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Woman's Hour

Attic memories; Afghanistan; Food and climate; ME and Covid; Neanderthals

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What should we do with all our attic memorabilia? Vicki from South Wales talks about the joy of clearing our her attic with her daughters and Maryam from Rotherham talks about her mother's suitcase brought over from Pakistan in the 1950s.

The desperation of many thousands of people trying to get out of Afghanistan in the last couple of weeks has been on our screens and the front page of our newspapers for days now. Many, outside of the country, are trying to do what they can to help get their colleagues, friends, loved ones get out – as Alice Bromage, previously a Major in the UK army , told us yesterday. She talked about the Sandhurst Sisterhood, around 2500 ex-army women officers, who are constantly being messaged by women, and men, who they have trained and worked with in Afghanistan. Jude, as an ex-military officer, is one of the network. Based in Dubai, she and her husband, an ex-Royal marine of 24 years, run a small local security business in Kabul, and have done for about a decade now. What role are they playing in the ongoing evacuation?

What are the best food choices to make for the environment? And can going vegetarian or vegan really help with the issue of climate change? That's what Woman's Hour listener Judith wants to know - so Sarah Bridle, physics professor at Manchester University and author of Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air is on hand with some answers! She joins Emma to crunch the numbers and give some practical advice on ways to make our breakfast, lunch and tea less harmful for the planet.

About a quarter of a million people in the UK suffer from myalgic encepahalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. It's a condition that affects more women than men, but patients still face doubts about their symptoms and there is controversy about treatment. Since the pandemic began, as many as two million people in the UK may have long Covid, with women 1.5 times more likely to experience ongoing symptoms than men. The symptoms of long Covid range from fatigue and muscle pain to coughs and headaches and have been linked to ME. Scientists and ME/CFS patients hope that research into long Covid will be an opportunity to learn more about long term consequences of viral infections. Dr Nina Muirhead, specialist surgeon in dermatology who has ME and Dr David Strain, the British Medical Association's lead on Long Covid and medical advisor to Action for ME discuss the links between long Covid and treatment of ME/CFS.

What was it like to be a Neanderthal woman? That's what listener Hannah wants to know. She emailed asking to hear from female archeologists, such as Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes, about their view on the Neanderthal female lifestyle and how it compares to our own. So, we asked Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes to come on the programme to tell us. Did they hunt? Did they look after the children? Did they have the menopause? Her book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, aims to tell a completely new story about Neanderthals.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Fladiated.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:25.0

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:35.0

Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.

0:39.6

Hello and welcome to today's programme,

0:41.6

the second day of the annual Women's Hour listener week

0:44.5

where you take charge of the program's content.

0:47.3

And today I can promise you everything from ham sandwiches

0:50.0

through to rage about ME and Long COVID.

0:53.0

But due to several of you getting in touch about clearing out

0:56.0

attics, cupboards, even whole homes,

0:58.0

well, what else was there to do over the last 17 months

1:01.0

for some of us?

1:02.0

We're going to talk to two listeners who've gone

1:04.3

about it in different ways and to hear about their emotional, funny and nostalgic journeys

1:09.7

from clearing out their mum's things after she has died or doing it together with older

1:14.1

family members while they're still with us. How about you? What have you cleared out?

...

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