Standard Issue Podcast

We’ve all heard of the glass ceiling, right? But what about the phenomenon befalling the high-flying women who have dared to smash through it? It’s known as the glass cliff, and Sophie Williams has written a book about it. Sophie joins Mick this week, to talk about how and why it happens – and why the issue matters to all women.

Meanwhile, Jen is on the Zoom with theatre company Dirty Hare, to talk witches, history and their play Gunter, which is showing at The Royal Court Theatre until April 25.

In Jenny Off The Blocks, there’s rugby, cricket and more. And in Rated or Dated, there’s more witchcraft afoot, but will 1989 “cult classic” Teen Witch be cinematic magic or a curse on the eyes, ears and emotions?

Meanwhile, in unrelated news *cough*, Hannah's wading through a river of jobbies in the Bush Telegraph. 

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According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, hospital admissions for eating disorders have increased by 84% over the past five years. And yet, for so many of us, anorexia remains very hard to understand. Hannah chats to author, journalist and recovered anorexic Hadley Freeman about her memoir Good Girls: A Story and Study of Anorexia, about her experiences, as a teenager and now a mother, and about why so many women have a complicated relationship with food.

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Experts - we should listen to them, right? RIGHT? Well, maybe not all of them. That's what Hannah learned while talking to Dr Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist and the host of new Radio 4 show Experts on Trial. Jen's been on the Zoom with Heather McCalden to talk about her genre-bending debut book, The Observable Universe, which is about losing both her parents to AIDS in the early '90s, and grief in the internet age. And in Rated or Dated, having not seen it as kids, what will Mickey and Hannah make of 1984's The NeverEnding Story?

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If you've not read the Atlantic article The Coddling of the American Mind, or the book that followed it, you've likely heard us recommend it. And now, it's a documentary, so Hannah got straight on the Zoom to California to talk to its producer Courtney Moorehead Balaker about the current mental health crisis among young people and how, rather than helping, the culture on US university campuses is making young people more vulnerable. And how tribalism, helicopter parenting and the “one strike and you're out” culture of public shaming has left young people afraid to make mistakes.

The original Atlantic article, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, is here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

You can buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224897

And you can watch the film here: https://www.thecoddlingmovie.com/

If you are struggling with your mental health, please reach out to the Samaritans. More details here: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/talk-us-phone/

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Playwright Stef Smith is best known for her, well, plays. But her award-winning BBC Scotland drama, Float – a tender tangle of love, life and identity in small-town Scotland – is also well worth your time. Season one is already bingeable on the iPlayer and, ahead of season two hitting screens at the end of the month, our Mick chatted to Stef about water, women in love, representation, and the joys of being a soppy sausage.

Talking of soppy sausages, Jen’s quite rightly feeling emotional about what seeing sporting women means to girls getting into sporting. And has top-tier cynic Hannah Dunleavy gone and picked a romance for Rated or Dated? Well, that’s up for discussion as we watch 2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

Plus bullies, unfinished church business, time theory, not enough nurses, and the return of Nelson Mandela. 

PS: Scotland, we love you.

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Playwright Suzie Miller is best known for her award-sweeping masterpiece, Prima Facie, a searing critique of the criminal justice system and, specifically, how it deals with survivors of sexual assault and rape. She’s now adapted the play into a novel, and so Jen was chuffed to bits to talk to her about the process of adaptation, as well as why she wrote it, the impact the play has had, and the sheer lunacy of a system that simply isn’t fit for purpose. Also, Jodie Comer, who blew minds in the play, reads the audio book. Win. 

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They don’t come much bigger than Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s three-hour Oscar-nabbing historical drama, and Hannah’s pick for this month’s Flicking. It’s quite rightly made Cillian Murphy the man of the moment, but how’s Yosra feeling about Robert Downey Jnr’s gongs? And will it have enough bang for its buck as far as Mick’s concerned? Find out!

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Hollie McNish - Standard Issue fave, award-winning poet, and all-round smasher - is back with Lobster, a brand-new collection of poems and prose. Naturally, Mick was delighted to jump on the Zoom to talk to her about it, as well as joy, not-joy, vulvas, knickers and RP.

Over IRL, as the kids say, Jen was chuffed to bits to be reunited with writer Anoushka Warden, to talk to her about her debut novel, I’m F*cking Amazing. They also chat sweary titles, female pleasure, and navigating the NHS.

There are recent retirements and romantic relationships in Jenny Off The Blocks, and in this week's Rated or Dated, we wonder if Hannah’s changed her mind about 1984 tearjerker Terms Of Endearment. And what did the Roman Empire ever do for women, eh? The British Museum has the, well *an* answer in this week’s Bush Telegraph.

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Journalist, broadcaster, documentary-maker, author and Mickey mind-blower is back on the podcast to chat about her incredible new book, The Price of Life: In Search of What We’re Worth and Who Decides. 

It’s a fascinating and brutal investigation into who puts a price on our heads – because we all have not just one, but several, depending on the situation. Jenny’s met with a hitman, people who’ve faked their own death, modern-day slaves, the makers of F-35 fighter jets, scientists, effective altruists, parents whose children have died in terrorist attacks, kidnap victims and, for a frankly wild final chapter, an American funeral parlour owner and body broker to find out what we’re worth, dead or alive. 

And now she’s chatting to our Mick about all of the above, whether cold calculations are the way to measure a life, and how she still has a deep faith in the good of humanity. 

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If you find watching sport in public a bit intimidating, Set Piece Social will be for you. This week, Jen chats to Naomi Fitzgibbons and Kate Hetherington about their pioneering new project to get women watching women's sport. Hannah's talking to writer Farine Clark about her new play London Zoo, and what inspired her career changes from medicine through journalism and into the arts. In Rated or Dated, Mickey (*screeches to a stop in a 1974 Gran Torino*) has had us watching 2004's Starksy & Hutch (*doesn't run out of fingers on one hand counting female roles*). And in BT, we've got some good news and some more good news and some more good news. Also some bad news. But let's focus on the positive eh?

• More info about London Zoo at the Southwark Playhouse here: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/london-zoo/

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