptoms, they've already experienced years of chaos. Gemma and Georgie uncover how treatment for blood cancer and other conditions can push women into early menopause without warning, leaving them feeling lost, misun...

Kate's off sunning herself in Spain, so this week Gemma's joined by Laurie from the Female Childfree Collective for a one-topic special. We're talking about a very modern pressure: the idea that if you're childfree, you should be visibly, impressively productive about it. Five businesses, six holidays a year, a new hobby every fortnight. When did freedom stop meaning you get to cho...

This week we ask why new research has named UK women the angriest, saddest and most worried in Europe, and whether medical misogyny, the pay gap and invisible labour might have something to do with it. Then we get into romantasy and the moral panic over Bad Girl Books, Britain's first romantasy bookshop. Why is fantasy treated as high art when men write it and trash when women do? Expect drago...

This week, the Hannah Spencer "Gucci" shirt that wasn't. A patterned blouse in Parliament got branded a £2,000 designer piece online, when it was really a £15 charity-shop find, so we get into why women's clothes draw scrutiny men's never do, and how one post hardens into "fact". Then to China's so-called "leftover women", the label the state coined fo...

New research says films are more likely to star a talking animal, or a leading man called Chris, than a woman over 60. This week we get into ageism in film and TV and the midlife women who vanish from our screens around 40, only to reappear as somebody's grandmother or a witchy old hag. Why do older women keep disappearing? Do reboots like Practical Magic and And Just Like That count as progress,...

It's Pride Month, so naturally everyone's arguing about toilets. This week we get into the new EHRC guidance on single-sex spaces, what it actually says about the trans toilet debate, and why we don't think this was ever the crisis it's been sold as. We also dig out the quiet bits nobody covered: the protections around breastfeeding, menopause and pregnancy. Then we turn to Stephen...

This week on Friday I'm In Bed we get into nonnamaxxing, the TikTok trend telling twenty-somethings to live like an Italian grandmother, and ask whether it's lost wisdom or just wellness culture with a tomato plant. We also unpack the backlash to the Department for Education's post-16 campaign fronted by Gemma Collins, and why parents and teachers called it tone-deaf on SEND support. P...

Content note: the first topic discusses sexual assault. There is a warning at the top of that section and chapter markers if you would like to skip ahead. Married at First Sight UK has been pulled from Channel 4 after three former brides made allegations against their on-screen husbands. We use it as a way into a bigger question: what does reality TV actually ask people to consent to? This week al...

At what point does commenting on women’s bodies stop being something we all just do, and start being the actual problem? This week we look at how school PE shaped a generation of women’s relationships with their own bodies — and why 4.1 million British women in their 50s and 60s are still avoiding exercise because of it. Then Kate takes us to Olivia Rodrigo’s baby doll dress and the internet meltd...

This week on Friday I'm in Bed; we're looking at two ends of the spectrum- young people who aren't going out, and older women working out who they actually want to live the rest of their lives with. Different demographics, same quiet rewriting of the script. Kate kicks us off with the slow death of going out. A pint has hit £10 in some places, two pubs a day are closing in the UK, and...