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Woman's Hour

Mary Earps' SPOTY win, Women's Super League founder Kelly Simmons, Pregnancy sickness

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

England goalkeeper Mary Earps has been voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year. She was a big part of the Lionesses' win at the Euros in 2022 and was named goalkeeper of the tournament in this year's World Cup. But back in 2019 she was ready to quit the game. Jessica Creighton speaks to Rebecca Myers from the The Sunday Times about Earps' bumpy road to success.

Kelly Simmons has recently left the Football Association after 32 years with the organisation. Best known for her time as Director of the Women’s Professional Game, Kelly joins Jessica to discuss her long career and the future of the Women’s Super League which she helped to launch and transform.

A breakthrough on why women get pregnancy sickness could open the way to finding a cure. Scientists have discovered a hormone that causes nausea and vomiting in pregnant women, sometimes to the extent that they get Hyperemesis Gravidarum – the most severe form of sickness often resulting in hospitalisation. Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine at Cambridge University Sir Stephen O’Rahilly and CEO of the charity Pregnancy Sickness Support Charlotte Howden join Jessica to discuss the implications of this discovery.

Could planning for a simpler, more realistic January be the best way to help your mental health this Christmas? Author and psychological decluttering expert Cathy Madavan and clinical psychologist Dr Emma Hepburn join Jessica to discuss why less might mean more as we move into the new year.

'Go to the front line yourself - and die'. Those are the reported words of the wives and girlfriends of Russian soldiers to Vladimir Putin, who they are addressing on a Telegram channel called The Way Home. According to UK estimates, 300,000 military personnel from Russia have died during the war in Ukraine. Jessica gets insights from Dr Jenny Mathers from the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

0:03.8

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

0:08.6

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

0:15.3

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

0:19.8

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

0:23.7

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

0:28.4

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

0:30.2

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

0:36.1

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

0:39.7

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

0:45.0

Hello, I'm Jessica Krieton.

0:47.0

Welcome to the Woman's Hour Podcast.

0:49.0

Welcome to the program.

0:50.0

Great to have you with us on this Wednesday morning.

0:53.6

Now, Mary Earps, England goalkeeper, is back in the news today

0:56.9

after being voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year

1:00.6

and it caps off a really remarkable couple of years for her.

1:04.0

But her road to success wasn't necessarily straightforward.

1:08.0

In 2019, she was considering quitting football altogether.

1:13.0

Now, four years later, she is lifting one of sports most prestigious trophies,

1:18.0

and it's that subject that I'd like to get your thoughts on this morning.

1:22.0

Has there ever been a time where you thought you were done with something?

...

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