Standard Issue Podcast

This week, Jen’s getting philosophical with high on drama, easy on the acting, ‘90s runaway hit, Speed. But can Mick and Hannah get on board? Der dum tsssssshhhhhh. Cue maniacal laughter, and a shedload of plot holes.

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With Scattered, award-winning journalist and former child refugee Aamna Mohdin has written a warm, candid and surprisingly funny memoir about her family’s experiences fleeing the Somali civil war in the 1990s. She chats to our Mick about survivor’s guilt, people not 'migrants', the joys in interviewing your parents, and her relationship with Somalia today.

Scattered is published by Bloomsbury, out on June 6 and available from all good bookshops.

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When she was 11, Genevieve Kingston's mother died, leaving her a box of gifts and letters, designed to see her through the big events of her life. In her new memoir, Genevieve, now a writer and actor, explores the loss of her mother and the joys of refinding her through her letters from the past. Hannah chats to her about that memoir - Did I Ever Tell You? - being on Oprah's 'to read' list, and how some cultures are just better at dealing with death than others. 

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Rosie Garland is a poet, an author and the front woman, since the 1980s, of punk band The March Violets. In this podcast, Hannah chats to her about her latest novel, The Fates, which is about, you've guessed it, the Fates, about how mythology treats women and why Zeus was an absolute dick. They're also talking about Rosie's recovery from cancer, how that affected her writing and performing and about what's next on her very full life plate.

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Mickey, Hannah and Jen are asking all the big questions this week. Such as, when a film's plot is so famous its title is now a verb, how's that going to affect three first-time viewers? And what would 1940s audiences have thought was going on? Also, were any Victorians called Paula and Brian? 

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A cursed wedding, a honeymoon meltdown, a gaslighting hotelier, and some pretty dodgy goings on: Scarlett Thomas’s latest novel, The Sleepwalkers, is a gripping tale of catastrophe from the contents page on. 

Scarlett chats to Mick about finding inspiration on a holiday from hell, the chain of blame in Big Patriarchy, trusting women, judging women, a love of wrong things, and big lash action.

The Sleepwalkers is published by Simon & Schuster, out now, and a brilliant, very dark, very funny read.

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Hot on the heels of Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain is hosting another huge exhibition dedicated to professional women artists, spanning 400 years from the early 16th Century. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Great Britain, 1520-1920 puts paid to the notion that women couldn’t make a living from art, and only ever pursued it as a cute leisure activity. Jen caught up with Tabitha Barber, Tate Britain's Curator of British Art, 1550-1750, to talk about what women artists were up to, why misconceptions around them exist and why art is *sort of* like football when it comes to ideas about the sexes.

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This mockumentary comedy flew under the radar when it was released last year. But our Yosra’s excited to make a song and dance about Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s big-hearted tale of a musical theatre camp, struggling to save itself after its beloved founder falls into a coma.

It’s well charted that we love a mockumentary, but will there be enough gags for Hannah? Or too much singing for Mick? You know what to do.

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Jen and Hannah are on Bush Telegraph duty this Thursday 23 May. They’re talking about how the only thing the UK doesn’t seem to be in short supply of these days, is court rulings against its own Government. Meanwhile the wait for a wheelchair hits frankly ludicrous levels. Harrison Butker (you heard) has his say on a woman’s worth, and with any luck it’s his balls Serena will be hitting in the near future, as Jen chats about a possible comeback in JOTB.

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Jeff Goldblum, people! Turns out, the big fella isn’t necessarily a lure for Hannah and Jen, so will they find anything else to like in Julien Temple’s American-science-fiction-musical-romantic comedy? And yes, of course it was Mick who picked it.

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