Ctrl Alt Delete

This is a live recorded one-off episode, hosted in Jigsaw's London Piccadilly store, all about working in the creativity industries from the perspectives of three generations of creative women. I invited Charly Cox (poet, Gen Z), Serena Guen (founder of Suitcase, Millennial) and Lucia White (Head of design at Jigsaw, Gen X) to talk abut the highs, lows and lessons of getting paid to be creative.This month, Jigsaw is launching their “creativity doesn’t discriminate” campaign, to champion women leaders in the creativity industry, through film, photography, prose and art. Government statistics show that women are still under-represented in the creative industries in the UK - there's never been a more important time to champion creative women.In collaboration with Kodak, Jigsaw are re-launching a 125 year-old campaign – Kodak Girl – into the modern era to celebrate new creative talent. The collaboration - now called Kodak Woman (she has grown up!) - will be supported by a capsule collection of T-shirts and sweats

Ava Duvernay is an Oscar-nominated film director. Ava made her feature film debut with the documentary This in the Life (2008), a history on the hip hop movement in Los Angeles in the 1990's. This was followed by series of television music documentaries and her first narrative feature film, I Will Follow (2010), secured her the African-American Film Critics Association award for best screenplay. Her follow-up, Middle of Nowhere (2012) won the Best Director Prize at the 2012 Sundance film festival, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award.Fast forward to the last few years, she is best know for her work directing Selma (2014), Ava was the first black female director to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award. With Selma, she was also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2017, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her film 13thHer latest film, out now, is the 2018 fantasy film A Wr

Jerico Mandybur is the editorial director at GIRLBOSS MEDIA. We recorded it in LA in the GIRLBOSS offices. You might have read the book GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso (the original founder of Nasty Gal) which was a New York Times bestseller in 2014. Jerico is currently the editorial director of Girlboss media.I had the best time in LA! thank you to Air New Zealand for my flight and Visit California for the most amazing trip. There's lots of content going on my site in the next few weeks.So back to Girlboss Media - it was founded for women redefining success on their own terms. It was also founded by Sophia Amoruso. Girlboss Media was born from the Girlboss book that inspired a generation of women to take action in their own lives.We talk about Jerico's career journey up to now: she previously held senior positions at sites like Mashable (a huge online tech magazine), Oyster Magazine, MTV and ASOS.Jerico also hosts of the podcast Self Service, and weekly guest on Girlboss Radio. Self Service is the second sho

Dawn O'Porter is a novelist, columnist and broadcaster who lives in Los Angeles with her husband Chris, two songs, cat Lilu and dog Potato. She has made numerous documentaries about all sorts of things: polygamy, childbirth, Geisha, body image, breast cancer and even the movie Dirty Dancing. She is the critically acclaimed author of Paper Aeroplanes and Goose and The Sunday Times Bestseller The Cows.Dawn helped launch ‘Help Refugees’ in 2015, a charity that sends urgent care to refugees across Europe. She is also the host of ‘Get It On’, a weekly podcast where she interviews interesting people about why they wear what they wear.The Cows is a powerful novel about three women – judging each other, but also themselves. In all the noise of modern life, they need to find their own voice. Tara, Cam and Stella are strangers living their own lives as best they can – though when society’s screaming you should live life one way, it can be hard to like what you see in the mirror.When an extraordinary event ties inv

Gina Martin is a writer and activist in London and currently campaigning to change the law around "upskirting", the act of someone taking a photo up someone's skirt.Gina recently partnered with Refinery 29 UK and created the hashtag #stopskirtingtheissue. In a nutshell, Gina was watching The Killers perform at a music festival last summer, when two guys kept hitting on her and wouldn't take no for an answer. After this happened and after she told the police, she later learned that taking pictures up skirts is not legally classed as a sexual offence under UK law.Taken from Refinery29UK: "Martin threw herself into research and found out that there is no specific legislation against upskirting. Upskirting is already illegal in Scotland after the law was changed by the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009. But, under the Sexual Offences Act 2003—a law which pertains to the whole UK—upskirting is not considered a sexual offence."In this episode we discuss how to start a campaign from scratch, the pow

I know I say “exciting episode” every week but this really is. I’ve been a huge fan of Greta Gerwig for years. I fell in love with her in the film Frances Ha, 20th Century Women, Mistress America and her brilliant supporting role in Jackie. Now she's nominated for an Oscar for her amazing directorial debut called Ladybird. I saw Ladybird last year at a special press screening and cried and laughed and loved it. Universal then asked if I wanted to interview Greta for my podcast and honestly, I nearly cried again when I got the email. I love her! Ladybird is a comedy-drama written and directed by Greta with a seriously amazing cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Timothée Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein. Set in Sacramento, California, it is a coming-of-age story of a high-school senior played by Saoirse and her turbulent relationship with her mother. The story of female friendship is also really lovely throughout.Go and see LADYBIRD! It’s out in the UK now.Favourite quotes from the episode: “I do not want to perpetu

Emily Hill is journalist and author of Bad Romance. In 2016, she was the commissioning editor at The Spectator. Last August, she was responsible for the magazine’s first ever all-female cover. She has written comment for The Guardian, books reviews for the New Statesman and features for the Mail on Sunday, as well as gathering gossip for the Evening Standard and profiling cult figures for Dazed & Confused. Emily is also a collage artist and she gave me a beautiful collage when we met to record the podcast!This is going live around Valentine's Day and I wanted to dedicate it to talking about being single and what that means right now. Bridget Jones seems outdated and a bit patronising at times, and she ends up with the man in the end, like most literature and film.Emily's book Bad Romance is dark, funny and feminist debut short story collection and I totally loved it. They tell of defiant single women in all shapes and sizes - of career girls, sisters, mothers and lovers, battling through sleepless nights,

Welcome to a bonus episode of Ctrl Alt Delete, recorded live at the Soho Hotel after a screening of Home Again, a film with the amazing Reese Witherspoon playing the main character Alice Kinney. Recently separated from her husband, (played by Michael Sheen), Alice decides to start over by moving back to her hometown of Los Angeles with her two young daughters. During a night out on her 40th birthday, Alice meets three aspiring filmmakers who happen to be in need of a place to live. Alice agrees to let the guys stay in her guesthouse temporarily, but the arrangement ends up unfolding in unexpected ways. Alice's unlikely new family and new romance comes to a crashing halt when her ex-husband shows up, suitcase in hand. It's the perfect escapism film, to watch with mates and have a night-in. I also loved how unexpectedly funny it is.The film was written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer and produced by Nancy Meyers (who directed The Holiday and The Intern, both so good). The film is a modern romantic comedy ab

Jayne Hardy is the Founder and CEO of The Blurt Foundation – a Social Enterprise dedicated to helping those affected by depression. She lost most of her twenties to depression. At the height of her illness she was unable to work, leave the house or even undertake the most basic acts of self-care – in her book she talks about how she lost a tooth because she didn’t feel worthy enough to clean them. She has spoken, and written, about her experiences of depression and self-care, on BBC Radio 2, at TEDxBrum, and in publications such as Huffington Post, Grazia, Virgin.com, to name a few - and now her book is out called The Self-Care Project. She won the TalkTalk Digital Hero Award in 2011, and in 2014 was included in Marketing Magazine’s list of Top 10 Digital Mavericks. Jayne has been mentioned as one of 19 inspirational women leading the way in mental health by Rethink as part of their International Women’s Day celebrations. In 2016, Jayne led the viral #whatyoudontsee Social Media campaign.Hope you find this ep

Jojo Moyes is a novelist, best known for her bestselling book Me Before You. Jojo has been a full time novelist since 2002, before that she was a journalist for 10 years. Her first book Sheltering Rain was published in 2002 Since then she has written a further eleven novels, all of which have been widely critically acclaimed. Jojo has won the Romantic Novelist’s Award twice, and Me Before You has been nominated for Book of the Year at the UK Galaxy Book Awards. Me Before You has since gone on to sell over 8 million copies worldwide. The film adaptation of Me Before You starring Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) and Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) was released in June 2016 and was a huge box-office success. The screenplay was written by Jojo. We spoke about dealing with rejected manuscripts, changing jobs, her new book Still Me, the power of listening to feedback and the excitement of being on a film set when you wrote the main characters.Favourite quotes from this episode:“My publishing career was in such a

This episode of Ctrl Alt Delete is all about travel and self-discovery. Anna Hart is my guest today, who is one of my favourite travel writers, and she has just written a book called Departures. Anna Hart writes for The Telegraph, Grazia, GQ, The Guardian and Conde Nast Traveller, Sunday Times Travel and is contributing travel editor of Stylist magazine. Her book Departures, is published by Little Brown this year exploring the world as a traveller, drawing on 10 years experience of travel writing, and she writes about the highs and lows travelling alone as a woman, showing that even the experts get it wrong (sometimes) and advice on how to get it right. I love this episode. We talk about the importance of unfiltered, non-airbrushed travel stories in a world of glossy travel on Instagram. The truth is travel arrangements can go horribly wrong, things might not go to plan, it can be scary on your own, especially a young woman with a backpack. We talk about the responsibility in only promoting brilliant pla

Lucy Sheridan is the World's first and only "Comparison Coach". She came on the podcast last year to talk about a book she co-authored with fellow lifecoach Jo Westwood. This time, we discuss the dreaded act on social media comparison in all it's ugliness.Lucy is a Hay House author and life coach who specialises in her helping her clients get over the compare and despair that can be heightened via social media. She uses the #comparisonfree hashtag online spreading awareness of how to find the tools to live a comparison free life. She coaches her clients with unique, specialist coaching experiences and events. The Times' calls Lucy "one of the UK's most successful coaches", she was also recently listed in the Sunday Times Style in an article called "Meet The New Wellbeing Coaches", and she’s been featured on Oprah's 'Life Class' series multiple times.I wanted to release this episode about comparison around Christmas time as I think it's a time when we have more time to play around online and maybe part of

Tom Chatfield is a leading writer, thinker and speak on technology and digital culture. We sat on a panel together a few years back and I loved what he had to say. He’s consulted for firms ranging from Google, Coca Cola to Time Out, he is interested in improving our experiences of digital culture, with a special interest in A.I., the psychology of human-machine interactions and the ethics of tech.He’s a TED Global speaker (with ver 1 million of his talk “7 Ways Games Reward the Brain”) and a prolific author. Tom’s 7th book CRITICAL THINKING has just come out with Sage publishing and it's a brilliant book full of tools on how to think more clearly in this age of digital overwhelm. He is a columnist for BBC’s worldwide technology site and BBC Future and guest lectures at universities in the UK and all over Europe. He has written for the Financial Times, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Sunday Times, New Statesman, New Scientist and Wired. He took his doctorate at St John’s College, Oxford, and was named on

So excited to have Lauren Laverne on the podcast today! Lauren Laverne is a radio DJ, television presenter, author and co-founder of the award-winning digital platform The Pool. She has presented TV shows including 10 O'Clock Live for Channel 4, and The Culture Show and coverage of the Glastonbury Festival for the BBC. She currently presents a radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music and also Late Night Woman's Hour. We discuss the fact that Late Night Woman's Hour podcast has it's own dedicated podcast (very exciting), why she started the award-winning digital platform The Pool, some advice for young women, the evolution of audio, the joy of radio and why privacy matters in the social media age.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I did a live podcast recording of Ctrl Alt Delete at Starling Bank offices where we spoke about the awkwardness of money and the taboo that surrounds it. How often do you check your bank account? What keeps you up at night? Why don't we talk about these things?It's a weird, emotional, vulnerable topic. We all have our own personal relationship with money and we all keep a lot hidden in the depths of our own minds. For this very special one-off live recording of Ctrl Alt Delete, hosted at Starling Bank offices, I wanted the whole episode to be around this topic and open up a wider conversation.We spoke about all sorts of different areas of money awkwardness: asking for it, not having it, having a lot of it, social sitchs when you have more than your friends, or less than your partner, or wanting a raise at work, or saving for a child, or late-night worries in bed and wtf is an ISA and oh shit moments when you realise you don't have a pension. We covered a lot and the aim of the night wasn't to financially advi

Welcome to my exciting episode with the incredible June Sarpong. We discuss her new book Diversify backstage at Stylist Live. I've wanted to meet June for ages, so this is a VERY exciting episode! June has enjoyed a 20-year career which has already seen her become one of the most recognisable faces of British television, as well as being one of the UK’s most intelligent and dynamic young hosts. June has also taken on the world’s most challenging live audiences, hosting 2005’s major Make Poverty History event in London’s Trafalgar Square and presenting at the UK leg of Live Earth in 2007. In 2008 alongside Will Smith she also hosted Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday celebrations in front of 30,000 people in London’s Hyde Park.June has worked extensively with HRH Prince Charles for ten years as an ambassador for his charity the Prince's Trust. June was awarded an MBE on the Queens 2007 new years honours list for her services to broadcasting and charity, making her along with Princess Anne’s daughter Zarah Phi

Hannah Jewell is a pop culture host at The Washington Post, and a former senior writer at BuzzFeed, where she became known for her humour writing - she presented BuzzFeed's live 2016 election night show, which was watched by nearly 7 million people.She has also now written a book called 100 Nasty Women of History. All about brilliant, badass and completely fearless women everyone should know.The book is about women in history who were deemed too nasty for their times. When you learn about (the very few) women in history, it's hard not to wonder: why do they seem so prim and proper? The truth is, (mostly male) historians keep glossing over the real details, or leaving out the women who threatened their idea of what a woman should be like. They’re intelligent, ahead of their time, some overthrew empires, and some just wanted to have a good time – obviously none of which were acceptable at the time.It’s sort of history the way you’d tell it to your friends at the pub – full of the salacious, the mind boggli

Today my 100th episode has gone live! That’s 100 guests, 100 locations, 100 different topics, over 1 million downloads and whole load of listening, from me as the host, and listeners all around the world. I think this calls for a digital celebration and some trip-down-memory-lane reflection. I wasn’t really going to do anything for my 100th episode, until I realised that no-one is responsible for shouting about anything for you – it’s up to you! If you want to say “WOO HOO” about something then do it. And hey, that’s what having a blog is for. This 100th episode is a compilation-style medley of some of my favourite interviews and some behind-the-scenes chat in between each clip about what I’ve learned and enjoyed along the way, including snippets from Lena Dunham, Gillian Anderson, Will Young, Deborah Frances-White and Nimko Ali.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode is with Will Storr, journalist and author of many books including his most recent work of non-fiction called SELFIE. We talk about his new book Selfie: how we became so self-obsessed and what it’s doing to us. He unpicks our society’s longing for self-esteem and where this came from – and how we are products of our own environment. Why do we have to be confident extroverts to be successful? Truth is, we don’t. He writes that the perfect self is propaganda and doesn’t actually exist. It’s rather liberating to hear Will’s thoughts on how you don’t have to be the person the media wants you be. We also chatted a bit about the future of work, we have a friendly conversational debate and seeing it from each other’s perspectives. We live in a world where people are so one-sided most of the time, and Will gives some tips at the end on how to spot if you are holding an idea too sacred and how to be more self-aware. Hope you enjoy this one!  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informati

Today’s episode is with Anne Boden, CEO of Starling Bank. I’m proud to have partnered with Starling to talk more about money, a topic I don't think we talk enough about. Starling is a mobile-only bank, and they believe everyone should be able to enjoy a healthy financial life. I love that Starling is spear-headed by a woman and Anne’s passion for helping me manage their money better. I feel its important we talk about money more, especially when pay gaps still exist and money is such an emotional subject that is often felt like a taboo. I am working with Starling on some exciting things coming up - keep an eye on my Twitter or Instagram for more news. You can get it on Android and Apple and just visit Starlingbank.com for more info and to download it. Can I also recommend their blog post called Women in Finance Charter talking all about how to get more women into senior tech positions. As CEO Anne overseas everything at Starling. After graduating in computer science and chemistry, she started her career at Ll