Woman's Hour

Original version

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

BBC Radio 4

Radio 4

Radio 4 (FM)

Magazines & Reviews

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.

BBC Radio 4 LW

Woman's Hour: Adult crushes, Identifying migrants lost at sea, Kishwer Falkner and the EHRC

14/01/2021

Adult crushes, Identifying migrants lost at sea, Kishwer Falkner and the EHRC

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Adult crushes, Identifying migrants lost at sea, Kishwer Falkner and the EHRC

Adult crushes tend to be a guilty secret. But can they have benefits for our mental health - and our existing relationships?

Everyone remembers their first teenage crush -  that feeling of butterflies in the stomach and  uncontrollable blushes. As we age, crushes still occur but they tend to be a guilty secret. But are there benefits to having a crush? Facebook introduced a secret crush feature in December last year and it is claimed that crushes can induce mood-boosting chemicals.  Should we see crushes as normal, exciting and harmless ways of understanding ourselves and our needs?  Or is it morally questionable if you’re in a loving, committed relationship? Emma is joined by Debra Waters, who won the Bridport Prize last year for her short story "Oh Hululu" about an adult crush, and Helen Thomson is a science journalist and author whose new book is called 'This Book Could Fix Your Life' in which she shares her advice on affairs of the heart.

Yesterday, the eyes of America were mainly on one woman. Congresswoman Liz Cheney was one of ten Republicans who crossed the floor and voted with the Democrats to impeach President Trump for the second time, something that has never happened before to a President. A key trigger in all of this was, of course, the storming of the Capitol Building last week. Cheney laid blame firmly at the feet of President Trump and criticised his role in stoking the attack. So who is Liz Cheney and is she the political heroine some are saying she is? Is she trying to save the Republic from doom and destruction at its most desperate hour? Emma talks to Amy Pope, former deputy home security advisor to President Obama

An estimated 30,000 migrants and refugees have lost their lives in the Mediterranean in the last fifteen years. One of the largest shipwrecks took place in October 2013 when a boat went down off the Italian island of Lampedusa, killing 366 migrants on board. A second tragedy, with an even larger loss of life, happened in April 2015 when a boat sank carrying 1000 refugees and migrants travelling from Libya to Italy. Cristina Cattaneo, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Milan, has spent the last five years voluntarily running a project with others to identify just some of those who died.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has a new chair. Her name is Kishwer Falkner. The EHRC's most recent and high-profile investigations have been into pay at the BBC and anti-Semitism within the Labour Party. Its twitter tag line says that it’s here to “to stand up for freedom, compassion and justice in our changing times”, but it has its critics too. The Women and Equalities Committee once said it needed to overcome its ‘timidity’, and be ‘bolder’. That was in 2019, so has it?

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Woman's Hour

Adult crushes, Identifying migrants lost at sea, Kishwer Falkner and the EHRC

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 FM

About BBC Radio 4