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The Thought Show: Italy's Football Failure, Russia's Blogger for President

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Factual: Life Stories

23/11/2017 GMT

Italy's Football Failure, Russia's Blogger for President

BBC World Service - The Thought Show, Italy's Football Failure, Russia's Blogger for President

Italy's World Cup failure. Plus, Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny

How expensive is Italy's World Cup failure? Also, Russia’s opposition leader Alexei Navalny's hopes for presidency, and are there differences between the way men and women speak?

Italy’s failure to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 60 years will damage more than  national pride. It will also carry a big financial cost – one estimate says Fifa stands to lose $100m. Is this really true? Also, we fact check the claim that 45% of Nigerian women marry before their 18th birthday.

For the second in our special series from Russia, we trace how opposition leader Alexei Navalny has used social media to move from writing LiveJournal blogs about corruption to trying to run for president.

Also, how true are beliefs about the differences between the way men and women speak, such as women apologise more and men interrupt more? Catherine Carr speaks to leading linguists, who have studied thousands of conversations and gathered data to find out what’s going on.

(Photo: Alessandro Florenzi of Italy at the end of the Fifa 2018 World Cup Qualifier play-off, 2017. Credit: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)

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