What’s this, not one but two older women with a lot to do? In the same film? There’s never been such times. Mick’s picked Nyad, the 2023 sports biopic from dream team Elizabeth Chai Vasarheluyi and Jimmy Chin about marathon swimmer Diana Nyad’s attempts to swim the 110 miles of open ocean from Cuba to Florida – in her 60s. But will Hannah and Yosra enjoy this tale of endurance and hubris? And did Annette Bening and Jodie Foster earn those Oscar nods? Find out! Learn more about your ad choices. V...
Jul 19, 2024•33 min
Assassination attempts, conspiracy theories and a MAGA Prince Harry costume. How can Hannah and Mickey cram all the drama of the US election into one BT? Well, they give it their best shot, no pun intended. And for Sexism of the Week, Mickey's been on the Zoom with journalist, broadcaster and author Terri White. Terri's podcast series, Finding Britain's Ghost Children, quite rightly scooped a whole load of awards and she has continued to bang the drum on how appalling the UK is when it comes to ...
Jul 18, 2024•55 min
This week it's Jen’s pick, and for reasons not even she can explain, she's chosen James Cameron's 1994 Arnie-fest, True Lies. But is Cameron telling tales of tough women, or toxic entitlement? How has Hannah found common ground with a horse? And why does Mick look like she's been crying? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 17, 2024•27 min
Artist Louise Bourgeois became a household name late on in her seven-decade long career, and is known best by many for her iconic spider sculptures. However, her body of work explores themes such as life cycles, nature, motherhood, and relationships. As part of its 20 Years of Compton Verney programme, the Warwickshire art gallery and stately home is showcasing Bourgeois’ work in a new exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Nature Study. Jen caught up with CEO of Compton Verney, Geraldine Collinge, to cha...
Jul 16, 2024•28 min
Best-selling crime author Lisa Jewell has written a book for Marvel. You heard us. So, our Hazel Davis got on the phone to find out more. They chat about Jessica Jones, killing off characters, a terrible first marriage, audiobooks, hoarding and a lot more besides. To hear the full interview, including Lisa talking about None Of This Is True, you can sign up to the Standard Issue membership scheme here: https://www.patreon.com/StandardIssue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc...
Jul 15, 2024•23 min
The Secret Garden was a childhood favourite of Anna Himali Howard and Holly Robinson - and our Hannah, too - so she leapt on the Zoom to talk about their new stage adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic novel. They talk about the themes of disability and India, as well as staging a play at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre during the Great British Summer - whatever the weather. Tickets are on sale here; https://openairtheatre.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhb60BhClARIsABGGtw8gIaATFcs6...
Jul 12, 2024•24 min
Jen and Mick are on Bush Telegraph duties this week, and boy, oh boy, are they giddy with optimism after Labour’s landslide victory in the 2024 General Election. That's rhetorical. And yet, as new PM Keir Starmer rings the changes, some things stay the same – hello sexism. Not that any of it is stopping Jobby the parrot having a lovely time. Meanwhile in sport, we’re chatting Wimbledon and misogyny, and definitely not sending any angry tweets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...
Jul 11, 2024•24 min
Hannah's been pretty upfront about how much she loved this film as a kid, but hang on, isn't it basically a musical about the rape of the Sabine women? Yes, yes, it is. But will the sheer toe-tapping nature of MGM's much-loved feast for the eyes, help Jen and Mick get over that terrible premise? No prizes for guessing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 09, 2024•25 min
The statistics around domestic violence in the UK and beyond are horrifying – and have been for a long time. When playwright Martha Loader heard about schemes to rehabilitate the perpetrators of abuse, she was inspired to write what became the winner of the 2022 Bruntwood prize for playwriting, Bindweed, which is at London's Arcola Theatre from July 9-13. Jen spoke to Martha about the issues explored in Bindweed, about the onus of solving the endemic problem of domestic abuse being firmly put on...
Jul 09, 2024•23 min
It’s been a while, but our resident music guru Liz Buckley is back. And she’s read Kathleen Hanna’s new autobiography, Rebel Girl. This has given her the perfect excuse to chat to our Mick about Hanna’s life and works so far, Bikini Kill and the band’s part in the riot grrrl movement that combined feminism, punk music, and politics, and why her gigs are great spaces for tits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 08, 2024•25 min
A far cry from the glamour and wealth of the Premier League, Georgia Cloepfil spent her days travelling around the world in search of a career as a professional footballer. In her new book, The Striker and the Clock, she details the loneliness of that life, seeking a time-limited win that might never come. She caught up with Jen to talk about that, as well as issues that continue to surround the women’s game, including inequality in pay and conditions, snobbery, and why women’s sport is definite...
Jul 05, 2024•24 min
It's Election Day! Finally! And it's also Independence Day, so in this week's BT, Hannah's been chatting to The Atlantic's Helen Lewis about what comes next for #TeamBiden after *that* Presidential Debate performance. And in Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen's chatting about the fate of Reading FC's women's team, as well as Wimbledon, and the best ways to ensure women's sport is taken seriously. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 04, 2024•32 min
What is Hannah’s timeline when it comes to someone she’s romantically involved with revealing they’re part fish? Just one of the big questions in this week’s Rated or Dated, as we go back to 1984 to watch Mick’s pick of Ron Howard’s Splash, a fish-out-of-water rom-com, in which Tom Hanks falls in love with Daryl Hannah as a mermaid. It also stars John Candy. Will that be enough to win Candy fan Jen over? Is it really a happy ending or does it finish on a major plot hole? Hold your laptop/phone u...
Jul 03, 2024•30 min
It can’t have escaped your attention there’s a general election happening in the UK this week. Polls show that 23 per cent of women are still undecided on how to vote, and when you look at where the political sphere is letting us down – healthcare, childcare, equal pay – it’s no surprise so many aren’t sure where to put their X. The Fawcett Society knows a thing or two about what women need and its latest project, #SheVotes24, has brought together more than 120 women’s organisations to address w...
Jul 02, 2024•25 min
This year's Papatango Prize winner, Laura Waldren, joins Hannah to chat about her play Some Demon, which is set in a unit for people with eating disorders. They chat about Laura's own experiences with anorexia, the difficulties of telling stories with no clear beginning, middle and end, and how to get a first play staged in an increasingly tough market. * You can see Some Demon at the Arcola until July 6. Tickets here: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/some-demon/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cjw...
Jul 01, 2024•24 min
June 23 was Women in Engineering Day, so Hannah got on the Zoom with Orlagh Costello, an engineer on a mission to get more women into the male-dominated industry. They talk about what puts women off, how we can change that and why if you're doing engineering with your penis, you're doing it wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 27, 2024•25 min
It’s just one week from the General Election and we’re assuming you’re as sick of the pantomime as us, so instead Hannah and Mick are talking: vandals at least having the courage of their convictions, a lorra lorra cash from our Taylor, the uptick in talking Kernewek, that twat Hannah’s dad fired, and why Manchester United need to do better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 27, 2024•22 min
Does falling in acid turn your hair green? Who's the worst person Jerry Hall's found on her sofa? And is Michael Keaton, star of Tim Burton's first take on the Batman film franchise, really the fourth best to have graced the Batsuit? We're asking all this and more as we revisit 1989's Batman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 26, 2024•31 min
What a treat for our Mick to get on the Zoom with excellent comedian and total smasher, Jen Brister. They’re chatting optimism in the face of the news, the upcoming general election, hang-gliding dogs, and All Our Relations, which is Jen’s non-profit, raising money to help Palestinian families stuck in Rafah. You can and should follow Jen on the socials, where she’s @jenbristercomedy, listen to her on Women Talking Bollocks, her podcast with Maureen Younger and Allyson June Smith, download her s...
Jun 25, 2024•23 min
Surrender, a new play at the Arcola Theatre Dalston, is the story of a mother in prison, meeting her estranged daughter for the first time in many years. Mother wants to put her side of the story across about how she came to be there – but is everything as it seems? Jen caught up with playwright Sophie Swithinbank, who wrote the play in collaboration with Phoebe Ladenburg, the actor playing Mother, to talk about a failing system, the emotional toil of mumming, and unreliable narrators. Learn mor...
Jun 24, 2024•25 min
Merry Christmas one and all! That’s right, Hannah’s picked 2023’s The Holdovers, Alexander Payne’s dramedy set in a posh boys’ boarding school in the 1970s over the festive period. It bagged an Oscar for the glorious Da’Vine Joy Randolph and features equally stellar performances from Paul Giamatti and newcomer Dominic Sessa. Are we giving too much away in this write-up? Nah, Hannah, Yosra and Mick all agree it’s fecking delightful. Come join the love-in. Bring bourbon. Learn more about your ad c...
Jun 21, 2024•36 min
This week, we're watching one of the most successful low-budget films ever, 2004's Napoleon Dynamite. Hannah and Jen chat about ligers (pretty much their favourite animals), why Jen's got her hair in a side ponytail and whether we'd enjoy seeing our siblings hit in the face by a steak. Here's the interview that Hannah promises: https://magazine.byu.edu/article/its-still-dynamite/#:~:text=That%20took%20us%20by%20surprise,different%20area%20for%20a%20while. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...
Jun 18, 2024•33 min
After a rapturously received debut album, folk star Katherine Priddy had to tackle the infamous "difficult second album". In this podcast she talks to journalist Hazel Davis about The Pendulum Swing, her upcoming appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival, supporting Elbow, being judged by McFly, and what a folk way to die would be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 17, 2024•25 min
Back in the 1970s, a group of Bristolian idealists dreamed of a nation stitched together by safe cycling paths, which would make us less reliant on our cars. They founded what would become Britain's 13,000 miles long National Cycle Network. Cycling journalist Laura Laker wondered what had gone right and, indeed, wrong, with a network once described by the CEO of the charity that runs it as “a bit crap”, and set off on an epic journey around the UK to find out more. That journey became the basis ...
Jun 17, 2024•27 min
In this month's Outside The Box, Hannah and Jen are talking about Rebus, Eric, Bodkin, Insomnia, Alaska Daily, The Gathering, Dark Matter and Bay of Fires. Plus, it turns out Hannah was right about Colin Farrell being a BEEEEEP in Sugar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 14, 2024•39 min
The world has gone election-crazy, but fortunately Hannah and Jen have mostly swerved it in this week’s Bush Telegraph. There’s some real human hardship to talk about, beyond poor ickle Rishi’s lack of Sky TV, as well as some mental imagery you’re likely never to forget around microplastics and human testicle samples. In sport, we’re looking at the European Athletics Championships, as well as saying a firm “fuck this shit” to the decision makers at Thornaby FC. Learn more about your ad choices. ...
Jun 13, 2024•29 min
Journalist Ellen Atlanta fell into a career in the beauty industry. Like many of us who subscribe to westernised beauty ideals and an online-culture, it was fine until it wasn’t. For Ellen, that was when she began to question whether or not she was part of the problem herself, and so began her work on her debut book, Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women. In this episode, she chats to Jen about the book, a life spent online, the harmful standards women hold themselves up to and the i...
Jun 11, 2024•33 min
Fans of the Star Wars universe will no doubt recognise Ireland’s Denise Gough as steely Andor villain Dedra Meero. But it was back in 2015 that she was catapulted to stardom with her role as Emma in Duncan Macmillan’s existential addiction drama, People, Places & Things. Almost ten years on, People, Places & Things is back and so is Denise with a proper barnstormer of a performance in a play that’s funny, clever, vivid, devastating and one of the most emotionally intelligent takes on add...
Jun 10, 2024•23 min
Fun times for football enthusiasts approach us, as the Euros kick off in Germany next week. Both England and Scotland are through to the tournament, with Scotland up first, against the host nation, before England take on Serbia – but how will the home nations fare? Jen caught up with Caoimhe O’Neill – journalist at The Athletic, Liverpool FC fan, and the proud owner of two Scotland shirts – to find out if football really is coming home, what it means to leave Marcus Rashford behind, what’s next ...
Jun 07, 2024•23 min
What a week! Trump is guilty, Farage is milkshaked, Owen Jones is Owen Jones-ing and some of the four horses of the apocalypse are having a nice time in a field. At least concrete is still concrete. Mickey and Hannah manage to fit all this in and still find time for a horrific sexism of the week, in which we get to see how one judge's mind works and really don't like it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 05, 2024•32 min
