Standard Issue Podcast

Adapted from his own novel, Inconceivable, Ben Elton’s 2000 directorial debut is hard to track down these days. Should Jen ever have unearthed it? Has Elton written a convincing female character in Joely Richardson’s baby-hungry Lucy? Is Hugh Laurie just dialling it in? What in the sweet fancy Moses is Emma Thompson doing? And can Hannah and Mick ever get over the trauma of watching it? 

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Back in 2020, then-student Ella Lambert started The Pachamama Project, when she was just 20 herself. 500 million people worldwide experience period poverty, including 100 million girls who miss school every single month. The Pachamama Project creates and distributes reusable period products to vulnerable women, girls and people who have periods, including refugees, around the world. 

Our Mick tried not to think about what she was doing when she was 20, and got Ella on the Zoom to talk more about the brilliant UK charity she founded and why its work is so important. 

The Pachamama Project is always looking for people to get involved, by the way, so please do check out thepachamamaproject.org for info on how to do that. 

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Artist Kirstie McLeod founded the Red Dress project in 2009, as a platform for women in marginalised groups to share their stories. Sixteen years later, the collective embroidery project represents 380 embroiderers across 51 countries and is exhibited all over the world. Jen chats to Kirstie about the project, embroidery as a (perhaps) surprising medium through which to pioneer social justice, and the joy of putting needle to thread.

The Red Dress is currently being exhibited at the Woven festival in Kirklees

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Fresh from her run in The Almeida's Rhinoceros, singer, composer, writer and actor Anoushka Lucas is back on stage in a revival of her one-way play Elephant. She chats to Hannah about why going back to it is a bit like reading an old diary, having a spectacularly successful side hustle and living in Russia.

Tickets to Elephant at London's Menier Chocolate Factory can be bought here: https://www.menierchocolatefactory.com/tickets/elephant/

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Inclusion, exclusion, cervical wands, disallowed ads, sunk rescue deals, and three whole women: Jen and Mick cover the lot in this week’s look at the news. Sexism of the Week uncovers a not so brave new world in how young men view women, and in JOTB there’s a pride of Lionesses, and some excellent cycle team names.

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What happens to characters when writers lose interest? They get a terrible film. Which is what The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse is all about. Very meta. But does it avoid becoming a bad film itself? And since it's got Geoff Tipps, a surprisingly touching Herr Lipp plot, and Victoria Wood herself in it, do Mickey, Hannah and Jen even care?

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Kate Muir’s name might not ring any immediate bells, but her documentaries with Davina McCall about the perimenopause, menopause and HRT made quite the stir. And rightly so, given they busted myths around HRT that have been stopping women asking for it for decades.

Mick got on the Zoom with the women’s health campaigner, documentary maker, journalist and author to talk about the menopause movement, healthcare’s reluctance to keep up, the ridiculous idea that middle age is boring, and Kate’s latest book, How to Have a Magnificent Midlife Crisis.

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Former model Jess Davies started campaigning around image-based sexual abuse after her own experience of it, and the realisation that so many other women she knew had been through the same. Off the back of this came a string of documentaries, including Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next for BBC Three, and now a book, No One Wants to See Your Dick: A Handbook For Survival in the Digital World. Jen catches up with Jess to talk about how very common these problems are, the blurring of on and offline lives, and the ticking time bomb of Only Fans.

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The most terrifying dystopias are within touching distance of now. And so it is with Alex Garland's Civil War, in which he uses imagined journalists chasing a story in an imagined civil war in an imagined future America to explore topics that resonate very loudly in the real world today. It’s a bleak, brutal and occasionally beautiful watch. But is it an important one? What’s its point? How good is Kirsten Dunst?!? And is two times too many times to see it? Hannah, Yosra and Mick discuss.

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How many kids is too many kids? Well, Boris Johnson and the UK Government are pretty divided on the issue. As well as covering the news of possible changes to the current two-child benefit cap, Hannah and Jen are talking about the horrific treatment of Nicola Packer, sexism and misogyny in the New South Wales police, and finally some good news about 20mph speed limits. Plus, there's joy for Charlton Athletic supporters, but sorrow for Mary Earps fans, in this week's Jenny Off The Blocks.

You can listen to Mick's chat with Terri White about the two-child benefit cap here.

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