Standard Issue Podcast

Beaches are nice, eh? Green spaces are nice, eh? Looking at places generally not covered in shit is nice, eh? They are, and in this week’s podzine, Jen’s chatting to Nicky Green, CEO of the Two Minute Foundation, about how we can all do our bit to keep Britain tidy (remember that?) in a teeny-tiny amount of time. Hannah’s been talking to Lucy O’Brien, author of many music books about brilliant women. They cover a whole load of ground about being a woman in the music business, but focus on Karen Carpenter, an incredible musician whose tragedy tends to overshadow her achievements, as detailed in Lucy’s latest book, Lead Sister: The Story of Karen Carpenter. This week’s Rated or Dated is a particularly interesting and complicated slice of history, with added Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier, as we watch 1967/8’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Make another pie would you, Tillie? And where’s Mick? Well, you might find her in a feather boa, sambuca in hand, being loud near Rolex wearers in York. Sorrywhatnow? The Bush Telegraph should put you straight. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chief fire officer, Big Issue ambassador, psychologist, author, champion of dogs – there are legion reasons Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is one of our favourite guests. And now she’s gone and penned a book that’s bang up Standard Issue’s alley. The Gender Bias: The Barriers That Hold Women Back and How to Break Them explores the serious amount of glass – ceilings, cliffs, breadlines – thwarting women’s potential and delaying equality being reached. So our Mick got on the Zoom to chat to Sab about gender bias, women biased against women, the modesty trap and the glass case of emotion trapping women. And dogs. There’s quite a lot of dog chat.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Only a few sleeps until Succession, so in the meanwhile we've been gorging on a lot of documentaries, including We Need to Talk About Cosby, Wild Isles, Paula, Kathy Burke: Growing Up and Finding Michael. Still time for a bit of drama as Hannah and Mick chat about the last three episodes of The Last Of Us, Jen talks Fleishman Is In Trouble and we all have thoughts on Unforgotten's fifth series.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're full of life advice in this week’s podzine. First up, Mick chats to Helen Wills, mum of teenagers and host of the Teenage Kicks podcast, about navigating the teenage years as a parent, letting go of control, and what we can learn from the adolescents in our lives.If you’ve ever wondered what happens if someone dies without family or money to deal with the aftermath, Evie King has written a book about exactly this, Ashes to Admin: Takes from the Caseload of a Council Funeral Officer. She chats to Hannah about the practicalities of planning a funeral and why it’s good to keep death at the back of our mind.In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen’s chatting equal prize money, stupid stories, and alpine excellence, and for god’s sake don’t say his name three times – we’re watching 1988’s Beetlejuice in Rated or Dated.Meanwhile there’s #Patygate, policing, and period pains in the Bush Telegraph – but does it taste of metal?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Considering that we all start life in one, and that roughly half of the global population has one, the womb remains one of the most under-researched, misunderstood, and controversial organs in the human body. Midwife and best-selling author Leah Hazard wanted to highlight this absence of knowledge, as well as the incredible work being done to better understand it in the future, in her endlessly fascinating new book Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began. In this week’s Chops, Leah chats to Jen about some of that incredible work, why the womb remains profoundly political, and the challenges of getting men, and publishers, to care.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you want to make our Hannah angry, simply refer to God’s Own Country, Francis Lee’s 2017 film about love between an isolated young sheep farmer (Josh O’Connor) and a Romanian migrant worker (Alex Secareanu) set on a failing farm, as the Yorkshire Brokeback Mountain and watch her Bruce Banner it up. And right enough. It’s fair to say that love for this film, for its cast (hello also Ian Hart and Gemma Jones) and for its closing song from Patrick Wolf is in the air for Yosra and Mick, too. So please enjoy three women having a lovely chat about a wonderful bit of cinema. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Embalming and rape might not sound like the makings of a great conversation, but Mickey proves that theory wrong when she gets on the Zoom with Alexandra Donnachie, whose play When We Died covers both topics. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen's chatting to boxer Caroline Dubois about the Olympics, trash talking, and turning professional. And in Rated or Dated, well, as you'll hear for yourself, we've thoughts on 1968's The Producers. And - spoiler alert - most of them aren't warm ones. Hannah's got some fun facts about the Elgin Marbles in BT and in SOTW, Mick's talking about childcare costs. Because when aren't we?Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"But women are violent, too" is a phrase often designed to shut down conversations about male violence. But, the inconvenient truth is, women can be and are violent. When? Why? And how does it differ from male violence? They're just some of the questions Hannah puts to Anna Motz, author of a fascinating new book A Love That Kills: Stories of Forensic Psychology and Female Violence.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Politics, power and sex play important parts in both of this week’s interviews. Ahead of new BBC documentary, Becoming Frida Kahlo, Hannah’s been on the Zoom with filmmakers Louise Lockwood and Nancy Bornat to talk about the superstar Mexican painter, who channelled her pain, heartache and womanhood into her art. Jen takes us even further back in time to revisit Tudor queens, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, who are the focus of a new exhibition at Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. Assistant curator Kate McCaffrey chats about Catherine and Anne: Queens, Rivals, Mothers and explains why we still find their lives so fascinating. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen’s talking about athletics, and a big new deal in women’s sport. In Rated or Dated, there’s bowling, blunts and bonus Tara Reid, as we watch a bonafide cult classic: 1998’s The Big Lebowski. And in the Bush Telegraph, we’re talking boats, bellends, some really bad policies, and Mick is absolutely not wishing you a happy International Women’s Day. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do we have hundreds of terms for the different stages of childhood and adolescence, but just one for the parents navigating their way through them all? This is just one of the questions asked in journalist Nell Frizzell’s excellent new book, Holding the Baby: Milk Sweat and Tears from the Frontline of Motherhood. Nell joins Jen to talk about her part-memoir, part-manifesto examining why we treat parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. They chat mental health, maternal rage, relationships, and sleep deprivation, as well as how to fix a system that isn’t working for anyone.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices