Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes

What we get wrong about knife crime, with Gary Younge

What do you know about knife crime? It’s something that happens in gangs and on the streets. It’s something you’ve never had to worry about. Right?

 

Gary Younge is an author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the university of Manchester. Formerly an editor at large of the guardian newspaper, he has written 5 books including Another Day In The Death of America, which chronicled the lives of ten children and adolescents who were shot dead on one day in November 2013.

 

I’ve wanted to talk to Gary since his award winning investigation for the Guardian in 2018, Beyond The Blade, where he took a similar approach to another day in the death of america: except he took a year, not a day, and he told the stories of the 39 children and adolescents who had been stabbed to death, in 2017. Gary has lived in both America - where he wrote extensively about gun culture - and now, back in the UK, where he has written extensively about knife crime, and I don’t think there’s anyone who descontructs the myths around social violence, like Gary.

 

We discuss why knife crime is a public health issue, why the term ‘knife crime’ itself is a social construct lacking in context, the ramifications of shutting down shared, free spaces for adolescents and how we won’t ever get on top of it until we understand that knife crime is about poverty, not race.

 

Follow @garyyounge on Twitter

Read Beyond The Blade

Buy Another Day In The Death of America

 

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes

Production by Joel Grove

Get 20% off OTO sleep drops with the code pandora20 

The myth of gendered emotion, with Praga Agarwal

Professor Pragya Agarwal is a data and behavioural scientist, a visiting professor of social inequities and injustice at Loughborough University and the founder of a research think tank, The 50% Project. She is also the author of five books, most recently Hysterical: Exploding The Myth of Gendered Emotions. 

 

In this episode, we talk about whether women really do cry more; the myth of the hysterical woman; how emotional expression varies over cultures and societies; and why we need to talk more about the biases in science.

 

Buy Hysterical: Exploding The Myth of Gendered Emotions

Follow Pragya on Twitter @DrPragyaAgarwal

 

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes

Production by Joel Grove

What we get wrong about dementia, with Wendy Mitchell

There are 50million people living with dementia worldwide. By 2050, it’s likely to rise to 152 million. But how much do you know about dementia? When it’s a disease so rapidly on the rise, why aren’t we talking more about it?

 

Wendy Mitchell is a former NHS worker who was diagnosed with young-onset dementia at the age of 58. She’s written two books: Somebody I Used To Know and What I Wish People Knew About Dementia

 

We talk about why dementia is so much more than memory loss; how the arts often falls back on stereotypes when featuring characters with dementia; and how Wendy thinks a diagnosis of dementia could be better broken by doctors - it’s not the end of life, she says, it’s the beginning of a different one.

 

Buy What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, by Wendy Mitchell

Follow Wendy on Twitter @WendyPMitchell 

 

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes

Production by Joel Grove

 

The myth of good skin, with Jessica DeFino

Jessica DeFino is not your regular beauty journalist. After finding her pieces were regularly rejected from newspapers and magazines for being too incendiary, or dissing beauty brands who advertised, she founded her newsletter, The Unpublishable, where, in her own words she “dismantles beauty standards, debunks marketing myths and explores how beauty culture impacts people”. It now has 40,000 readers. 

The Huffington Post once described her as “giving the middle finger to the entire beauty industry”. 

 

Jess and I discuss why clear skin isn’t a health objective but an aesthetic one, the evolution of a tan, the explosion of celebrity makeup and skincare lines and why we’re at a tipping point in beauty.

Subscribe to The Unpublishable

Follow Jess on Twitter and IG @jessicadefino_

 

Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes

Production by Joel Grove

The nuances of grief, with Cariad Lloyd

I'm so pleased to bring you this s2 bonus episode sponsored by Sage Appliances, with Cariad Lloyd, which we recorded in front of a live audience a month ago. Cariad is a comedian and writer and the creator of the cult podcast, Griefcast, where she interviews famous people (usually comedians) like Robert Webb, David Baddiel and Sara Pascoe about the human experience of death and grief, and which has won multiple British Podcast Awards. 

 

I'm really interested in grief: why we fear it (especially other people's), why we expect grief to look a certain way, the lack of nuance in our understanding of grief. What I love about Griefcast is the way it democratises grief: there is no one way to grieve. Grief, as Cariad digs into, is not just very sad, it is funny, absurd, weird and life-expanding.

 

You can listen to a new series of Griefcast now, on all good pod platforms and find Griefcast on Twitter @thegriefcast. Here are some helpful resources from Cariad:

The Grief Network

Let's Talk About Loss charity

Dead Parent Club podcast

The New Normal charity

Bereavement Room podcast

 

And some books I recommend: Grief Works by Julia Samuel, Once More We Saw Stars by Jayson Greene, It's Your Loss by Robyn Donaldson and Emma Hopkinson, Languages of Loss by Sasha Bates, Sunset by Jessie Cave and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

How to be sad, with Helen Russell

Helen Russell is a journalist, podcaster and author of How To Be Sad, a part memoir/ manifesto which argues that we can’t talk about happiness, without making space for sadness. But why are we so scared of being sad? We discuss ‘warm glow giving’, what we can learn about sadness from the Russians and why "money can't buy you happiness" isn't quite right.

Buy How To Be Sad, here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Helen-Russell/How-to-be-Sad--Everything-IVe-Learned-About-Getting-Happi/24958621

Re-thinking self-care, with Pooja Lakshmin

Pooja Lakshmin MD is a psychiatrist and writer, specialising in women's mental health. The founder of digital women's health platform Gemma, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she writes about wellness and self-care (amongst other subjects) about which she is currently writing a book. We talk about what the business of wellness gets wrong, what real self-care looks like and the difference between burnout and despair. 

Follow Pooja's work, here: https://www.instagram.com/womensmentalhealthdoc/

 

Gemma's first all digital course on dealing with mom guilt, martyr-mode, and perfectionism can be found here: https://gemmawomen.com/unloadmomguilt 

The lonely economy, with Noreena Hertz

Noreena Hertz is an economist and thought leader and the author of The Lonely Century, a fascinating and sprawling study of the epidemic of loneliness. We discuss why loneliness is higher in cities where people walk faster, how robots can be a force for good in social care and how to reconnect communities.

Buy The Lonely Century here: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Noreena-Hertz/The-Lonely-Century--A-Call-to-Reconnect/24115876

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

Introverts and Extroverts, with Arthur Brooks

Arthur Brooks is a social scientist, Harvard professor and author of multiple books, who writes a column for The Atlantic about happiness. After his column on introverts and extroverts caught my attention (I am fascinated in personality theories), I rung him up to discuss why introverts fared better during the pandemic and what extroverts and introverts can learn from one another. Plus, we take a little detour into why 'more' isn't always better. You can read that column here: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/05/introverts-extroverts-happiness-gap-pandemic/618925/

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora

What the law gets wrong, with Alexandra Wilson

Alexandra Wilson is a criminal and family law barrister, the founder of Black Women In Law and the author of Black & White: a young barrister’s story of race and class in a broken justice system. We discuss the bar’s diversity and access problem, Stop & Search, the over-representation of black people in prisons and what we get wrong when we talk about knife crime. Plus, she drops some deliciously archaic nuggets about the process of becoming a barrister.

Buy In Black and White https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Alexandra-Wilson/In-Black-and-White--A-Young-Barristers-Story-of-Race-and-/25680126

 

Tickets for Pandora Sykes in conversation with Candice Brathwaite are available here: fane.co.uk/pandora