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Woman's Hour

Small Island, Esther Wojcicki, Natalie Haynes

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture

4.13K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2019

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island was published in 2004, dramatised for television in 2009 and now Helen Edmundson’s theatrical adaptation has begun a run at the National Theatre. It tells the stories of Hortense, who grows up in Jamaica and moves to England as part of the “Windrush” generation, and Queenie, who escapes life on a Lincolnshire farm to find herself in inner-city London as social and ethnic dynamics shift after the War. Jenni talks the actors playing Hortense and Queenie, Leah Harvey and Aisling Loftus. How do you raise successful people? Esther Wojcicki claims to have done just that. She is the mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe Co-Founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, and Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Pediatrics Janet Wojcicki. Esther has written a book including 'simple lessons for radical results' and she shares her strategies with Jenni, explaining her TRICK theory and why she thinks it works equally well whether you are raising children or managing a company. Why has Leeds become the first city in the UK to report a drop in childhood obesity, what’s the significance of this for the rest of the UK and what else is being done throughout Europe and the world to tackle the problem? Jenni is joined by Esther Wojcicki, author of How to Raise Successful People, Susan Jebb, Professor of Diet and Population Health at Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford and Franco Sassi, Professor of International Health Policy and Economics at Imperial College, London. In her latest novel, A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes tells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective. She joins Jenni to explain why she decided to give a voice to these overlooked women, girls and goddesses and what can be gained by listening to their stories. Presenter: Jenni Murray

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

0:04.9

Hello, Jenny Murray, welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Our Podcast.

0:10.4

It's a programme for parents called Henry, and has resulted in leads becoming the first

0:16.6

UK city to report a significant drop in childhood obesity.

0:21.5

How was it done?

0:24.0

Small Island is the novel by the late Andrea Levy, which described the experience of the

0:28.4

Windrush generation as they arrived in Britain.

0:31.7

It's now a play at the National Theatre, and I'll be talking to the two young women

0:36.2

playing Hortense and Queenie.

0:39.0

And a thousand ships, Natalie Haynes tells the story of the Trojan War

0:43.4

from the perspective of the women involved.

0:47.8

Now Esther Wojcicki is a teacher and a parent, she has three daughters.

0:53.7

One is the chief executive of YouTube, another is one of the founders

0:58.0

of the genetic testing company 23 and me, she's also its chief executive.

1:03.5

Her third daughter is a full-right scholar and professor of pediatrics, so

1:09.1

it's not surprising that their mother has written a book called How to Raise Successful People.

1:15.9

But what does she mean by success?

1:18.8

Success is feeling a sense of peace and happiness with what you're doing in the world.

1:27.5

So you have good relationships, you have a place to live,

1:34.3

food to eat, clothing that is necessary, not necessarily designer clothing, but good clothing.

1:43.7

But it's a sense of peace that you feel on a regular basis, at least 51% of the time.

1:53.8

But how do you measure it? I mean your daughters are phenomenally successful

...

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