Standard Issue Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Flicking #61: Challengers May 02, 2025

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It’s game, set and love matches in our Yosra’s pick of 2024 films, as she, Mick and Hannah watch Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty tale of rivalry on and off the courts. Starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, it was a bit of a critics’ darling and a box-office champ. But does that mean a flying sausage for our three women? Or will they take issue with the plot, the characters, the tennis, the depiction of women (woman), and the Golden Globe-winning score? Ooh, it’s a mystery.

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The Bush Telegraph: You'd think, right? May 01, 2025

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There’s a whole load of ‘but why the feck isn’t that already happening?’ in Hannah and Mick’s look at the news this week, as they take in nudification apps (no thanks), fresh rules for the police (yes please), and new investigations at old mother and baby institutions in Ireland (finally). Still, good news comes in the shapes of Jon Bon Jovi, miniature dachshunds, and new shoes.

Plus Sarah Millican's Light Relief for £5+ Patreon members.

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Rated or Dated: Look Who’s Talking (1990) Apr 30, 2025

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Director Amy Heckerling is known for films centred on the female experience, but how feminist is a film about a woman narrated by an actual man-baby? Or a single mum hell-bent on finding a dad for her young child? Jen, Mick and Hannah revisit 1990’s Look Who’s Talking.

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Lucky boys with Chloe Hadjimatheou Apr 29, 2025

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If an adult male grooms a teenage girl into a sexual relationship, we're increasingly likely to call it abuse. But reverse the sex of the perpetrator and victim and attitudes are very different. In her latest podcast, Lucky Boy, journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou investigates one such case. She chats to Hannah about why female abusers are judged less harshly and their victims are often not seen as victims at all.

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Have Lauren Mishcon and Nicole Goodman tried this? Apr 28, 2025

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Anyone who’s ever been anywhere near social media can attest to the somewhat loose definition of “self-care” adopted by society. Broadcasters Lauren Mishcon and Nicole Goodman, keen to challenge the deeply consumerist notions underpinning the wellness industry, and so their podcast, The Self-Care Club, in which they try and test different practices, was spawned. Now in its fifth year, the podcast has also led to a book, Have You Tried This: The Only Self-Care Book You Will Ever Need. Jen catches up with Lauren and Nicole to talk about the weird and wonderful things they’ve tried, how they define “self-care”, and just how problematic the industry is for women.

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Sophie Gilbert on how pop culture turned women against themselves Apr 25, 2025

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In Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, Pulitzer-nominated journalist Sophie Gilbert underlines how popular culture isn’t an innocuous force. She chats to our Mick about how focusing on how women and girls have been presented in pop culture from the late 1990s through the first two decades of this century revealed modern misogyny has been shaped by a mass culture attuned to male desire and all-pervasive pornography.

Girl on Girl is published by John Murray on May 1, but available for pre-order now.

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Rated or Dated: Leon (1995) Apr 23, 2025

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Once cool, now ick. That could describe so many things from 1995, but in this instance it's Luc Besson's thriller about a prepubescent girl and her assassin neighbour. But could it all have been so different?

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Meeting history with Amy Ng Apr 22, 2025

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Two young women walk into a theatre in China in 1935 and so begins a relationship that spans a turbulent period of history and ends with the death of one of them. Hannah chats to playwright and historian Amy Ng about her latest play, Shanghai Dolls, about finding the women behind the legends of Sun Weishi and Madame Mao, and about how we could all probably do with brushing up on our Chinese history.

More information and tickets here: https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/shanghai-dolls/

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Abigail Johnson on nineties nostalgia and millennium madness Apr 21, 2025

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Books are a bit like buses for author Abigail Johnson, who signed a two-book deal after taking a punt on a creative writing course during the pandemic. Fast forward a few years, and Abigail's debut novel The Secret Collector is out now. Jen catches up with Abigail to talk about loneliness, learning from our elders (and indeed youngers), and the best bug that never happened.

The Secret Collector is available now.

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Outside The Box April 2025 Apr 18, 2025

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There's a long weekend ahead and if you want to spend it watching telly, then you do you. Have some help choosing in the form of our monthly chat about TV, in which we're talking about The White Lotus, The Last of Us, After the Party, Dying for Sex, Black Mirror, Black Snow and Black Doves. Yeah, we saw the pattern there too.

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