Fasting and women, Conscription, Cuteness exhibition
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following the speech last week by the head of the British Armed Forces calling for a new ‘citizen army’, we look at what this could look like and what role women would play. Emma Barnett speaks to former RAF Group Captain Kathleen Sherit the author of Women on the Front Line, and to Diane Allen, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel.
It's been reported that the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fasts for 36 hours at the start of each week. He is said to stop eating by 5pm on a Sunday and doesn't permit himself to touch food again until 5am on a Tuesday, and allows himself to drink only black coffee and water. It is said that he has followed this practice for years. Emma is joined by Dr Saira Hameed to discuss fasting and how men and women should approach it differently.
Amy and Anu are identical twins, but just after they were born, they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families. Years later they connected online and realised they were among thousands of babies in Georgia stolen from hospitals and sold, some as recently as 2005. Emma speaks to one of the twins, Amy Khvitia, and also Fay Nurse, a BBC journalist behind a new documentary, Georgia’s Stolen Children.
From cute cat memes to plush toys, a new exhibition at Somerset House explores the power of cuteness in contemporary culture. But is buying into a cute aesthetic regressive or even sexist, or can cute be reclaimed as a form of protest? And how would you feel, as a grown woman, about being labelled 'cute' or 'adorable'? To discuss, Emma is joined by Dr Isabel Galleymore, a consultant on the Cute exhibition; and the journalist Vicky Spratt.
Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Emma Pearce
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I love you and would kill before I would see you taken from me. |
| 0:06.0 | Lady Killers is back. |
| 0:08.0 | Join me Lucy Worsley to investigate infamous female criminals from the past. |
| 0:13.2 | It's really important that we listen to these voices about the society in which they lived. |
| 0:18.0 | We're seeking to understand these women from the perspective of 21st century feminists. |
| 0:23.0 | We cannot put women into history on the basis of likeability. |
| 0:26.0 | Put all the women back, the sinners and the saints. |
| 0:29.0 | Lady Killers, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:38.0 | Hello, I'm Emma Barnet and welcome to Woman's Ah, from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:43.0 | Well, it might be a good morning for you, but what if you haven't eaten because you're fasting? |
| 0:47.9 | We now know, courtesy of the Sunday Times, I believe, that the Prime Minister is 17 hours into |
| 0:52.4 | his weekly 36 hour fast, something he does apparently |
| 0:56.0 | to boost his performance, health and well-being. But he's not alone. Far from it. And weirdly |
| 1:01.7 | for me, when reading the papers yesterday, I found myself |
| 1:04.4 | in a slightly strange position of knowing I'm now living a similar life to the Prime Minister in |
| 1:08.1 | this one small way, I hasten to add, as I too have recently started experimenting with fasting, not for weight loss or even mental clarity, |
| 1:17.0 | in an attempt to reduce inflammation and improve how my hormones function |
| 1:21.0 | as I try to think about how I'm next going to tackle endometriosis. |
| 1:25.8 | I'm still early days and I do want to be clear that this is not me in any way endorsing |
| 1:30.3 | this for somebody or as a strategy particularly in relation to any diseases. |
| 1:35.0 | But what is fascinating in my reading of books like Mindy Peltz's Fast Like a Girl, |
... |
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