Standard Issue Podcast

On the bus home from her diagnosis of degenerative hearing condition otosclerosis, journalist and broadcaster Helena Merriman got thinking about the experiences of others on the receiving end of life-changing diagnoses. In this week’s podzine, she talks to Mick about Room 5, her latest series for Radio 4, a collection of stories about lives that change in a heartbeat and the process of diagnosis and recovery...

Ever wondered where the weird and wonderful workouts of the women’s fitness industry originated? Danielle Friedman did, which is why the journalist and author decided to research and write a book about the history of women’s fitness. In this week’s Chops, the last of January so possibly at the point at which you’re thinking of ditching any new year’s fitness resolutions, Danielle chats to Jen about Let’s Get Physical...

Ann Dowd – sorry… ANN DOWD! – joins Hannah on this week’s podcast to talk about her new film Mass, the Oscar buzz surrounding her performance, Aunt Lydia, The Leftovers, feral nuns and making it over 35. 

Jen chats to Sonita Gale, about her BAFTA long-listed new documentary, Hostile, the history of immigration to the UK, and the realities of the hostile environment for the very many people living in it...

“Random angry woman” Fiona Mackenzie was appalled when she saw the ‘rough sex’ defence being used in the horrific killing of Natalie Connolly in 2016 – a defence which, in December 2018, saw her killer sentenced to just three years and eight months in prison. And so Fiona did something about it, starting We Can’t Consent To This to highlight and then to campaign against men claiming ‘consensual rough sex’ as a defence against injuring and killing women...

It's the first Outside The Box of 2022 and we're talking about a whole load of telly, including Anne, Rules of The Game, Four Lives, The Girl Before, The Green Planet and Yellowjackets. We also find out if anyone is still watching And Just Like That.... Spoiler alert: Jen is - even if she's not entirely sure why. 

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Would you want to predict the future, if you could? This week, Hannah is chatting to actor writer and disability activist Athena Stevens, about her play The Diagnosis, in which another Cassandra is doomed not to be believed - again. Journalist Hazel Davis gets on the Zoom to author Jenn Ashworth to talk about unreliable narrators, listening to your own books and her latest novel, Ghosted...

Most people think they've got a grasp on history when it comes to the Tudors, but how much of that knowledge comes from pop culture or male historians? This week, Hannah chats to Dr Andrea Clarke, curator of The British Library's fantastic exhibition Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens. They talk about Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, how they were similar and how they were different, and what myths about them need to go in the bin right now...

Fauns and fascism ahoy, as Hannah gets Yosra and Mick to watch Guillermo Del Toro’s 2006 dark fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth, set in post-civil war Spain...

Some of us made plans to “better ourselves” to mark the advent of 2022, so Mick got on the Zoom with our resident psychotherapist Jane Watson, to talk about why we make new year’s resolutions, why we break them and how we can all be a bit kinder to ourselves.

In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen has a natter with two-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick, about an amazing year in women's motorsports and what's coming up next...

Northern Ireland is so often absent from our media and from the arts in the UK, so Hannah has been on the Zoom with Kate Reid, the writer of new play The 4th Country, and one of its stars, Rachael Rooney. They chat about a time of great change in the province and why England's view of it is so often wrong, as well as the highs and lows of rehearsing under the ever-present threat of a new lockdown. 

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