Reality Check

In this episode we reconvened remotely to catch up on our quarantine antics. We discussed the recent changes set out by the UK government with regards to lifting the lockdown and also how we've kept ourselves busy during these uncertain times. Stay safe and enjoy!

For a special lockdown episode this week we were joined by mental health campaigner Ben West. He's campaigning to get mental health first aid to become a compulsory part of teacher training in the UK. We think this is hugely important, so in the episode we discussed how we can reform the way we approach the topic of mental health, especially with regards to men and the phenomenon of toxic masculinity. We also discussed how we can look after our mental health during this tough time. Apologies the quality isn't as good as usual - due to the lockdown we are recording remotely!Thanks for listening, enjoy xYou can sign Ben's petition here: https://www.change.org/p/saveourstudents

Last Sunday it was International Women's Day and so this week we decided to explore some of the inequalities that still exist between men and women by debunking the gender pay gap. We compared different gender pay gaps across a variety of countries, including the Nordics, Rwanda and South Korea. What remains fairly consistent in the West is the fact that the gender pay gap widens significantly after a woman has children, and so we discussed the idea of the Motherhood Penalty and how it needs to be broken down by reforms to paternal leave.

Food and eating is a unique fusion whereby humans behave both biologically and socially. The practice can be deeply embedded within one's upbringing and culture. We talked about our own relationships with food, and the significance of it in our own individual cultures and backgrounds.

Electoral reform has been a ubiquitous topic in politics for some time now. We discussed the different types of voting systems in relation to the UK's first-past-the-post, which has come under criticism for failing to attribute any power to minority parties.

What are expectations and how do they affect us? We take a more personal approach to this topic, drawing from our diverse backgrounds and experiences to analyse how expectations differ across cultures, countries and religions - from ‘wife kidnapping’ in Vietnam to students’ sexual exploration in Buddhist Sri Lankan schools. Then, we compare family and self-expectations, discussing whether expectations are healthy. To conclude, we explored our expectations for the future, and how to be content whilst living with expectations.

February is LGBT+ History Month and to celebrate we decided to talk about sex education and consent within the community. We discussed what seemed to be highly biological and heteronormative personal experiences with sex education, where sexual experiences where assumed to be penetrative intercourse between a man and a women, with a complete disregard for female pleasure. We also explored the future of a more inclusive form of sex education with the idea of counselling-like one-on-one sessions, much like Jean Milburn's approach in Netflix's Sex Education.

Australian Bushfires have been occurring for centuries, but the fires of 2019 and 2020 met the public with unprecedented force, and they're still burning. With two student journalists from Warwick's The Boar, we discussed what's been happening in Australia and it's relation to the climate crisis. The episode also explores the political climate in Australia and how Scott Morrison's Liberal Party struggled to admit that the fires were related to climate change, still failing to address the radical climate reform that the people of Australia want to see.

This week we were joined by Chathu to discuss childhood and its significance on our future lives. By drawing on our own experiences, we explored the problematic notion of the heteronormative 'nuclear family' whereby we expect men to be breadwinners and women to be caregivers. We also discussed the role of gender in the upbringing of children, and the expectations that tell us that boys and girls need to behave in a certain way.

Sexual liberation is so important - for both our physical and mental health. Virginity is a concept that remains to hold some pretty retrogressive assumptions - girls are told to hold on to it whilst boys are told to get rid of it as soon as they possibly can. In this episode we discussed why we attach a certain value to virginity, and delved into the quite shocking history of the subject. We also explored the heteronormative culture of virginity, chatting about how it struggles to fit into the LGBTQ+ discourse and ends up alienating a huge number of people.

For our first episode of the new year we decided to try and answer some ethical dilemma questions. School and university teaches us a lot of useful and useless things but sometimes real life surprises us with some far more complex problems. In this episode we discussed a series of ethical problems and tried to establish what our best move would be.

It can be so easy to blame a huge portion of contemporary issues on social media, whether it's mental health, false news, or cult political groups. We discussed the paradox of social media's attempt to connect us in the face of increased loneliness and mental health issues.Trigger warning: this episode includes discussion around social media's relationship with eating disorders and self-harm.

This week we spoke about the deceptive powers of greenwashing and how the 'trendiness' of sustainability has motivated companies to attempt to appear greener than they actually are. We honed in on greenwashing in fashion and political campaigning, as well as the question of authenticity surrounding corporate social responsibility.

Dealing with conflicting opinions is part of what it means to be human. But it seems that social media has hindered our ability to understand the fact that sometime people get things wrong. Call-out culture has made it socially acceptable to cancel people for not being perfect, whether it's a vegan wearing a leather belt, Jordyn Woods fooling around with the wrong Kardashian's man, or Jameela Jamil for not being a good enough feminist. We discussed why this trend is problematic with our lovely guest Claudia Aoraha.

We seem to live in a political climate where an election always seems to be around the corner, and this week, with the announcement of a December General Election, we thought it necessary to discuss voting behaviour. With social media narrowing our world view through algorithmic timelines and politicians failing to provide us with the right information, voting is more convoluted than ever. We discussed this with an aim to establish how voters can avoid bias and bypass the abundance of bogus information that is so often forced upon us.

More people than ever spend their summers volunteering in developing countries. We used this episode to talk about the potential harms of voluntourism and the way that it has perpetuated the voyeuristic notion of 'poverty porn'.

Amidst the growth of the Extinction Rebellion protests we've been seeing, we decided to discuss the climate crisis and its link to the food that we eat. We talked about why going vegan is beneficial for the planet, and how we can go about doing so without dropping our entire student loans.

This week we spoke with Tom about privilege, unpacking what it means and why it seems to have become a dirty word. We gained insights into how acknowledging one's privilege is imperative in overcoming the social stigma attached to it.

This week we spoke with Mo about mental health. Firstly, we spoke about what exactly our mental health is, and why to some level it is perceived as a trivial matter. We ended the discussion by establishing how 'good' mental health doesn't necessarily mean being happy all the time, but instead is a mental state whereby one is able to control both positive and negative emotions.