Hold Fast , the latest series of the BBC World Service's Lives Less Ordinary podcast, tells the extraordinary tale of the Avontuur, a 100-year-old sailing cargo ship which left Germany heading for the Caribbean in early 2020. What happened next could never have been predicted, as the world was gripped by a global pandemic and the 15-strong crew found themselves unable to disembark for 188 days. Hannah was delighted to chat to producer Christina Hardinge and composer Noémie Ducimetière about maki...
Aug 22, 2025•29 min
This month's Outside The Box is a podcast of two halves. First up, Mickey and Hannah are chatting about Department Q, Untamed, Bookish and Parenthood . Then Jen arrives, and she and Hannah discuss Unforgivable , The Gone, Too Much, The Gilded Age and 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story . Yes, that is a whole lot of telly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 21, 2025•1 hr 6 min
A pig herding sheep? A kids film getting loads of Oscar nods? A main role containing just 16 lines of dialogue? Join Hannah and Jen as they discuss these and other unheard of (unherd of?) things, after watching an understated farmyard classic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 20, 2025•28 min
In 2017 Katy O'Neill Gutierrez was keen to get outdoors with her newborn daughter. When she searched for local mum and baby groups that combined a love of the outdoors with meeting other new parents, she couldn't find anything that fit the bill, so she decided to start her own. What started as a few friends meeting in North London for a walk with their babies turned into Blaze Trails , which now has more than 60 groups across the UK meeting regularly. Jen chats to Katy about the significant impa...
Aug 19, 2025•26 min
When BBC journalist Melissa Hogenboom happened across a study looking at attitudes towards male and female breadwinners, it made her wonder what other power imbalances we see play out in our everyday lives and how they affect us. This inspired her fascinating new book Breadwinners: and Other Power Imbalances That Influence Your Life . Jen chats to Melissa about those inequalities, the value we place in different tasks, the point at which those values become entrenched, and why they hate the word...
Aug 15, 2025•27 min
It was smash hit city for Michael J Fox in 1985, with Rod Daniel’s fantasy-comedy Teen Wolf following hot on the heels of Back to the Future , but did they have enough people in their hair and make-up department? Should 33-year-olds be at school? And how easy is it to accept a werewolf on your basketball team? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 13, 2025•27 min
Jo Hamilton was one of the most high-profile victims of the British Post Office Scandal in which she, along with hundreds of other innocent subpostmasters, was wrongly prosecuted for shortfalls caused by faulty accounting software. The scandal is quite rightly considered one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British judicial history – with the Government also very heavily implicated. Jo’s treatment at the hands of the Post Office had a devastating impact on, well, her whole world and tha...
Aug 12, 2025•26 min
Comedian Jessica Fostekew is going back on the road with her new show Iconic Breath , including short runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and at London's Soho Theatre. She chats to Hannah about still giving a shit, inherited traits, weightlifting, and guessing how old children are. Tickets to Jess' Edinburgh show are here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/jessica-fostekew-iconic-breath And for the rest of the tour here: https://www.plosive.co.uk/events/jessica-fostekew-iconic-breath-tour-20...
Aug 11, 2025•30 min
Colman Domingo got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of John “Divine G” Whitfield in Greg Kwedar’s film based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme (RTA) at America’s Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. Domingo is just one of a handful of professional actors starring alongside real-life alumni of RTA, a programme which gives them a sense of purpose and a close-knit group of friends. Yosra loved it when she saw it on its UK release last summer, but will Hannah and Mick feel the s...
Aug 08, 2025•32 min
Lou Butcher, better known as the Topless Runner, has been running marathons naked from the waist up since having two mastectomies after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She chats to our friend Hazel Davis about health anxiety, body confidence, the politics of being bare chested and her memoir, Going Topless. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 07, 2025•25 min
A fictional mystery without a solution masquerading as a true story is Australia's best film, you say? We do. Well, Hannah does anyway. But what does Mickey make of Peter Weir's dreamy boarding school drama/horror on a first watch? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 06, 2025•33 min
Hannah is happily child-free so she was glad to grab some time with author Helen Taylor to chat about her new book Childless By Choice, which is part memoir, part cultural history. They talk about "crazy cat ladies", societal pressure, misconceptions and the pressing question of who is going to look after us when we get old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 01, 2025•26 min
It’s a big one this week, as Mick and Hannah watch possibly the most cult of cult films: Richard O’Brien’s stage show turned Jim Sharman’s screen show, The Rocky Horror Picture Show . So many questions. Has there ever been a hotter Curry than Tim? How might the modern youth view it? Did Hannah sing along? And what’s Mr Peanutbutter’s favourite berry got to do with anything? We see you shiver with… you know. Mick mentions a couple of interesting articles, which you’ll find here: https://www.them....
Jul 30, 2025•34 min
Comedian and storyteller, actress and broadcasting star, Desiree Burch is also a perimenopausal woman with plenty to say about it. Mick got on the Zoom to talk about Desiree’s new show, The Golden Wrath , as well as the ups, downs and big bag of goo that is a woman’s midlife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 29, 2025•24 min
In 2017, Zelda Perkins broke an NDA of more than 20 years to speak out against Harvey Weinstein. Since then, she’s tirelessly campaigned to end the misuse and abuse of NDAS – non-disclosure agreements – used to silence victims. Her campaigning included setting up Can’t Buy My Silence in 2021, and Mick chatted to her about that at the time. Earlier this month, the Government announced it will ban NDAs designed to silence victims of workplace harassment and discrimination, a change that will be im...
Jul 25, 2025•27 min
Joel Schumacher’s sci-fi psychological horror exploring the boundaries between life, death and redemption was chock-a-block with early 1990s Hollywood's hottest property. But who gets redeemed and why? What happens when Bacon meets ham? And for the love of God, why won’t someone turn on a light? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 23, 2025•29 min
In 2024, alongside Steph McCall and Olympic athlete Rose Harvey, Natasha Edwards co-founded BOLDLI running club, a response to safety concerns around women runners. Now, BOLDLI provides resources to help women gain the confidence to run when and where they want, and this year they’ve teamed up with the Altra Kielder Marathon to launch the Stay Out There: She Runs Free initiative. Jen was tickled pink to catch up not only with Natasha but also with former world, European and Commonwealth champion...
Jul 22, 2025•27 min
Karis Kelly's award-winning play Consumed is about to tour the UK, so Hannah grabbed the chance to chat with the playwright about Northern Ireland in the arts, mother-daughter relationships, religion, superstition, OCD, trans-generational trauma, blood on stage and a lot more. Tickets for Consumed can be bought here: https://painesplough.com/productions/consumed/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jul 21, 2025•25 min
Sally Gardner has had a long career of writing for children, for adults, and for everyone between. She chats to Hannah about her latest novel, The Bride Stone , growing up in London's Gray's Inn and about her belief that being dyslexic helped rather than hindered her writing career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 18, 2025•23 min
Are you ready for our close ups? Maybe not, but tuck in anyway as we watch Gloria Swanson's glorious swansong in Billy Wilder's dark comedy about lost fame, madness and how to arrange a funeral for a chimpanzee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 16, 2025•26 min
Adventurer, award-winning travel writer and Director of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Jean McNeil knows a lot about the world and our ever-more threadbare connection to it. She chats to Mickey about her latest book, Latitudes: Encounters with a Changing Planet , a front-line witness account of the impact of climate change, and about her travels to and writing about remote, inhospitable places. Which started with being raised in one. And the fact Jean trained as a walking saf...
Jul 15, 2025•26 min
During her career as a midwife, Dr Laura Abbott – now an associate professor in research at the University of Hertfordshire – became interested in the plight of women who gave birth in prison, or were separated from their babies by incarceration. And so she founded the Lost Mothers Project: a research project exploring the effects of mandatory separation of babies from women with Criminal Justice System involvement. As the Lost Mothers Project prepares to take its findings to Parliament, Jen cha...
Jul 14, 2025•27 min
The second series of crime drama Karen Pirie is about to arrive, so Hannah grabbed some time with its star Lauren Lyle to talk about why Karen's not like other detectives, but a lot like most women her age. They also chat about Toxic Town , The Bombing of Pan Am 103 and women who "do". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 11, 2025•24 min
Starring Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd and a genuinely beautiful school building, Robert Zemeckis’s time travel comedy blockbuster continues to be a cultural touchstone. At the time, it dazzled at the box office and with critics alike. But 40 years on, how does it fare with Mick, Hannah and Jen? Do the inevitable time travel plotholes matter? How much did the young Jen fancy the young Fox? Does Mick own this 1980s smash on DVD? And, perhaps most importantly, what in the Doc Brown is going on ...
Jul 09, 2025•34 min
Oddbody is Rose Keating’s debut short story collection, an anthology of bold and unsettling tales inspired by her love of horror – and the genre's intersection with the female experience. In this episode, Jen gets inside the weird and wonderful mind of the Marian Keyes Young Writer Award winner, as she and Rose talk about how the body horror genre lends itself to the lived female experience, the inherent comedy of horror, and the horror (the horror!) of eggs. Oddbody is published by Canongate an...
Jul 07, 2025•26 min
Author Esther Freud first shot to fame with her debut novel, Hideous Kinky , back in 1992. Her tenth novel, My Sister and Other Lovers , reunites readers with sisters Lucy and Bea, and astutely captures the realities of being a sister and having a sister. Spoiler: as much as pop culture would like us to think it, a sister is not a built-in BFF. Our Mick chats to Esther about sisters, siblings, parents, the slippery nature of memory, and love in its many forms. My Sister and Other Lovers is publi...
Jul 04, 2025•27 min
Rachel Talalay's 1995 take on the much-loved comic series Tank Girl had so much promise, but does it live up to its "truly feminist" hype? Who gets to decide? And how will a jazz-loving kangaroo-man help or hinder these efforts? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 02, 2025•31 min
Hannah's joined by playwright Iman Qureshi and director Hannah Hauer-King to chat about their play about the members of a lesbian choir, The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs . They chat about disability on stage, the search for community, and joining a uniquely British genre. * The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs is on at the Kiln Theatre until July 12. You can find tickets here: https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-ministry-of-lesbian-affairs/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...
Jul 01, 2025•24 min
Theatre maker Jess Andrews found herself exploring the murky world of dating apps after she and her husband decided to join the polyamorous community. The experience inspired her to create her one-woman show I Met All My Friends on Dating Apps , which is now touring. Jen chats to Jess about misconceptions around polyamory, why no one’s having a great time on dating apps and how we might fix some of the problems within it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 30, 2025•29 min
This animated sci-fi adventure, adapted from Peter Brown’s much-loved books and written and directed by Chris Sanders, got a fair few Oscar nods, even if it missed out on an actual statue. But how will the tale of futuristic, task-oriented robot Roz, thrust into mothering gosling Brightbill amid the natural world’s chaos, fare with Mick, Hannah and Yosra? And what’s Bullseye got to do with it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 27, 2025•27 min
