In this episode, I spoke to Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Alessia Cara. Discovered at the tender age of 18, she’s grown up in the spotlight, and shared that journey with her fans through her music – often showing us a perspective far outside the confident, sexy pop-princess norm. Her unique voice and emotional vulnerability gives her lyrics a power; a sense of relatability for anyone who has ever felt alone or unloved or sad.

What struck me about this conversation is her ability to be so completely open about her struggles with maintaining mental health. For many, those internal battles can be incredibly lonely, and Alessia, through her music and openness, is bravely creating space for them. She’s refreshingly honest about her personal battles, and throughout this conversation I couldn’t help but feel encouraged and uplifted by being able to share our common experiences.

You can follow @alessiasmusic and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

When you see Little Simz (or Simbi, as I call her) perform, she gives everything to the crowd. Off stage, she has this incredible composed energy. So, how does she find the balance? We talk about how to manage the energy you expel in your work and what to keep for yourself.

In a recent interview Simbi said, “my career is very important to me but it’s not my life, I’m doing things differently this time.” And I can hands down relate to that. As I’m sure a lot of you can. Turning up in life and setting boundaries is vital for our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Born to tell stories, Little Simz has written another amazing album – Sometimes I Might Be Introvert – because of her ability to self-reflect and look at uncomfortable things. She talks about what inspires her work and the responsibility she feels as a young, Black British artist and woman.

I loved having this conversation. Even though we were countries apart, it felt like we were sat chatting on the sofa together. Enjoy and as always, mad amounts of love.

You can follow @littlesimz and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

Few books have taken hold of the Gurls Talk team like Three Women and Animal. The vulnerability of Lisa’s writing inspires uncomfortable conversations, encapsulating everything that Gurls Talk is about, so it’s a dream come true to have her on the podcast.

Lisa writes with such brutal honesty, we get to see the rawness of her protagonists as they struggle through messy, complicated feelings. We unpick some of the themes in her work in this episode and talk about how trauma impacts our identity and relationships. “Everything that’s happened to me in the past has informed everything I do in the present, which is why I’m so interested in writing about memories,” Lisa tells us.

We talk about the importance of being honest with our feelings to understand ourselves better. To not be ashamed of our fears but to overcome them. And to simply honour the crazy array of emotions – both our own and those of others.

Enjoy listening. And as always, mad amounts of love.

You can follow @lisadtaddeo and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

Trigger warning:

This episode covers difficult topics, which some listeners may find upsetting. These areas include rape, sexual assault, and various types of abuse. Please practice good self-care and listen at your own discretion. If you need additional support, please visit our website at www.gurlstalk.com/hotlines

For too long we’ve stayed quiet to the culture that’s normalised and trivialised sexual violence, sexual harassment and misogyny. Girls have been socialised to feel like it’s something they have to cope with, laugh off, get over. Enter Soma Sara. When she decided to share her own experiences, it resonated with so many and opened up the conversation. The scale of the problem is so significant, so global, the world is finally listening. Thank god.

Soma takes us through how she started Everyone’s Invited. We talk about the archaic systems that have made rape culture so deeply entrenched in society. We recognise the incredible power of a shared story ­­– its ability to heal and the ripple effect it has – and the courage of those who have stood up and spoken, and also those who have sat down and listened.

For the tide to turn, everyone needs to play their part. Soma talks about the values of empathy and community, encouraging us all to be upstanders – calling out rape culture, reflecting upon behaviours, educating. “Together we are building on the mistakes of the past and working towards reconciliation and creating a new future.”

This is such a positive listen but comes with a trigger warning: This episode covers difficult topics, which some listeners may find upsetting. These areas include rape, sexual assault, and various types of abuse. Please practice good self-care and listen at your own discretion. If you need additional support, please visit our website at www.Gurlstalk.com/hotlines

As always, mad amounts of love.

You can follow @everyonesinvited and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

It was a total fangirl moment talking to Elsa, who has got so many of us through lockdown with her videos. Her real, honest, universally relatable, hilarious videos. Saying the things we say in our own heads but never out loud. It’s this energy that has taken the world by storm over the past year.

Elsa has a refreshing take on being unashamedly herself, refusing to fit into the mould that’s out there. A 19-year-old African woman who clearly won’t take any shit from people who think her youth and origin make her naive. Nope. Elsa talks about her future plans with the shrewd strategy of a chess player. It’s clear this is all very much the beginning for her.

I’m so excited to share this episode with you. I think we could all do with being a bit more Elsa Majimbo: “I don’t feel any kind of pressure to do anything or to look a certain way. So, what I want to do is what I do. If I don’t want to do it, I don’t do it.”

Enjoy listening. And as always, mad amounts of love.

You can follow @majimb.o and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

It’s easy to spiral from the seemingly smallest things during the pandemic. Life has been really tough for a long time now. But one thing, one huge thing, has helped immeasurably: being sober. And in this episode, Brandon shares his experience of leaning into the AA community and reaching his first year of sobriety. Choosing a life of sobriety, he says, has been the hardest and most gratifying thing he’s ever done.

Brandon is a brilliant human, an empath, and an authentic voice on and off screen, which makes him a dream to talk to. We swap stories on living solo during the pandemic, about self-reflection and engaging in the quality of friendships. We talk about shows that are bold enough to tackle storytelling in a different way, and his character as the ​complex and conflicted heartthrob, Justin Foley, in the Netflix hit series, ​13 Reasons Why. And lastly, we look at how the culture of curiosity plays a part in activism and community work.

Enjoy listening. And mad amounts of love.

You can follow @brandonflynn and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

Remember being squished in a sweaty crowd with thousands of people watching an insanely talented music artist performing on stage? And the artist’s energy, and the crowd’s energy feeding one another, and in that moment, your body’s buzzing with joy – you feel alive. Yeah, us too. For Rosalía, she misses the energy from performing to a large audience, she misses being around people. I think most of us do.

In this episode, we talk about how performances have had to adapt in this upside world. Being away from her Spanish home for the past year and in the US where she’s been busy working on new music, Rosalía talks about her influences and how the world closing its shutters has created a different energy to her music. With Rosalía’s Spanish heritage playing such a vital role in her identity and style, she expands on how it’s shaped her sound.

Enjoy listening to this one. And mad amounts of love.

You can follow @rosalia.vt and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

On this week’s podcast, I catch up with two formidable ladies in the fields of women’s health and sport. Stacy Sims, PhD is an expert in sex differences, and globally acclaimed for her research and TED Talk, ‘Women are Not Small Men’. She’s dedicated the last 20 years to educating women, and men, on the female body, and how it responds differently to athleticism than the male body.

Joslyn Thompson Rule, a woman with many strings to her bow, is a Nike Global Master Trainer, a Sports Therapist, and Coaching Mentor. She draws from her years of coaching women, and young girls as we discuss the benefits of working with the female cycle: how it not only boosts health and training results, but also empowers girls to own their fitness through every stage of the menstrual cycle. I talk about my experiences with puberty, how confusing navigating that time can be, and we discuss why so many girls are dropping out of sport during puberty, after getting their period. I definitely remember skipping P.E. during that early life phase. It’s crazy that something that half the population gets is still the cause of such embarrassment.

This week’s episode is a reminder to start having open conversations with girls about periods and sport early on. To be honest, I spent most of this episode enthralled by Stacy and Joslyn’s passion and commitment to this issue. And I learned a lot of things about my body, training, and the menstrual cycle that I didn’t know. Even as an adult!

Easy listening guys - and as always mad, mad love.

You can follow @DrStacySims and @JoslynThompsonRule, and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

Fangirling Rupi is an easy thing to do. If not for her raw, intimate poetry, for the way she talks about the power of her friendships and platonic, familial love. It makes talking (and listening) to Rupi feel like you’ve been friends forever.

As we ruminate life in lockdown – me in London, Rupi in Toronto – we talk about making sense of our identity in the stillness and being gentle with ourselves. In home body, Rupi’s recently released, brilliant third book of poetry, she dedicates a whole chapter to the importance of rest. And like all of her poems, she talks with such clarity of thought and warmth on everything. She tells me, “for so long, my mind wasn’t a safe space for me, so what do you do, where do you go then? If your mind isn’t a safe space.” All I can say is thank goodness for Rupi’s words. She offers hope on the darker days, and generally makes us see and feel things differently.

Enjoy listening. And as always, mad amounts of love.

You can follow @rupikaur_ and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.

On this week’s episode, I spoke to the incredible, inspiring Michaela DePrince. The epitome of poise and grace, Michaela is a dancer, author and War Child ambassador. She has overcome tremendous challenges over her lifetime, including grief, war, racism, bullying and more, all in the pursuit of  what she calls ‘her soul’ – her passion for dance.

What stands out for me is her unmistakable grit; a burning desire to prove critics wrong and succeed against all odds. But that dedication is not without a price, and we discuss the emotional and mental toll that it takes to keep performing in the face of a global pandemic, personal losses, and the trauma of racism.

This week’s episode is a timely reminder to us all to seek out the space we need to take care of ourselves. For Michaela, the arts and classical ballet provide an escape and a means of expression. I hope that with the new year, we can collectively make time to indulge in what grounds us.

You can follow @michaeladeprince and you can follow us @gurlstalk. Please send any messages to www.gurlstalk.com and don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of the Gurls Talk podcast.