Standard Issue Podcast

Louise Kennedy’s short story collection The End of the World is a Cul-de-sac garnered her all sorts of well-deserved plaudits. Her debut novel, Trespasses, is a page-turning story of love and loss set in Belfast during The Troubles, in which Louise’s spare, lyrical writing brings to uneasy life the reality of people getting on with their lives in a time and place where the unspeakable is just everyday.  

In this Chops, Louise chats to our Mick about the Troubles and their legacy, and what problems Brexit and the unresolved difficulties of the Northern Ireland Protocol might mean, starting writing in your 40s, dealing with cancer, and why the joy of doomed love might just mean readers are perverts. 

Trespasses is out now, published by Bloomsbury.

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Comedian Lucy Beaumont is a busy woman, starring as a fictionalised version of herself in Dave’s Meet The Richardsons and being the co-writer of new Channel 4 sitcom, Hullraisers. In this week’s podzine, she chats to our Hannah about why Hull is no longer the butt of a national joke and that time she wet herself before 8 Out of 10 Cats. 

For Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen’s been on the Zoom with multi-award-winning audio documentary maker and writer Hana Walker-Brown. They’re talking about degenerative brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), concussive and sub-concussive trauma, and how that all ties to sport, its players, and their lives – and those of their families – off the field. All of which is covered in Hana’s new non-fiction book, A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice.  

And it’s bonkers galore in Rated or Dated, as Mick’s choice of Robert Altman’s 1977 avant-garde piece, 3 Women, leads to all sorts of questions, but not many answers. 

Plus, there’s loads of good news in the Bush Telegraph. If you’re patient, like. 

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A life-threatening ectopic pregnancy at 37 caused writer Georgina Scull to re-evaluate her lot. Having not lived the life she’d “planned”, she set about talking to people facing their own mortality to find out what they wished they'd done differently. Her new book, The Regrets of The Dying: Stories and Wisdom That Remind Us How to Live, is the result. She chats to Jen about common themes of regret, the patterns that drive them and how, by listening to other people’s regrets, we can lead more fulfilled lives.

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The love for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo's 2011 comedy brimming with women is flowing out of Mickey like lava, in the latest episode of Flicking. But what do Yosra and Hannah make of Bridesmaids? The cast? The plot? The outrageous opulence? The weird American tradition of having 27 big days before The Big Day? Find out! 

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Times are tough, financially speaking, and Makala Green knows a thing or two about looking after the pennies, having worked her way up from a 16-year-old cashier at Nationwide bank to being a chartered financial planner. In this week’s podzine, she chats to Jen about her new book, The Money Edit, and what we can do to keep on top of our finances.

When do you think the first woman was paid to work in science? Hannah finds out as she chats to Izzy Wall, assistant curator at Bath's Herschel Museum of Astronomy, about astronomer Caroline Herschel.

In Jenny Off The Blocks, Jen chats about the new Number One in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings, while in Rated or Dated, Mick’s ready to rename the whole section after sitting through 1997’s Chasing Amy. And in the Bush Telegraph, there’s a plague island and some tiny joyous ear hairs.

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Journalist and writer Lucy Ward tells Hannah how she turned a tale of family history she heard in a school playground into the cracking new non-fiction book The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great defied a deadly virus. They talk about how Catherine The Great's bold decision to be inoculated - and talk about it publicly - helped the fight against smallpox, about writing that book during a pandemic, and about why now is the perfect time to try to understand Russian history a bit better. And pus. There's quite a lot about pus.

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Areej Osman is a senior placement coordinator at Refugees At Home, and this week, she’s explaining the realities of hosting a displaced person. She and Jen chat pros, cons, vulnerabilities and responsibilities. 

Victorian girl power is the foundation of author Liz Hyder’s latest fiction, The Gifts, and she’s talking to Mick about fierce women, unscrupulous surgeons, surprise wings and the joyful power of storytelling. 

In Jenny Off The Blocks, there’s a surprise retirement and more cricket, while in Rated or Dated, Hannah’s pick of 1997 Aussie cult classic The Castle leads to some Dunleavy and Noonan reminiscing about gifts from Lourdes. And in the Bush Telegraph, there’s trafficking, taxes and toxic behaviour, but absolutely no Nazis. 

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The stage version of The Life of Pi is currently pulling in the crowds and snaffling all the Olivier nominations, so Hannah got on the Zoom with the woman responsible for adapting the book: Lolita Chakrabarti. They talk about the highs and lows of tackling such a well-loved novel and its themes of storytelling and faith, as well as chatting about some of Lolita's other recent projects, including A Working Diary, the book she wrote with her husband, fellow actor Adrian Lester.

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How do you turn a book of short stories into a cohesive play? This week, Mickey finds out as she chats Angela Carter, feminism, wolves and circus skills with Mary Swan, director of Proteus Theatre’s adaptation of The Bloody Chamber. Jen's been on the Zoom with US writer Kimberly Jones about her book, How We Can Win, and the economics of racial inequality in the US, and in Jenny Off The Blocks, she's looking forward to the Women's Six Nations. In BT, we're discussing P&O and Child Q, plus you can find out why an interview Hannah has been chasing for months (and is now not happening), turns out to be really good news. And we take a listener's suggestion and tuck into My Cousin Vinny. Will we ever do that again? You can find out in this week's Rated or Dated.

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Professor Jane Monckton Smith is a criminologist specialising in domestic homicide, a former police officer, a professor of public protection at the University of Gloucestershire, and responsible for groundbreaking work on coercive control and stalking. Too right we love her.

In this Chops, she chats with Mick about her latest book, In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder, in which she lays out the eight stages of a domestic homicide timeline – the first temporal sequencing of domestic homicide, and vital to helping stop the appalling rates of domestic murder. 

It’s an outstanding book, which should be required reading for, well, everyone. And it’s testament to Jane that, despite the subject matter, it is both accessible and engaging. And out now in paperback, courtesy of Bloomsbury. 

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