Through her own experience of becoming a single parent, Zoe Desmond wanted to change the often isolated picture for people in similar situations. So she set up the Frolo app, aimed at helping to foster a community focussed on the joy of solo parenting, rather than the negative stereotypes often perpetuated by society and the media. It was through the app that Zoe met journalist Rebecca Cox, herself a single mother to a young child, who shared many of the same concerns as her and others in their ...
Oct 08, 2023•30 min
What do you get the person who has everything? A home DNA testing kit seems to be the present du jour and in the UK alone, more than 4.7million of us have spit into a vial to find out more about our ancestry. Journalist Jenny Kleeman’s new BBC Sounds series, The Gift, explores what happens when technology, genealogy and identity collide, and our Mick got on the Zoom with her to chat crimes solved, sperm stolen, and why these kits’ popularity show no signs of waning. Because what could possibly g...
Oct 04, 2023•1 hr 30 min
When journalist Moya Lothian-McLean was asked whether she’d be interested in exploring the truth about Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and what that means to and for modern Britons, she didn’t need asking twice. The resulting podcast, Human Resources, is a smart, nuanced, meticulously researched look at the realities and effects of the slave trade, the capitalist system it created, and how it’s indelibly shaped us all. With Human Resources’ third season underway, Mick got ...
Oct 01, 2023•34 min•Ep. 898
Why is “sorry” so often the easiest word for women? It’s a question author and mental health campaigner Lucy Nichol found herself asking on a regular basis, and a topic she covers in her latest novel, No Worries If Not!. She and Mick chat about apologies, how empowered we really were back in the ‘90s, and what they'd like to see on a T-shirt. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Dr Carrie Dunn makes a welcome return to chat all things women’s football, the new WSL season, and her book Woman Up: Pitches Pay ...
Sep 27, 2023•1 hr 28 min
If you don't know a huge amount about the English Civil War, join the club. Also, perhaps get your hands on a copy of Francesca Peacock's excellent new book Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. Hannah got on the Zoom with Francesca to learn about how the war affected Margaret's life, and what that life can tell us about marriage, infertility, literature, fashion and feminism in the 17th century. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acas...
Sep 24, 2023•26 min
It's September, the nights are drawing in and do we have some TV recommendations for you? Yes, we do. In this episode, we're chatting Winning Time*, The Woman in the Wall, Only Murders In The Building, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Painkiller and Beef. Since we recorded this, Winning Time has, indeed, been cancelled. *sobs* 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 meg...
Sep 22, 2023•41 min
Who wants to live forever? That's the question Hannah puts to Dr Aleks Krotoski, tech journalist and podcaster, whose latest series, The Immortals, looks at the tech millionaires searching for the key to eternal life. And if they are looking forward, Jen's looking backwards with Donna Freed, whose search for answers about her birth parents led her to a well-publicised crime. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen's got some news about viewership of women's sport, and in Rated or Dated, we're on first name...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Actor, comedian and writer Doon Mackichan has written an incredibly to-the-point memoir, My Lady Parts, and so, OBVIOUSLY, Hannah leapt at the chance to talk to her. They chat about ageing, Smack The Pony, Paedogeddon, telling off Mamet, and dead naked women on TV. 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
Sep 17, 2023•28 min
Raising Arizona, The Coen Brothers’ second film, is a screwball comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter, as a loved-up couple who can’t have kids of their own and so decide to steal a baby. It’s also a Dunleavy family favourite, hence our Hannah choosing it for this month’s Flicking. Will Raising Arizona raise Mick and Yosra’s spirits as high as Cage’s hair? Or will it sink like two prisoners returning to the clink through a tunnel of mud? Find out! Support this show http://supporter.acast...
Sep 16, 2023•25 min•Ep. 892
Dating: it’s weird, isn’t it? Two strangers having contrived chat in a lost-forever pocket of time. Which all makes it excellent fodder for playwright Miriam Battye, who’s chatting to Hannah about her latest stage offering, Strategic Love Play. Miriam also spent some time in the Succession writers’ room, but Hannah wasn’t interested in talking about that. LOLZ. There is also Succession content, including why Roman accidentally sending Logan a dick pic was always going to happen. There’s more wri...
Sep 13, 2023•1 hr 26 min
Preventable deaths by suicide remain the biggest killer of young people under the age of 35 in the UK and continue to rise across the population. Though men account for 75% all suicides, the biggest increase in 2021, according to the most up-to-date Government statistics, was in women and girls aged 24 and under. Keen to bring these numbers down, is the suicide prevention charity, Samaritans*, and for those already bereaved by a loved one taking their own life, Suicide & Co** provides help a...
Sep 10, 2023•42 min
ITV crime drama The Tower is back on our screens for a second series, presenting our Hannah with an excellent opportunity to jump on the Zoom with Gemma Whelan, who plays DS Sarah Collins. They chat about the reputation of the Met, telling women’s stories, Gentleman Jack, Upstart Crow and what exactly Gemma was doing with that fox. Jen's chatting to poet Maggie Smith about how when her career took off, her marriage declined, something she charts in her gorgeous new memoir, You could Make This Pl...
Sep 06, 2023•1 hr 33 min
Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life is, ostensibly, a biography of Eileen Blair, nee Eileen O’Shaughnessy, aka the first Mrs George Orwell. And indeed, Anna tells Eileen’s story beautifully, using Eileen’s own words from letters to friends and to her husband, with added judicious fiction, as she imagines scenes from the Orwells’ lives, and from Eileen’s life. Turns out, Eileen played a vital role in Orwell’s writing and in his life (in actually saving his life – and indeed in keep...
Sep 03, 2023•25 min•Ep. 888
Nina Sosanya has been a regular presence on TV screens since the nineties, quite often portraying hard-working and so seen as “difficult” women, including Jenny in Teachers and now Leigh in Screw. Screw is back for season two, so our Hannah took the chance to get Nina on the Zoom to chat about, well, being on the Zoom, putting the prison uniform back on, those ‘difficult’ women and the strikes in America. Jen’s chatting to Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science, about climate cha...
Aug 30, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 887
The British Empire has been a hot topic for centuries, but debates around its impact have reignited in recent years. In trying to explain these debates to her children, writer, podcaster and advertising executive, Shelina Janmohamed, was struck by how few resources there were available to help inform that conversation. And so, Shelina wrote The Story Of Now: Why We Need To Talk About The British Empire, her own book for children aged ten and above. In this week’s Chops, she joins Jen to talk abo...
Aug 27, 2023•31 min
How much can a person's name tell us about them? Almost everything, says journalist Sheela Banerjee and in this week's podcast, she's chatting to Mickey about her book, What's In A Name? and how she’s used what we call ourselves and our kids to examine the history of modern, multicultural Britain. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen talks to Team GB triathlete Jess Learmonth, about being a gold medallist, support for athletes on maternity leave and gearing up for the next Olympics. So, does that mean w...
Aug 23, 2023•1 hr 24 min
Henpocalypse! hit our screens this week, so Hannah's been on the phone with its writer and creator, Caroline Moran, to talk about the end of the world, hen parties and why hen parties sometimes feel like the end of the world. They also chat about big families, babysitting, working class characters on TV and why sometimes Danny Dyer is the only man for the job. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn mo...
Aug 20, 2023•31 min
It’s our Yosra’s turn picking Flicking and she’s been a bit nervous about making Hannah and Mick watch Enchanted, 2007’s live-action/animated musical fantasy romantic comedy film from the House of Mouse, starring Amy Adams as would-be princess Giselle transported from her cartoon world to actual New York City for a reality check and, potentially, true love’s first kiss. That’s right: Yosra’s chosen a Disney princess movie. Will Mick and (especially) Hannah suffer Nam-style flashbacks to some of ...
Aug 19, 2023•27 min•Ep. 883
When it comes to creative partnerships, Standard Issue fave Helen Lewis is more interested in The Krankies than Beyoncé and Jay Z. In this week’s podzine, she got on the Zoom with Hannah to talk about the second series of her Radio 4 show Great Wives, as well as the upcoming 2024 US election. Meanwhile, Mick chats to theatremaker Elisabeth Gunawan about dark clowning, mail order brides, cultural stereotypes and her award-winning play, Unforgettable Girl. In Jenny Off The Blocks, there’s World Cu...
Aug 16, 2023•1 hr 31 min
Kayla Feldman is directing The Arc, a trilogy of brand new short plays, of which Amy Rosenthal’s Birth is one. It’s joined by Marriage written by Alexis Zegerman and Death penned by Ryan Craig for a story of hatches, matches and dispatches told through a Jewish lens, as The Arc as a whole shines a contemporary light on the cycle of Jewish life, and what it means to live as a Jew in 2023. In the first half of this Chops, Mick chats to Kayla about the specific rituals in universal experiences, whe...
Aug 13, 2023•26 min
Winning Time is back on our tellyboxes! How excited are Hannah and Mick? That's just one of many questions we're asking in this month's Outside The Box. See also: What's going on with the Writers'/Actors' strikes? Is Packham the new Attenborough? Why didn't Stephen Root get an Emmy nod? Are Mickey and Jen still watching And Just Like That? Is The Bear style over substance? Why does Idris Elba make such strange choices? And has the BBC given us another summer stinker? Support this show http://sup...
Aug 11, 2023•45 min
Could anything make the Edinburgh Fringe more stressful for a comedian? Well, American comedian Janine Harouni is doing it while nine months pregnant, so Mickey got on the Zoom with her to find out what her plan is, what it's like when your dad voted for Donald Trump, and family history. In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen's talking to director Georgina Cammalleri about her new boxing documentary, Right To Fight, and why sports documentaries can tell us a lot, regardless of whether we're interested in ...
Aug 09, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Comedian, firm Standard Issue favourite and now author, the mighty Jo Caulfield has penned The Funny Thing About Death…, a truly lovely, funny and moving book about illness and grief but, mostly, about her big sister Annie and their relationship. In this Chops, Jo chats to our Mick about siblings in general, Annie in particular, getting – or indeed not getting – to grips with someone you love dying, how to not get ashes in your face, and, well, the funny things about death. The Funny Thing About...
Aug 06, 2023•36 min•Ep. 878
Biological clocks, abortions rights, percussive speculum – it’s all happening in Larisa Faber’s brilliant play, stark bollock naked. Mick got on the Zoom with Larisa and her partner in collaboration, Shamira Turner, to chat whether that tick-tock is real, imagined or societal and to try to answer the evergreen question, ‘will women ever be fully human?’. Samantha Lane, artistic director of Little Angel Theatre, talks to our Hannah about why it's never too early to start taking your kids to the t...
Aug 02, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 877
What’s this, Smack The Pony’s Fiona Allen? Oh HELLO. Ahead of Fiona’s debut – debut! – standup show, Fiona Allen: On The Run, our Mick got on the Zoom to this one-woman whirlwind to chat Smack The Pony (obvs), women and comedy (obvs), and falling in love with a bull (erm). Fiona Allen: On The Run, kicks off with an Edinburgh Fringe run at the Pleasance Courtyard from the 2nd to 20th of August, before going on a UK tour. For details of dates, just type ‘Fiona Allen On The Run tour’ into Google – ...
Jul 30, 2023•32 min•Ep. 265
K-Pop is known for its good-looking stars, catchy tunes, and teenage fanbase. However, as journalist Chloe Hadjimatheou investigates in her new Radio 4 series, Burning Sun, there is a darker and frankly horrifying side to this popular music phenomenon. She chats to Hannah about what life is like for women in South Korea, sexual abuse, and the digital culture enabling it. Mick chats to Carole Fisher, host of new podcast The Girlfriends, a true crime story about the murder of Gail Katz by her husb...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 30 min
When Victoria Belim set out to write a family history, she uncovered a mystery that told her a lot about her family and Ukraine's past. And now, as The Rooster House: A Ukrainian Family History is published, all eyes are on Victoria's home country. She talks to Hannnah about uncles with bad opinions, cucumber whisperers, and how Ukraine is processing its past while struggling for its future. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/standardissuespodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...
Jul 23, 2023•25 min
Cartoons and live action living together in total harmony? Movie fan Mickey Noonan has picked a cinematic game changer for this month’s Flicking. Robert Zemeckis’s boundary-bashing, genre-mixing, Oscar-nabbing 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a tightly structured classical noir script packed to the gills with gags and boasting a career-best performance from delightful furball Bob Hoskins. A joy for all the family, right. Right? Have Hannah Dunleavy and Yosra Osman got their stern judging fac...
Jul 22, 2023•30 min•Ep. 873
If you've not heard of 17th Century artist Artemesia Gentileschi, you're not alone. The good news is that Mickey's been on Zoom with author Elizabeth Fremantle to find out about Gentileschi's incredible life, what her beautiful but brutal paintings reveal about her story, and Elizabeth's new book Disobedient. Jen's chatting to journalist and author Paula Cocozza about her new book Speak To Me, and a lack of connection in an overly-connected world. In Jenny Off The Blocks, we'll be looking ahead ...
Jul 19, 2023•1 hr 25 min
The world of sex, relationships and dating is a minefield, growing increasingly difficult to navigate thanks to the use of online apps. Fortunately, educator and social worker-turned-anonymous relationships expert, LalalaLetMeExplain is here to talk us through it. Known for her hilarious, honest and relatable advice – which she’s already turned into a book, Block Delete, Move On, and a regular column in OK! Magazine – LaLa is about to launch a new podcast, It’s Not You It’s Them…But It Might Be ...
Jul 16, 2023•39 min
