My guest this episode is writer, director and producer Danielle Dash. You may know her from her award-winning 2012 web series Dear Jesus, her incisive pull-no-punches culture writing, and her Twitter, a platform she uses to raise her voice about pop culture she cares about, work she supports, and GIFs that deserve our attention. We talk about the gospel music that makes her feel hopeful, storytelling at school, Twitter as a portal to new friends connected by mutual love and admiration, and Real Housewives.

Gabriel is a BAFTA nominated writer, actor and director. Right now he’s in the final stages of prep for bringing his new play Whitewash to Soho Theatre, a semi-autobiographical play about London, family, and the intersection between race and class. We talk about the experiences that inspired the play, as well as his childhood obsession with ghost-adjacent pop culture, the song that reminds him of his best friend, and a compelling theory he has about the viewership of reality TV.

This week I had the absolute pleasure of going round to have a coffee with writer and actor Milly Thomas. She’s written a whole host of plays but it's Dust - a really frank, portrait of suicide and what comes after it - that we talk about most during our conversation. We also discuss portrayals of mental health in pop culture, the music that’s guaranteed to make her cry in a Pret, and the Gordon Ramsay one-liners that make her spit tea at her laptop. Extremely mixed genres there but it works.

My guest this week is the poet and author Andrea Gibson whose writing and performance explores love and loss and anxiety and gender amongst so, so much besides. We talked about Andrea's forthcoming tour and recent book, Lord of the Butterflies, how they found their way to the stage through watching jazz in New Orleans and longing to perform while simultaneously gripped by stage-fright, the concept of kindness as coolness, and Harry Styles! Perfect combo.

This week my guest in Charlie Craggs, founder of Nail Transphobia, an organisation that sees Charlie tacking trans issues through conversation, education and manicures, and Editor of To My Trans Sisters, a collection of letters written by trans women from all walks of life. We talk about everything from Charlie’s early obsession with Posh Spice to the music that made her feel a sense of community during a really difficult time at school, to dealing with the concept of ‘cool’ then and now.

My guest this week is illustrator and mental health advocate, Venus Libido. Her art reflects life in 2019 – messy and complicated, a constant balancing act between self-love and self-doubt. Though her pieces are often tongue-in-cheek, lots of them shine a light on issues of mental health. It’s something we talk a lot about throughout the ep, as well as its intersection with the act of creating work, social media and, of course, pop culture from Michael Jackson to It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Gina Martin is a force of nature online and off. After 18 months of solid campaigning, this January Gina succeeded in making upskirting a criminal offence. It clearly wasn't easy, particularly when the bill was blocked in the Commons by Conservative MP Sir Christopher Chope, but she didn’t back down. We talk about how she did what she did, how pop culture was a port in the storm for her through the worst moments, and how she harnessed it to serve the campaign.

Eliza Hopewell is an artist best known for her candid unapologetic plate paintings. Her work is hugely popular, but its that very popularity that forced Eliza to stop what she was doing in the middle of last year and take stock. We talk about how, since then, she’s reframed her work, her prices, and ultimately, her self-worth, as well as her early obsession with PJ Harvey, the song that got her through a difficult breakup, and her current fixation on the sublime simplicity of the work of Alex Katz.

My guest this week is Katy Hessel, the creator of The Great Women Artists, an Instagram account that celebrates all the female artists it’s very likely you’ve never heard of. Katy believes that art should be for everyone, and that’s just that bit harder to affect if the vast majority of the art we see if by men. We managed to cover a lot of ground, from what inspired her to start The Great Women Artists, to Skins-era new rave to the feminist advice she’d give to her younger self.

My guest this week is the culture writer Simran Hans. As a film critic for the observer Simran has led me to see so many films I might otherwise not even have heard of, let alone been inspired to watch. We get through a lot in this episode from the inexplicably enduring allure of The OC’s Seth Cohen to the perceived unattainable cool of early seasons of Channel 4’s Skins, to our mutual recent experience of a 1975 gig. Let's get into it!