Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Week Junior show.
I'm Bex and I'm here at an end of year party with the team behind the Week Junior, the magazine making sense of the world for 8 to 14 year olds.
And while we're here, I thought we could do a little roundup of our favourite stories and moments in the magazine this year.
So we've got some members of the team that have all featured on the podcast through the year.
There's Joe, Eve, Elena, Vanessa, Laura and Rahul.
So guys, great to see you all together in one place, obviously.
First of all, I've got to ask seeing as we're approaching the end of 2025 and, of course, the beginning of 2026, I want to know what are your New Year's resolutions.
Rahul?
What do you have for me?
Hi bex, new year's resolutions feel a bit like they're a bit pressured, aren't they?
It's a bit intense, it's a lot to take on.
So i think i'm thinking about more like new year's um intentions or aspirations.
So, and i think something i'd like to do that hopefully won't be too tricky is do a bit of do a bit of volunteering.
So there's a community kitchen uh near where i live and i think i'd like to cook some food for them and head down to the community kitchen and help uh serve up food and spend some time with their clients.
That is my intention and it feels achievable.
What a lovely and noble thing to do.
I might steal that one from you, Rahul, to be honest.
I might take that one for my own as well.
Elena, how about you?
Can I just say Rahul, I love that way of thinking about it, because resolutions just feel like you're pressuring yourself to do something.
And then at the end of the year, you look back and you're like, oh no, why didn't I
So I'm going to say my intention this year is to take up ballet classes again.
I started last year and I stopped in the summer because I just went on holiday and I didn't feel like doing sports.
So this year I want to start doing it again.
Another excellent idea.
So, Elena and Rahul, thank you very much.
Of course, I'll be checking in with you at the end of next year to find out how you've done.
Now, let's look back at the year we've just had.
The Week Junior team has been very busy, as usual.
Vanessa, what's been your top moment from the year?
Well, I think my top moment of the year, I think, it's been a year packed with good stuff, actually.
But I think my best moment was in july, when we had our 500th issue.
Yes, we had.
We have produced 500 well, more than 500, uh magazines now.
So we were having a thing.
We knew we were going to be celebrating another birthday, big birthday this year.
So we're thinking gosh, how will we do things differently?
So we thought we'll look back over the 10 years and we will try and mix this up into something clever.
So what we did On our cover for the 500th issue, we asked an illustrator to come up with a beautiful design and we sort of turned it into a game.
So we got lots of little cartoons of people who had featured in the previous 499 issues.
See how good my maths is.
And we invited readers to try and spot them.
So we had, gosh, so many things have happened in those previous 499 issues.
You see, I keep on stumbling myself.
We've got Taylor Swift.
We had Joseph Coelho.
We had Albert Einstein.
We had the lovely mask from Sutton Hoo.
We had all sorts of things.
It was absolutely jam packed.
And it took us ages to come up with the list because of course, we had to go through all the previous issues and to then commission the illustrator.
So it was actually really lovely going back through all the stories that we've covered over the years.
And it was a little trip down memory lane for me because I've been here since the very start.
I was going to say, yes, you've been there from the beginning.
So it must have been quite an emotional moment for you.
And I remember that cover.
That was incredible because I was obsessed with trying to find all of the things on it.
What was your favourite thing on that cover, Vanessa?
Did you have one thing that you'd recommended on it or one thing that you were very happy to have put on there?
Well, we had some fantastic activists.
So we had Greta and Malala.
So we had lots of my heroes actually on there.
We definitely sneaked in a good few of them so uh, but it's really hard to pick an absolute favorite.
Yeah, that was a real winner.
I love that cover so much, uh.
Now, laura hello uh, you're our regular animals correspondent.
This year, it's felt like um, what's been your favorite moment from the year?
Well bex, i know, are you always bang on about animals?
Um, but actually i'm going to break this tradition um, and my choice isn't to do with animals, and my favorite moment was interviewing an author called Danny Robbins about ghosts for our Halloween issue.
And I don't usually do interviews, but I couldn't resist this one because I actually listened to his podcast and I'm quite fascinated by ghosts.
So, like his podcast, his children's book, which I was chatting to him about, which came out this year, is full of ghost stories.
But what he does is he tells the story and then the reader has to decide if they're team believer or team sceptic, meaning they don't believe it's real.
And there's some kind of rational, sort of scientific explanation for whatever spooky thing has happened.
And yeah, speaking to Danny was really interesting because he's a bit like me.
He wants to believe in ghosts, but he's not really sure.
And unlike me, he's put himself into all these really spooky situations to try and investigate.
So he told me how he spent a night in this reportedly haunted cottage in the remote Scottish Highlands.
And he heard footsteps in the night.
But he did also talk to me about haunted toilet, which was a bit less scary.
Well, maybe not.
I mean, it could be worse, I guess.
But yeah, that was my favourite.
I know that book.
I've read that book.
It's so, so good.
And yeah, like you, I kind of do want to believe, but I am quite sceptical.
Have you ever seen a ghost though, Laura?
Sadly, I haven't.
So I live in quite an old house and our neighbour's got a ghost.
Apparently he wears a maroon waistcoat and he always pops up when she's getting out of the bath, which is a bit rude.
But sadly, I haven't seen him.
Well, actually, I don't think I want to see him, but yeah.
Yeah, no, fair enough.
Absolutely.
And what feature has been your favourite in the magazine?
So it was one of the all about pages.
So this year was the first time I've looked after this page and I've really enjoyed it.
Mostly because it's just so varied in terms of the subjects that we cover.
So some of my favourites have been nature related.
So sharks was one of them, for example.
But I wanted to talk about sleep.
So this is a subject close to my heart, because I love sleeping, but I'm not very good at doing it lately.
And this feature actually helped me because sometimes I feel quite anxious, because I know how important sleep is.
But this was quite interesting to work on because we looked at the history and the science behind sleep.
So, for example, we uncovered the fact that in the 17th century people used to have two sleeps.
So they'd go to bed about nine and sleep for a couple of hours and then they would wake up for a bit and they would do chores or read and then they would go back and have like a second sleep until the morning.
So this made me feel a bit better about waking up in the middle of the night.
You know when you wake up and you can't get back to sleep.
And I also love the fact that there were people called knocker uppers in the 18th century who were employed to tap on people's windows with a stick and wake them up for work.
I feel like we should bring this back.
I know we have alarm clocks now so we don't need them, but I'm always scared that mine isn't going to go off.
So I love that.
Good facts there.
I knew about knocker uppers.
I didn't know about the first and second sleep.
I love that.
That is good to know.
Thank you very much, Laura.
Now, Joe, hello.
What's been your favourite moment at the Week Junior this year?
My favourite moment was interviewing the footballer Aggie Beaver-Jones, who plays for Chelsea and England.
I'm a big football fan, so it was a great experience, especially as I did the interview in person at Chelsea's training ground.
This was at the beginning of the year.
And I just want to highlight that Aggie had an amazing 2025, obviously drawing no connection between my interview and her 2025.
She won the Women's Super League, the League Cup and the FA Cup with Chelsea, and also Euro 2025 with England.
So definitely a player to keep your eye on in 2026 and in coming years.
Oh, excellent stuff.
Thanks, Joe.
And what's been your favourite story that you've had in the Week Junior magazine?
So my favorite story was about woolly mice.
I really enjoyed writing it.
And we also had these beautiful, really cute pictures of the two mice on the page.
It was amazing.
I loved it.
And the woolly mice, these were mice with the golden woolly hair of woolly mammoths, although...
Perhaps, fortunately, they didn't quite match the ancient elephant species for size.
The mice were created by a company called Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences, which is based in the US, as part of its efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, or well, sort of bring back the woolly mammoth.
So researchers made the mice by editing the genes of mouse cells and injecting the altered genes into mouse embryos.
Now, genes are short sections of DNA, which is a chemical that carries all the information about a body and its characteristics.
The researchers edited several combinations of genes to try to give the mice features found in mammoths.
And some of the embryos successfully grew into these wonderful hairy mice.
Now, Colossal doesn't actually plan to recreate woolly mammoths.
Instead, researchers are planning to create a creature that looks like a woolly mammoth by editing the genes of Asian elephants.
And in theory, the mice were the first step on this path.
Oh, a great story.
Thank you very much, Joe.
Now, Elena, hello.
Welcome to the party.
Tell me, what's been your favourite moment of the year?
My favourite moment this year were the Wig Junior Book Awards, which took place in late September this year.
The ceremony was amazing.
It's truly great to see so many authors and people who work in books all together, and you could really feel the excitement and the passion in the room.
And Kay and I were working on social media that evening.
So it was actually a very stressful evening in some ways.
But when it all went right, it was amazing.
And there's so many things I enjoyed about the night.
But I think my favorite was seeing people who had never won a prize before do it for the first time at the awards, because you could tell how much it meant to them.
Claire Harlow, the author of Tight Magic, which won the breakthrough category.
She just looked elated to have won.
And in her interview in the magazine you can see.
One of her pictures is just her beaming and it's just lovely.
And I also really enjoyed the speech by Tom Percival, whose book The Wrong Shoes won the older fiction category.
But Bex, actually I wanted to ask you what your favorite part of the awards was, because Bex here was hosting the ceremony.
Have to say, hosting in general was an absolute honor.
It was such a delight because I have met or interviewed a lot of the authors in that room, so being able to actually host the ceremony for them was was something quite special.
Um, and also, at the end, Greg Jenner came up to speak to me, and I'm a bit of a fan of Greg Jenner.
I listen to his podcast and I like his book a lot.
Um so yeah, him coming up to me at the end and saying like congratulations, that was a really great night.
I was thrilled.
So I think for me, that would be my favourite bit of the day.
But that was, yeah, that was quite something, that Book Awards.
Has there been something in the magazine that you've really enjoyed reading, Elena?
Yes, actually.
One of my favourite stories this year was our cover issue for issue 494, which came out at the end of May.
And it was all about Arsenal winning the Women's Champions League.
For anyone who doesn't know, the Champions League is a football tournament that takes place every year that has some of Europe's best football teams compete against each other.
And I'm completely biased here because I'm a big Arsenal fan, but I just love that it ended up being on the cover of the magazine.
It was so exciting and exciting.
I actually got to attend the second leg of the quarterfinal against Real Madrid at the Emirates, which Arsenal won 3-0.
So I felt like I was a part of it.
And in the final they won 1-0 against Barcelona, who have won three Champions League tournaments in the last five years.
One of the best teams in the world at the moment and definitely were the ones were the favourites to win the tournament.
Our winning goal was scored by Swedish footballer Stina Blakstenius in the 74th minute.
She's a hero.
She's a star.
I love the chant that we've got for her.
So, so many things I loved.
That was my favourite story of the year.
I can feel your passion for it.
Thank you very much, Elena.
Right.
Hello, Eve.
We've got to find out what's been your highlight from the year.
So my highlight of the year was I really enjoyed being able to interview Dean Dubois earlier this year.
And he's the director of the How to Train Your Dragon films.
He directed the original animated trilogy and the new live action one that came out earlier this year.
And it was just a bit of a dream come true for me really to meet the director of one of my favourite films growing up.
I actually remember my family and I renting the DVD out, which is probably a concept that our listeners aren't so familiar with.
But we rented the DVD out and watched it together on a Friday night.
And I just absolutely loved it.
And so to meet him was just really, really cool.
Yeah, that's really exciting when you meet somebody who's been part of something that you absolutely love.
Yeah, I can absolutely imagine that.
And what's been your favourite story in the magazine?
So my favourite story was a feature on our All About page, and it was all about biscuits.
And in the Week Junior office, we like to eat lots of biscuits while we're making the magazine.
And Laura and I I feel like we've been campaigning for years to do a feature on biscuits on the All About page.
And we saw that biscuit company McVitie's was celebrating 100 years of chocolate digestives.
And we knew this was the perfect opportunity to do a feature on biscuits and the history of biscuits.
And it was so interesting.
I learned so many fun biscuit facts while writing it.
One of them was that jammy Dodgers are named after Roger the Dodger, a character in the Beano.
I love that fact because Roger the Dodger is actually my favorite Beano character.
So very, very cool.
And the world's largest biscuit was made in 2003 and was more than 30 metres wide, which just seems insane to me.
I just can't imagine a biscuit that's that big.
And another fact I loved was that a study in 2022 found that oat-filled biscuits, such as Hobnobs, are the best for dunking in tea because they stay together and don't fall apart in your drink, which I think is good knowledge to have, because I do love dipping, dunking biscuits in tea and they often fall apart.
So I need to start having Hobnob.
I have to say, in my opinion, the Hobnob is the classic biscuit because it gets the job done.
You can eat it.
It's delicious.
It's got chocolate in and you can dip it in tea.
What is your favourite biscuit though?
My favourite biscuit, I would say a bit of a classic, dark chocolate digestives.
And actually I think I was eating dark chocolate digestives one afternoon when I discovered that it was the 100th anniversary of chocolate digestives on the McVitie's packet.
Because it said it on the packet and I was looking at it while eating my biscuit.
And then I was thinking... we have the perfect hook to do all about biscuits.
So actually, my love of dark chocolate digestives inspired this brilliant feature.
Oh my goodness, a true journalistic dream, taking from real life and putting it in a magazine.
Lovely stuff.
Now, Rahul, it's been quite a big year for The Week Junior.
What's been your highlight been a massive year for the week junior.
So much going on, whether it's the book awards, the 500th issue, but my personal highlight is our 10th birthday, which was in november, the 21st of november 2025 to be precise.
That marked our 10th birthday and we had a little party amongst the team, which was lovely, and for that 10th birthday we also tried to have a, So we invited some famous friends and family to give some advice to their 10 year old selves.
And that made up front cover and a lovely little story.
Some of those responses also made it onto the podcast and onto our social media.
It was, yeah, it was a lovely little way to mark that birthday.
And there was just so much nice advice.
You know generally around Being yourself, not worrying about what other people think.
And I especially liked your advice Bex, that when you find things are a bit difficult, ask some questions and get some help.
So much so, I think I might make that my New Year's resolution.
I'm honoured, Rahul.
Honestly, to be on the cover of the magazine was a real joy.
To be above Michael Rosen, where it looked like he was pointing up at me, even better.
And it was quite a moment.
I had a lot of people get in touch about the magazine.
And I know that friends of friends were saying oh my goodness, have you seen Bex on The Week?
Junior.
So a very big deal for me.
So thank you for that.
Which story in the magazine, though, have you enjoyed the most?
I really enjoyed our entertainment story on the phenomenon that has been K-pop demon hunters.
So um, in August we did a story looking at the uh, the Netflix film, which was a bit of a surprise here.
It was quite unexpected.
It wasn't kind of flagged as one of the year's big releases, for example, like Minecraft, the movie or how to train your dragon.
And it kind of sneaked out on Netflix and over the summer, I think, picked up a lot of um, a lot of views and popularity, mainly because I think my children were watching it about 25 times a day during the summer holidays.
But, yeah, I think our feature kind of looked at the musical side of it.
It's obviously got amazing songs and we kind of highlighted some of the music producers that are behind the songs in the film.
And we also... heard from the director who's Canadian Korean.
And what I really liked about this is that the film idea came from her lovers of K-pop as a kid.
So from having like K-pop, K-pop kind of superstar posters on her walls as a kid has actually been made, you know, been the inspiration for an incredible, incredible film that's just taken the world by storm.
And yeah, it was a soundtrack to our summer holidays, our family's summer holidays.
And yeah, the kids dressed up as K-pop demon hunters.
And Saja Boy is a roomie to go trick-or-treating at Halloween.
So, yeah, it's very much been a big part of my life.
It really has, hasn't it?
That's basically your whole year taken up by K-pop demon hunters.
I love it.
Thank you very much, Rahul.
What an amazing selection of stories.
The Week Junior, it genuinely has had a cracking year.
But now the party is nearly over.
But before it is, I've got to know something very important.
The thing.
Of course, that is well, for me quite a big deal, because we've been doing Real or Rubbish every week on the podcast where a member of the team tells me a story.
I have to guess if it's true or false.
I have to sniff out a lie.
And I believe Eve keeps a spreadsheet with all of the results.
So I want to know, Eve, who has won for the whole year in the war of Bex versus the weak junior?
Yeah.
Who on earth has got one over on the other?
Should we do a little drum roll?
Yes, let's do a drum roll, everyone.
One last drum roll of 2025.
Well...
There were 50 realer rubbishes this year.
Okay.
The weak junior won 24 and Bex, you won 26.
This is the third year in a row that you've won.
You're just too good.
You're too good at spotting these fake stories.
That is close.
That is tighter than I would like it to be.
26 versus 24.
Good gravy that is close.
I think often because some weeks I'm too focused on making a good pun.
But still, that's not the point.
I'd like to thank the Academy.
Thank goodness I got it correct.
But also, I mean, guys, that just means it's very close call.
Next year, it's still all to play for, in my opinion.
You could still absolutely beat me.
Yeah, 2026 could be the year.
So watch this space, everyone.
We will try and beat Bex next year.
Give me some more ridiculous stories that sound just about plausible, please.
And you never know what's going to happen.
Well, I'm thrilled with that.
Personally, what a way for me to end the year.
Very happy.
Thank you very much for that result.
Well, there we go.
That is it for our very special end of year episode for the Week Junior show.
Thank you, of course, to the Week Junior team for inviting me to be part of their end of year party.
It's been an absolute blast and a privilege.
We hope all of our listeners at home have a very happy new year.
And don't forget to rate, review and subscribe or follow us wherever it is to get your podcasts.
We'll see you in 2026.
Bye.
For five pounds by heading to theweekjunior.co.uk forward slash podcast offer.
