Kathryn Harkup on Agatha Christie, Ofcom, Sexual violence in Haiti, Mistress Dispeller

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From today, websites operating in the UK with pornographic content must ‘robustly’ age-check users. Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must protect young people from encountering harmful content relating to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and pornography. Kylie discusses the issues with the BBC’s senior technology reporter Graham Fraser and Head of Policy and Public Affairs at CEASE, Gemma Kelly.

Dame Agatha Christie, also known as the ‘Queen of Crime’ and the ‘Duchess of Death,’ is the best-selling novelist of all time with more than two billion books sold and translations in 104 languages. In her new book V is for Venom: Agatha Christie's Chemicals of Death, author and former chemist Kathryn Harkup uncovers the real science behind the fiction and the true crime cases that inspired Christie’s plots.

Rape and other sexual violence is surging in Haiti as armed gangs expand their control across the capital Port-au-Prince and beyond. Medicine Sans Frontiers say cases of sexual violence have tripled in the past four years and that one in five victims are under the age of 18. BBC Correspondent, Nawal Al-Maghafi, has recently returned from Haiti and she describes what she witnessed.

Director Elizabeth Lo’s new Mandarin-language documentary, Mistress Dispeller, follows the real-life story of one woman who hires a professional, Teacher Wang, to help break up her husband’s affair and save her marriage. It’s a compelling documentary about love, infidelity, pain and joy in modern-day Chinese society. Elizabeth joins Kylie in the studio to tell the story.

A joint holiday with another family can be the perfect recipe for a memorable break - playmates for your children, shared responsibilities and enjoying other adult company. But different parenting styles and routines may lead to tension rather than relaxation. Genevieve Roberts, parenting columnist for the I newspaper, describes why she enjoys holidaying with another family and manages to stay friends afterwards.

Presented by Kylie Pentelow Producer: Louise Corley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sing Sing and I'm Simon Jack. And Good Bad Billionaire is back. It's the podcast
0:06.2	exploring the lives and livelihoods of some of the world's richest people, but this time there's
0:10.6	a twist. On Good Bad Dead billionaire, we are looking back on the lives of some titans of
0:15.6	US industry. Like the first ever billionaire, John D. Rockefeller. The founder of the Ford
0:20.3	Motor Company, Henry Ford.
0:21.9	And the First Lady of Wall Street, Hetty Green.
0:24.3	And Simon and I are asking you if they were good, bad or just another billionaire.
0:28.4	Good bad billionaire.
0:29.5	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:32.2	Hello, this is Kylie Pentelow and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast.
0:36.7	Hello and welcome to the program.
0:38.7	Coming up, it's been described as the worst place in the world to be a woman. I'm talking about Porto
0:44.6	Prince in Haiti where sexual violence is surging. We hear from our correspondent who has spoken to women there.
0:51.7	As you heard in the news from today, websites operating in the UK with
0:54.9	pornographic content must robustly age-check users. We'll be discussing if that can really work
1:01.0	to protect children. Plus, we're very much in the grip of the school holidays and maybe you're
1:07.0	heading off for a break or we'll be speaking to a parenting columnists on the highs and lows of going away with another family and her tips on how to make it work.
1:17.4	So we want to hear what your experiences are of this.
1:21.4	If you're holidaying with friends, do you set ground rules before you go?
1:25.5	Maybe you gave it a try and fell out with each other and we'll never
1:28.3	do it again. So we want to hear from you. You can text the program. The number is 84844. On social media,
1:35.3	we're at BBC Women's Hour. You can email us through our website or you can send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note.
	...

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