Claim Ownership
Standard Issue Podcast
Standard Issue PodcastSubscribed: 3,986Played: 235,698
Subscribe
Description
By women. For women. About everything. Standard Issue is a podcast championing women's voices, and packed with interviews, news, film, opinion and humour.
For advertising enquiries, email sales@auddy.co
1259 Episodes
Reverse
Safe Haven, which has just opened at London's Arcola theatre, tells the true story of what happened in spring 2001, when two million Kurds fleeing Saddam Hussein's forces found themselves in the freezing mountains, and two Whitehall diplomats decided to intervene. Hannah chats to two of the play's stars, Lisa Zahra and Beth Burrows, to find out more.
* Safe Haven is on until February 7. More information and tickets here: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/safe-haven/
* You can support Standard Issue here:
Standard Issue Podcast | creating a magazine for ears, by women for women | Patreon
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you’ve no idea what’s going on with the US and Greenland, don't worry – neither do we. Nor, apparently, does Donald Trump, so join the club. Elsewhere, we’ve identified a learning opportunity for Nigel Farage, there’s good news neither Hannah nor Jen are ready to listen to, and we start the campaign for equal opportunities LOL-ing at the Beckhams. And with the Australian Open underway, Jen caught up with TNT Sports pundit and former GB tennis star, Laura Robson, to find out more about the runners and riders.
The Australian Open is broadcast on TNT Sports and available to stream on Discovery+ in the UK.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Does Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 grindhouse-schlock fest with a screeching plot twist put even more NO into its writer and “star” Quentin Tarantino for Mick, Hannah and Jen? Ooh, it’s a breath bater. George Clooney’s film debut was a far cry from ER’s Dr Doug Ross, but classic Tarantino to its core. But does that mean it’s OUTRAGEOUS and CONTROVERSIAL and CLEVER and THE BEST or just jerk-off dogshit misogyny? Find out!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Journalist, author and mother of three, Ellie Levenson used to dream of time away from the pressures of family life, a fantasy shared by many of her female friends. This became the basis for her first novel, Room 706, a story about extra-marital affairs, gunmen, and who’s picking up those bread rolls the kids like. Jen chatted to Ellie about the book, the mental load, and what it's like to get props from Sarah Jessica Parker.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Comedian, actress and writer Lucia Keskin made her name on YouTube as Chi with a C, where she started making content at just 16. Indeed, one of her first videos to go viral was her opening her GCSE results on camera.
Fair to say, Lucia’s a natural comedic voice, and the first season of her BBC3 sitcom Things You Should Have Done bagged a big following as well as a couple of awards (hello a BAFTA). It’s back this week for season two, so Mick got Lucia on the Zoom to find out what our spectacularly hapless hero Chi has been up to, and to talk about the joy in dopey and mean female characters, the excitement of added Bridget Christie, failing all your GCSEs, and how silly might save us all.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1Jesse Eisenberg’s Oscar-winning comedy drama received an embarrassment of plaudits from the industry and critics. Now it’s time to get the ones that really matter: Mick, Hannah and Yosra watch American-Jewish cousins Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Eisenberg) as they embark on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland, following the death of their Holocaust-surviving grandmother. Feel-good film? Mismatched buddy comedy? Devastatingly bittersweet? All of the above?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It's the first BT of 2026, so Mickey and Hannah have some catching up to do. This time, they're talking about failure: Grok user failures, women's health study failures and child benefit failures. Still, elderly nuns are making a reappearance, so it's not all bad.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Thomas Carter’s teen dance film helped launch the career of Julia Stiles, but has she been wronged by public perceptions of her dance skills in the years that followed? How many tropes are too many tropes? And can it hold a torch to 1983's Flashdance?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Holocaust Memorial Day is coming up later this month (Tuesday 27 January), so Hannah's been on the Zoom with historian Elizabeth Hyman to talk about her non-fiction book The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto. They talk about five very different women who lived there, the work they did for their people and the tough choices they made.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feeling bogged down by meetings and out of her depth at work, travel writer Laura Hall quit her job and embarked on a fresh challenge to get her life back on track. Her new book, The Year I Lay My Head in Water: Swimming Scandinavia in Search of a Better Life, documents the year that followed, spent cold-water swimming around Scandinavia. Jen chats to Laura about the book, the appeal of the sea, the insanity of cold-water swimming, and the absolute joy of taking on a daft challenge.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our weekly look at a film from the past is back for the New Year like a boulder about to smash into your swimming pool, as we watch Jonathan Glazer's debut: a one-last-job tale with a gangster who won't take no for an answer. No matter how many times he hears it. But does Sexy Beast still pass muster?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Last year, actor, author, life coach and professional mad woman (she co-hosts the Women Are Mad podcast with psychotherapist Jennifer Cox) Salima Saxton got ill. Obviously she started a Substack about it and Bad Patient – in which she writes about being ill with raw honesty, humour, insight and on her own terms – was born.
Salima chats to our Mick about illness: how we perceive it, how we talk about it, how we don’t have to meet other people’s expectations when dealing with it and how it can change our perspective on, well, everything.
Also, bonus chat: tricky dads.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
An injury in her early 40s, and a long period of chronic pain that followed, made Wendy Welpton think about how she was moving. Now a movement coach, founder of Reclaim Movement, and a podcast host, she’s also written a book – Move Well For Life: Unlock The Life-Changing Power of Everyday Movement – aimed at getting others to do the same.
Jen chats to Wendy about why movement should trump exercise, why it’s so important for people in midlife to move more and move better, and why she really really wants you to get on the floor.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What's the best book we read this year? Or the best play we saw? We're talking about that, plus our favorite TV, events, sport, music, comedy and interviews of 2025, as we wave goodbye to a year that's been, well, how would we describe it?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Adventure, nostalgia, trains, Cribbens and three elderly children posher than a lobster in a cravat: HOW JOLLY! Lionel Jeffries’ period piece based on E Nesbit’s 1906 book is a wholesome slice of classic British cinema, but what will filthy commoners Mick, Hannah and Jen make of it? And how will it go down with our resident five year old?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jessica Swale is a busy woman, so Hannah was surprised to discover the writer and director did have the time for a chat about some of her latest projects. They cover getting the tone right for Paddington: The Musical, working with children and dogs in Amazon's new Christmas film Merv, and Jessica's new book aimed at making sure we can all have A Year of Creative Thinking.
Find out more about supporting Standard Issue here:
Standard Issue Podcast | creating a magazine for ears, by women for women | Patreon
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Working in the 17th century gothic library at St John's College puts Tanya Kirk in an ideal position to talk about book-based ghost stories. She's just edited the latest in a series of short story collections - The Haunted Library: Tales of Cursed Books and Forbidden Shelves - so Hannah got on the Zoom to chat about why old books are spooky, why Christmas is a rich source of ghost stories, and the white gloves myth.
Tanya's latest book is available here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-haunted-library/tanya-kirk/9780712355292
* You can support Standard Issue here:
Standard Issue Podcast | creating a magazine for ears, by women for women | Patreon
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Richard Benjamin’s coming-of-age comedy-drama has a (sort of) dream cast, but how much will Jen, Hannah and Mick love central character Mrs Flax? Does the character even matter when she’s played by Cher? And can we get over a ropey age-gap and a real lack of DIY prep to allow Mermaids to shoop-shoop into our hearts?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Padel might well be one of the fastest growing sports in the world, right now, but what exactly is it? And how is it different to tennis, squash, or pickleball?
Jen wanted to find out more, so she got on the Zoom with Alex Brodie, PR and sponsorship manager at UK Padel, one of the UK’s leading tournament organisers in the sport, to chat about the who, what and where of the game – and why it’s so good for women and girls.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Let’s bring some cheer to the end of the year with Dr Suze Kundu – that’s right NASA’s Dr Suze Kundu. She and Mick* debunk some bad science, celebrate some impactful and robust research and tech, and create some positive associations with the work of millions. With added Katy Perry and a plea to outer space-related height restrictions.
*mostly Suze, to be fair
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
Congratulations Standard Issue Team on your 200 episode
The sound is awful. Skipped this one.
I enjoyed this episode. This was the 3rd one I tried... I started with the first 2 episodes and the sound really isn't great... So just switched off. This one is funny and I can hear it on my head phones!
one of my great aunts had the middle name Markowitz after this revolutionary woman; and her twin brother's middle name was de Valera after another famous Irish nationalist. It was interesting to hear about the person that I only knew as one of the family's 'funny names' (there were quite a few!)
The live gig episodes are amazing. Always have fantastic guests.
Sadly, quality of the sound made this podcast almost impossible to follow, most texts are scripted and read to us without a hint of spontaneity. Those are well written texts and subjects are very interesting, but still I wish that Standard Issue would be bunch of brilliantly written articles (like it used to be), than this poorly made podcast. I hope creators will improve in time.
listen to Episode 8. it's so funny. I nearly choked on the train 🤣