This week on Friday I'm in Bed; we're looking at two ends of the spectrum- young people who aren't going out, and older women working out who they actually want to live the rest of their lives with. Different demographics, same quiet rewriting of the script.

Kate kicks us off with the slow death of going out. A pint has hit £10 in some places, two pubs a day are closing in the UK, and a quarter of late-night venues have shut since 2020. Gen Z, broadly, isn't picking up the slack- they're at the gym, they're on coffee, they're saving for houses, and they don't fancy ending up as a blurry shape in someone else's TikTok story. We get into cost of living, sober curiosity, the think-25 rule, and the Mediterranean model of slow evenings, family, and food that we keep gesturing at. Gem fondly remembers a bottle of La Mancha and ten Silk Cut for under a fiver. Kate remembers her mum giving her taxi money she absolutely did not spend on a taxi.

Then Gem brings us the story of Pat Dunn, a Canadian woman who, after losing her husband and finding herself googling how to live safely in her car at 70, set up a Facebook group looking for housemates. It now has hundreds of members and has paired up dozens of older women into shared homes. We use it as a springboard for the bigger question: who are we actually planning to grow old alongside, and why do we keep assuming the answer is a husband or kids? We talk about the pension gap, the 1 in 5 over-50s in the UK without children, the 70% of over-65s living alone who are women, and Gem's conversation with a friend about writing each other into wills. There's a Golden Girls scenario for everyone.

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Topics covered: pub closures UK, £10 pint, Gen Z drinking habits, sober curious, late-night venues closing, Mediterranean drinking culture, grassroots music venues, Senior Women Living Together, Pat Dunn, older women co-housing, female friendship in midlife, ageing without children, chosen family, women's pensions gap, planning for retirement.

Helpful links

• Senior Women Living Together (Pat Dunn's organisation)
• Ageing Without Children
• Older Women's Co-Housing (OWCH)
• Gateway Women / Childless Collective

It's Friday I'm an Angry Young Woman (Apparently)

This week we're unpacking the New Statesman's "Angry Young Women" cover story, the right-wing press meltdown that followed, and the very tired playbook of describing women's politics by their hair colour. Plus: is the manosphere really equivalent to the so-called "femosphere"?

Then Stella McCartney has done another collaboration with H&M - and we're asking whether the most famously sustainable designer in fashion can team up with a fast-fashion giant without it being greenwashing in beaded form. Plus a slight tangent into ASOS return fees, the privilege of charity-shop hauls, and why "reduce" is the R nobody wants to talk about.

And in this week's Zine 🍷 we get into MPs drinking on the job, the Hannah Spencer story, the Westminster pushback, and why a subsidised pint at lunchtime would get the rest of us sacked. Subscribe to the Zine here for the bonus episode and the rest.

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Topics covered: angry young women, femosphere, manosphere, New Statesman, Greta Thunberg, Green Party, luxury beliefs, Leftie Island, Stella McCartney H&M, greenwashing, fast fashion, sustainable fashion, ASOS returns, Victoria Beckham Gap, over-consumption, charity shop hauls, reduce reuse recycle

Helpful links

• Meet the Angry Young Women — New Statesman, Emily Lawford (paywall)
• Forget the manosphere. It's angry Leftie women we need to worry about — Rowan Pelling, Telegraph, 16 April 2026 (paywall)
• Stella McCartney x H&M collection (Launching 7th May)

This week on Friday I'm in Bed, we're looking at the week's most questionable advertising decisions, and asking why the people writing the copy never seem to include anyone who might actually be affected by it.

We start with Nike, who put a sign outside their Boston store ahead of the city's marathon that said "Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated" — and then appeared at London parkruns that same week with billboards telling people they "didn't come all this way for a walk in the park." They've since apologised. Twice. In one week. We get into why the word "tolerated" isn't just clumsy, it's a whole attitude — and what it tells us about gatekeeping in fitness culture and who gets to decide who belongs.

Then Kate brings in an AI "employee" campaign that's been getting called out for sexism, because apparently we can build artificial intelligence but we can't build it without making it a woman in a pencil skirt. And we wrap up with Madonna at Coachella, a woman who performed at 67 and was greeted with commentary about her face.

Grab a cuppa. Let's get into it.

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In this episode

• Nike's "Runners Welcome. Walkers Tolerated" billboard at the Boston Marathon — the backlash, the withdrawal, and why the word "tolerated" matters
• Nike at London parkruns: uninvited ambush marketing at Peckham Rye, Brockwell Park, and Crystal Palace Park, with signs telling people they "didn't come all this way for a walk in the park"
• Gatekeeping in running and fitness culture — who gets to decide who belongs
• Ableism in advertising and the pressure on disabled and older people in exercise spaces
• An AI "employee" ad campaign called out for sexism
• Madonna at Coachella 2026: performing at 67 and why we're still talking about her face

Coachella just happened and TFI Friday is back on our screens, so naturally we had a lot to say about both. We're unpacking the biggest moments from the desert festival, from Sabrina Carpenter's full-blown Hollywood spectacular to Justin Bieber sitting at a laptop in a hoodie scrolling through YouTube videos of his younger self. The internet tried to cancel Sabrina for not recognising an Arabic celebration call and we're asking if over 40s are allowed at festivals (spoiler: yes). Then we're diving into the return of TFI Friday to Channel 4, talking lad and ladette culture, whether you can bring back chaotic 90s TV without bringing back the values that came with it, and what we'd actually want back from the 90s.

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Topics covered: Coachella 2026, Justin Bieber Coachella performance, Sabrina Carpenter Coachella, Karol G first Latina headliner, inner child healing, child stars, cancel culture, over 40s at festivals, TFI Friday return, TFI Friday Unplugged Channel 4, Chris Evans, lad culture, ladette culture, 90s nostalgia, Britpop, appointment TV, 90s feminism, girl power, Body Shop 90s, Woolworths, magazines, high street shopping

This week on Friday I'm in Bed, we've got two stories that are both, underneath it all, about the same question: who gets celebrated, who gets forgiven, and why does the answer always seem to depend on who you are?

Gem kicks us off with the Artemis II mission, because four astronauts are literally on their way home from flying around the Moon and one of them is 47. Same age as Gem. Born the same year. While Gem has been making a very impressive trifle. We talk about why this feels like such a rare good news story, why Christina Koch being the first woman to journey around the Moon in 2026 is both incredible and a reminder of how overdue it is, and why she still experiences imposter syndrome while being further from Earth than any woman in human history. We also get into Kate's mild ick about the cost of space exploration, Gem's rebuttal involving water ice and Moon-based rocket fuel (she's not a scientist, she just reads things), and the Carroll Crater, which had everyone in tears including the astronauts.

Then Kate takes on Kanye West, the banning, the cancellation, and the question the whole thing really raises. We get into whether bipolar disorder is an explanation or an excuse (and why that framing is too simple) and why wealth and fame can actually remove the safeguards that would catch anyone else, the impossibility of separating art from artist when the artist is still at it, and why Chris Brown is still selling out stadiums while Chappell Roan is still getting grief for a security guard who wasn't even hers.

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In this episode:

• Christina Koch, the first woman to travel around the Moon, on imposter syndrome and stereotype threat at 47
• Why the Artemis II crew - including the first Black astronaut on a lunar mission - is being received as a genuine feel-good story
• The Carroll Crater: Commander Wiseman naming a lunar feature after his late wife during the flyby
• Should space exploration money be spent fixing problems on Earth instead? Gem and Kate disagree (politely)
• Kanye West banned from the UK by the Home Office - and Wireless Festival cancelled entirely as a result
• What bipolar disorder does and doesn't explain about his behaviour, and why "it's not an excuse but it is a reason" is the most useful framing
• Why being surrounded by people whose livelihoods depend on you can make mental illness harder to treat, not easier
• Can you separate the art from the artist? JK Rowling, Joss Whedon, and the question of when the ick finally wins
• The cancel culture double standard: why controversial men tend to bounce back just fine

This week on Friday I'm in Bed, we're talking about boundaries - who's allowed to set them and who gets punished for it. Kate kicks us off with Chappell Roan and the security guard incident that's dominated everyone's feed. Causing international outrage, 125+ articles in two days, and a ban from a festival she was never even playing at. Meanwhile Shia LaBeouf screamed expletives at a woman the same week and got seven articles. We dig into the bot campaign behind 23% of the negative posts, Jameela Jamil's take that women get "two years at the top" before they're dragged, and why parasocial relationships have us feeling entitled to celebrities' private time.

Then Gem tackles the Hackney pub that's banned under-18s after a child fell through a cellar hatch. One parent, one non-parent, somehow in total agreement: pubs are not a creche, having kids should probably change your Saturday afternoons, and dogs are generally quieter and better behaved anyway.

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@GemmaSeager

@FearlessAt50

In this episode:

The Chappell Roan security guard controversy, bot-driven pile-ons, the double standard between how male and female celebrities are treated, parasocial relationships and fan entitlement, being called "bossy" at seven, pubs banning children, the Kenton in Hackney, whether having kids should change your life, dogs vs children in public spaces, and child-free weddings.

This week we're talking about two things that seem completely unrelated but both come down to the same question: who's selling you something, and should you be buying it?

We start with Harry Styles on Saturday Night Live and the Make America Healthy Again hospital sketch that had us howling. It parodies a hospital where patients are treated with raw milk IVs, LED masks, and full moon ceremonies, and it's very funny. But it also got us into a proper conversation about wellness culture, the pressure women are under to do all the things just to be healthy, and where the line is between helpful and harmful. We're talking about protein obsession, the influencers walking around supermarkets vilifying bread because they can't pronounce an ingredient, and why telling a menopausal woman she's poisoning herself for eating a pudding is not the public service they think it is. Kate calls it the female version of the Manosphere, and honestly, she's not wrong. Unqualified people with big followings giving health advice to vulnerable women who are stressed, time-poor, and looking for a quick fix. We also dig into a Yale study on breast cancer patients and alternative therapies that's been making the rounds. The headlines say complementary medicine kills, but the actual data tells a much more nuanced story, and we break down what it really shows. Spoiler: the issue isn't doing yoga alongside chemo. The issue is skipping chemo for coffee enemas.

Then we move to banknotes. The Bank of England ran a public vote on what should replace the current historical figures on British notes, and the winner, by 60%, was wildlife. Cue outrage. Not because Jane Austen or Alan Turing are leaving, but because Winston Churchill is being taken off the fiver, and apparently that's the definition of woke now. We talk about who actually voted (not us, and probably not the people complaining either), why Kemi Badenoch wants Thatcher on a banknote, why there's never been a Black or ethnic minority figure on a Bank of England note, and whether putting hedgehogs on our money is actually a genius move for dodging political division. Plus we pick our dream animal line-ups, which is honestly the best bit.

Two stories, one thread: when people feel out of control, they're easy to sell to, whether that's a wellness influencer flogging supplements or a political figure flogging outrage. The question is always the same. Who benefits?

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Louis Theroux has taken Netflix inside the manosphere — and everyone has an opinion. This week we're digging into whether shining a light on the grifters and their carefully curated personas actually helps, or whether it just gives them another platform. We're talking about the contradictions (profiting off women while claiming to despise them), the moments where the mask slipped (that dog, that mum, that juice), and why we can't expect one documentary to fix a problem this big. Plus, what does it tell us about the limits of a social media ban when these guys are thriving on YouTube, Telegram, and everywhere else?

Then we're turning to the Oscars - not the awards themselves, but what happens the morning after. Because once again, women walked red carpets in stunning gowns, picked up historic wins, and delivered brilliant speeches, and Monday's headlines were about their bodies. Too thin, too big, too different from last year. We're asking why we're still reducing accomplished women to their dress size, what GLP-1s have done to the goalposts, and whether women in the spotlight can ever actually win. Jessie Buckley won Best Actress and dedicated her award to women who create against all odds -so maybe we could start by talking about that.

Grab a cuppa, get comfy, and let's get into it.

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@FearlessAt50 ⁠

What we're talking about this week:

• Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere - exposure, editing, and whether the right people are watching
• The business of the manosphere - grifting, monetisation, and profiting off the people you claim to despise
• Why a social media ban won't silence these voices
• Oscars red carpet culture - fashion vs body policing
• Jessie Buckley's historic Best Actress win
• Autumn Durald Arkapaw - first woman to win Best Cinematography
• The shifting goalposts of what women's bodies are "allowed" to look like
• Pedro Pascal in Chanel, because we're fair like that

Listen wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Friday.