Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, Air pollution and pregnancy, BookTok, Loneliness and health
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2023
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Frances Haugen is the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower who extracted more than 22,000 pages of documents from the company revealing its inner workings. She believes they show the company prioritising profit over the safety of its users. Frances has since campaigned for greater transparency and accountability for social media firms, giving evidence to the US Senate as well as MPs here in the UK. And she's written a book, The Power of One, about her experience. But what has prompted one woman to take on one of the biggest companies in tech? And what has been the personal cost?
All this week on Woman’s Hour we are discussing the topic of loneliness as women and young people are statistically more likely to experience it. Today Nuala speaks to the psychiatrist Dr Farhana Mann from UCL about the impact of loneliness on our health.
A new community has formed on TikTok where content creators share their top reading recommendations and bring plots to life. BookTokkers are mainly female, as are their followers. With the social media giant now launching its own book awards, just how influential is the BookTok community to both followers and the publishing industry? Nuala is joined by Holly McLoughlin, who posts as “the caffeinated reader” and Assistant Literary Editor for The Times Susie Goldsbrough.
New research has found that almost half of black mothers living in London do not feel sufficiently educated on the impact of air pollution during pregnancy, despite 89% of respondents feeling concerned about air pollution in their local area. Nuala speaks to Dr Karen Joash is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Imperial College NHS Trust and expert adviser to Global Black Maternal Health, a platform that aims to connect and empower black maternal health movements across the world.
Lucy Bronze MBE is the most capped Lioness playing in the Women’s Football World Cup this year. Her mum, Diane, recorded a special message for Woman's Hour wishing Lucy and the team good luck ahead of England’s last group stage game against China today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts Hello, this is Neulam Agavren and you're listening |
| 0:08.4 | to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. This morning at an interview |
| 0:14.6 | with Facebook whistleblower Frances Hagen, she has just released her book The Power of |
| 0:19.8 | One. We talk about what it takes to stand up to one of the biggest tech companies in the |
| 0:24.7 | world, how she thinks social media could work better, and why she thinks Mark Zuckerberg |
| 0:31.2 | is stuck in a rush. We also continue our series on loneliness. Thank you for all your messages |
| 0:36.8 | on your experience of it. I see more coming in this morning, 84844 is our text number. |
| 0:42.5 | Today we're looking at the physical and mental toll that loneliness can take on us. Dr. |
| 0:47.6 | Fahana Mann, a psychiatrist at University College of London, has been looking at this closely |
| 0:52.6 | over the past 10 years, so she'll share her expertise and also her advice. And my question |
| 1:00.0 | to you. If I were to ask you, what would you recommend as the best book to end a reading |
| 1:06.8 | slump? What would you say? Well that is one of the categories in the first book talk awards. |
| 1:12.7 | That's book awards from that huge community on TikTok that focuses on books. We're going |
| 1:18.2 | to talk about the awards, but it's book talk where you get your inspiration. And if it's |
| 1:23.1 | not there, where is it? Or who is it where you get your recommendations from? It can be a tricky |
| 1:29.9 | thing to get right. So I want to hear about your successes, your failures, whether it's on the |
| 1:34.3 | giving or the receiving end of recommendations. Again, the text number 84844 on social media |
| 1:40.9 | at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website for WhatsApp or a voice note, |
| 1:48.0 | that number is 03700 1444. And as you might have been hearing in the news bulletin, |
| 1:54.8 | England are playing China at noon in the football world cup. The England defender Lucy Brown's |
| 2:00.6 | her mom has been in touch with women's hour. We're going to play you her message. |
| 2:06.5 | But let me begin with the news that we heard yesterday that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to |
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