Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4616994/

Anyone with any connection at all to academia will find this fascinating. Petra writes about being well in academia (actually that's the title of the book!) and we talk about this with specific reference to students and staff returning to school and uni after lockdown.

I absolutely defy you to listen to this and not immediately want to read all of Lucinda's books, she is such an engaging speaker, and as a veteran author speaks with authority of her experience of writing and getting published. Find more of her at lucindahawksley.com

Sherry Bevan is a life coach, breastfeeding counsellor, mother, and president of the NCT. She tells me about her life and her writing process. This one's right down the feminist end of the conversational spectrum.

Hens Dancing - Rafaella Barker

Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively

The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton

Hideous Kinky - Esther Freud

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Book of Human Skin - Michelle Lovric

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

The Little Friend - Donna Tartt

The Ripliad - Patricia Highsmith

Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis

Thursday Next - Jasper Fforde

The Book Thief - Markus Zuzak

Wolf Hall, Bringing Up The Bodies, The Mirror & The Light - Hilary Mantel

Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel

Giving up the Ghost (A Memoir) - Hilary Mantel

Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey

A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters- Julian Barnes

New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

I Am I Am I Am - Maggie O'Farrell

Bruce Dickinson's Autobiography

Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

To The Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

War & Peace, Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

Now We Are Six - A.A. Milne

Ant & Bee - Angela Banner

Le Petit Lapin Dans L'Avion (Miffy Goes Flying) - Dick Bruna

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R.Tolkein

When God Was A Rabbit - Sarah Winman

Why We Sleep? - Matthew Walker

I spoke to Zainab on what might have been the hottest day of the year, but we managed to focus our minds and had a really interesting discussion of breastfeeding aversion as well as - of course - breastfeeding in its wider context. I used the term "skin hunger" and thanks to my friend Meg have tracked down the correct attribution - it's in Kerstin Uvnas Moberg's book The Oxytocin Factor.

Amy Jones is all over the social medias as @jimsyjampots, where she shares her family life in all its glory; she's a writer and podcaster, and the auther of The To Do List and Other Debacles, a memoir of mental health. In our conversation, we explored the process of writing, the importance of to-do lists, and the impact that motherhood has had on her.

Rachel and I chat about her "bible," Carl Rogers' On Becoming A Person, a 1961 book that really sets out his philosophy. We also touch on other books that have been important to her, and whether or not she might one day write one herself. It's so lovely to talk to someone about a book they really love and keep on going back to throughout their life.

Lori is an old friend, and we have had many conversations about the book she hasn't written yet. It's subject matter is quite literally very close to all our hearts: bras.

Amy Brown is single-handedly responsible for the latter, churning out a book or two most days. In this episode we talk incessantly about her latest book, which I'm more than usually excited about because I'm in it!

Comedian and antenatal teacher Njambi McGrath talks about the process and emotional journey of writing her heartfelt book Through The Leopard's Gaze.

Jenny Harmer is a Heath Visitor/breastfeeding specialist in South London and one half of the I am a Health Visitor Podcast. Prior to health visiting she was a paediatric A&E nurse. She lives with her husband & three children (two human one greyhound!) and has rediscovered cross-stitch during lockdown.

Nicola Sheldon lives in Thatcham and is an active member of her local community, volunteering in several organisations supporting women and babies. She has three young boys and is a full time carer to her second child Thomas who has complex disabilities.

Bronwen Wilson Rashad has done many weird and wonderful things but is currently Head of Enterprise and Training at OTR Bristol, a youth mental health service. She's got three children and lives happily on her own in the Wye Valley.

Rahila Gupta talks about her epic work The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong, fighting for the rights of her disabled child, and creative writing with BAME survivors of domestic violence.

Louise and I talk about being a woman in science and industry, being a northerner, and being in the Women's Equality Party.

Dr Sophie Harman is Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary's University of London. She has written recently about the government response to the coronavirus pandemic and its implications for women. In this interview she points out how women are upholding the economy both in their paid and their unpaid labour, and we do manage to find a few positives in the situation

Andrea Freeman is Associate Professor at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law. Freeman writes and researches at the intersection of critical race theory and issues of food policy, health, and consumer credit.

She talks to Karen about her book, Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race and Injustice, the story of the exploitation of the Fultz quadruplets in 1940s America.

Lisa is one of my oldest friends, living the high life in Shanghai. She talks about the adjustments she and her family have had to make in the last few weeks, and their impact on her work and family life.

Emma Pickett is a mother, lactation consultant, author, and chair of the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers. She has such a lot to say about the state of breastfeeding and why it is and isn't a feminist issue, that I might have to do another episode with her. But enjoy this one!

Michelle Quashie is a busy woman: mother, founder of the Women's Voices Conference, Service User Rep on the National Maternity Transformation Programme, and vice chair of her local Maternity Voices Partnership. She tells her birth stories, as background to her journey into birth activism and advocating for women, and talks about why she does what she does.