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Woman's Hour

Stalking & heart disease, Cellist Laura van der Heijden, Periods

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.22.9K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sussex-born cellist Laura van der Heijden won the BBC Young Musician of the Year at the age of 15 in 2012. She's now been named as the Royal Philharmonic Society's Instrumentalist of the Year and will be the Artist in Residence at this year's Lammermuir Festival in Scotland. Laura tells Kylie Pentelow about her repertoire, her love of the outdoors, and plays live in the studio.

Women who've been stalked, or had to take out a restraining order, have a much higher chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It followed a group of over 66,000 women across 10 years, and found those who'd been stalked were 41% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, with those who'd taken out a restraining orders 71% more likely to have heart problems. Kylie talks to Dr Audrey Murchland, one of the lead researchers who carried out the study, about their findings.

Paula Byrne, Jane Austen’s biographer and also a novelist, has spent 25 years researching and writing about the iconic author. In this 250th anniversary year of Austen's birth, she joins Kylie to talk about her new novel, Six Weeks by the Sea, which is her first fictional treatment of Austen and tells the story of how she imagines the most famous romance writer of all time first fell in love.

New government guidance on sex education coming in next year doesn't include specific information on how children should be taught about menstruation, despite a new study showing children don't get enough lessons on the subject. Researchers from University College London claim children get at most two sessions on periods and they say boys and girls should be taught about it together. The study was led by Professor Joyce Harper from the UCL Institute for Women's Health. She joins Kylie along with Tina Leslie from the charity Freedom for Girls, which provides period education.

Presenter: Kylie Pentelow Producer: Andrea Kidd

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

0:09.0

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

0:16.0

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

0:20.0

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

0:23.1

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,

0:28.6

Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Kylie Pentalo and welcome to Women's Hour

0:36.2

from BBC Radio 4.

0:38.4

Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast.

0:46.4

Hello and welcome to the programme.

0:48.9

Now, for many of us, a bank holiday Monday, so I hope you're enjoying your day so far.

0:53.2

We have got plenty coming up, including

0:55.9

how being stalked can increase your risk of having a stroke or heart attack. We'll be finding out

1:02.2

about why this could be. Also, the woman who knows everything you possibly can about Jane Austen

1:07.8

joins me to talk about her new book. It's all about the only love affair

1:12.1

that Jane Austen is rumoured to have had. We'll speak to Paula Byrne about her novel. Plus, we'll be

1:17.6

hearing whether boys and girls should be taught together about periods and about just how much or

1:24.1

how little children are told about menstruation in schools.

1:28.4

He might have heard the actress Helen Mirren on turning 80

1:31.1

has been speaking about those words that people use about her that she loathes,

1:37.0

things like feisty and sweet.

1:39.8

She says there's something very condescending about some people's attitudes,

1:44.0

and I think they think they're being kind and generous, but they're not.

...

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