The Snash with Jennie Cook

I had a great chat with my lovely friend Viki all about the process her and her wife went through to get pregnant. When we spoke she was 37 weeks and she's since had a super adorable wee boy called Frank. We discuss how I.U.I works, her experience of pregnancy, how they chose which sperm to use and how, as a lesbian she has to come out over and over again plus some of the othering they've experienced during the process.

In this episode I talk to Cat Hepburn about the themes she explores in her recent book of poetry Girlhood. We try to get in about some complex issues including being a teenager, some of the potential problems with internet porn, we touch on safety, sexual assault and partner rape, current beauty standards and why Cat doesn't want kids.

In this episode I chat to Talat Yaqoob about representation and why it's so important. We discuss why quotas are needed, why women are so under represented in STEM and politics and what we can do to improve the stats. We delve into a bit of privilege and talk about how to pass the mic and allow those with less their chance to be heard.

In this episode Jennie talks to human and disability rights activist Pam Duncan-Glancy about her experiences of growing up with a disability in a small town in Scotland. She tells us about trying to get the right social care package to get to University. She also talks about her bodily autonomy and the ways in which that can be compromised as a young woman with a disability.

Lydia Morrow is a maker and small business owner who had Ransom at 22. In this episode of the podcast we talk about her experiences of being a mother in her early 20s, her pregnancy and birth and how she feels about her body after having a baby. We talk about some of the difficulties of motherhood, how it can feel like losing yourself for a while, and we touch on maternal mental health and isolation.

Despite the fact that about half of the world's population will experience having a period at some point there is still a real lack of research into menstruation. Victoria Heaney created the research project Free Period Scotland for Women for Independence to fill that gap, it was a ground breaking research project that was instrumental in keeping periods at the top of the agenda in Scotland, in this podcast we discuss the shame and stigma traditionally attached to menstruation, whether that's changing and how fast and why the term period poverty can be slightly problematic. 

In this episode I talk to my actual sister Anna Cook about our own particular sisterhood and then sisterhood as a wider concept. We discuss how to recognise your own privilege, intersectionality and how to support or amplify those with less privilege. There are also some pretty damning stories about how terrible I was to her when we were kids...

In Episode 2 Jennie talks to Samina Ansari, C.E.O of Amina Muslim Women's Resource Centre about her experiences of being a Scottish Muslim woman, about why she wears the hijab, Islamophobia and how her feminism intersects with her faith. They also chat about how cultural stereotyping colours the way the media reports stories about Muslim women and the misconceptions this leads to. 

Jennie chats to body positivity advocate Danni Gordon from https://www.chachipowerproject.co.uk/ about the pressures our kids bodies are under from society, about how we can help alleviate that pressure and how we can start changing the conversation about our own bodies.

A trailer for ep 1 of The Snash with Jennie Cook.