Woman's Hour - AI 'girlfriends', Japan's PM designate, Hope Reese, Musica Secreta

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Elon Musk's Artificial Intelligence company xAI recently introduced two sexually explicit chatbots. He's a high-profile presence in a growing field where developers are banking on users interacting and forming intimate relationships with the AI chatbots. Nuala McGovern speaks to journalist Amelia Gentleman, who has just returned from an adult industry conference in Prague, where she saw a sharp rise in new websites offering an increasingly realistic selection of AI girlfriends, and Gina Neff, Professor of Responsible AI at the Queen Mary University of London, who tells us what this means for women.Sanae Takaichi has been elected as the new leader of Japan’s ruling conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party, known as the LDP. Parliament is expected to confirm her as Japan’s first female Prime Minister on 15 October, two days after the 100th anniversary of the birth of Takaichi’s personal political inspiration – Margaret Thatcher. A former government minister, television host and drummer in a heavy metal band, she recently told a group of schoolchildren that her goal was “to become the Iron Lady.” To find out what she means by this and how she is likely to lead her country, Nuala is joined by Mariko Oi, journalist and presenter of the BBC’s soon-to-be launched World Service podcast Asia Specific.At the turn of the 20th century in a small village in Hungary, a midwife, known as Auntie Zsuzsi, was more than a care giver, she was a confidante. Over a period of 20 years, she was central to helping women poison their abusive husbands, killing up to an estimated 300 people in the region. In her book, The Women Are Not Fine - the dark history of a Poisonous Sisterhood, journalist Hope Reese investigates what happened in that Hungarian village and tells Nuala why these women went to such extremes, and how they got away with it for two decades. Following the death of romance author Jilly Cooper yesterday, we hear part of her Woman's Hour interview from November 2023 in which she talked about setting her novel Tackle in the world of sex and football. When you think about music from 500 years ago, you might picture monks chanting, or the voices of choirboys, but what’s been largely forgotten over the course of history is that some of the most striking music during this time was being written and sung by nuns, hidden away in convents across Europe. Nuala speaks to Laurie Stras, Director of Musica Secreta, an all-female renaissance ensemble.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Andrea Kidd

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I just stole myself on the floor. He's coming on really straight. It's like he's trying to date you all of them. a sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Nula McGovern, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. While you're here, I wanted to let you know about the Woman's Hour Guide to Life, your toolkit for the juggle, the struggle, and everything in between. Life is complicated and often incredibly busy. So whether you're fixing a problem at one of life's crossroads or just looking to shake

things up a bit, this is the guide you'll need to help you survive and even thrive. Each episode brings together world-class experts with women sharing their honest, powerful stories, offering real insight and also practical tips that really work. From work and career to relationships and family issues, the focus is on helping you grow, also adapt and overcome life's curved walls. It's your companion, your life coach, it's your Woman's Hour Guide to Life. Join us only on BBC Sounds, but now back to today's Woman's Hour. Hello and welcome to the program this morning, the rise of AI girlfriends. We explore the race by developers to exploit online intimacy that some say will reinforce misogyny. Also, previously a television host

and a drummer in a heavy metal band, but now she is set to become Japan's first female Prime Minister. We'll hear more about Sane Takeichi this hour. We have author, Hope Rees, who's written a fascinating book. It's called The Women Are Not Fine, and it's about a poisonous sisterhood in Hungary in the 1920s. We'll also discover, rediscover perhaps, what Renaissance nuns used to sing. We have a musical treat in storefew with a performance in this studio coming up. Plus, we remember Jilly Cooper. Jilly Cooper was on Woman's Hour talking about sex and football will bring you a little snip of that archive

of footage of course Jillie Cooper who died at the age of 88. If you'd like to get in touch with the program, you can text us the numbers 84844 on social media. We're at BBC's Women's Hour or you can email us through our website. For a WhatsApp message or voice note, that number

is 0300-100-444. But today, the New York Times has an article on Elon Musk as his artificial intelligence company, X-A.I recently introduced two sexually explicit chatbots. He is a high-profile presence in a growing field where developers are banking on users interacting and forming intimate relationships with AI chatbots.

The journalist Amelia Gentleman has just returned from an adult industry conference in Prague where she saw a sharp rise in new websites offering an increasingly realistic selection of AI girlfriends. Gina Neff is a professor of responsible AI at the Queen Mary University of London and she'll tell us more about what this means for women. I began by asking Amelia, what is an AI girlfriend? An AI girlfriend is a just pretty much as it sounds.

It's a digital girlfriend that you can befriend on a website. So there are lots of new emerging pornographic websites where designers offer users images of women that they can talk to, that they can befriend. And after some time, the user will ask the AI girlfriend to remove her clothes and perhaps perform a sex act on screen. It sounds very kind of friendly and innocent, but in the world of the adult industry, AI girlfriends are pretty explicit. There are gamification elements to them as well, correct?

Yeah. So a lot of the users of these AI girlfriends are people who've grown up playing video games and the designers, the developers have created different prototypes of females that you can opt to be your AI girlfriend or you can create your own one and built into the system, there is a way of, I suppose, making some girlfriends more amenable immediately to taking their clothes off and other AI girlfriends a bit more, a bit less submissive,

I suppose. And the website developers see that as part of the fun and as part of the game. But on the whole, the kinds of girlfriends that are on offer on these sites tend to be presented as fairly submissive. There's a lot of food for thought and everything you've said already, Amelia, but we did see that the New York Times was reporting Gina that Elon Musk's AI company has introduced to sexually explicit chatbots as well. What do we know? These sex chatbots are going to go mainstream.

Many of the big tech companies, the current AI chatbot companies, have not allowed sexually explicitly chatbots on their services, although users have figured out ways to get around those guardrails. Elon Musk has thrown those guardrails out and said that his company will go forward and make these offerings. Yeah, I did also see because we know he's often concerned with population decline. He's convinced that the use of these chatbots will actually lead people to more intimacy, with real-life partners that remains to be seen. But what there is is a race to intimacy within this online world, as it was described by one.

What about that, Amelia? I'm wondering what was said. I read some of the comments, for example, that some users are divorced or widowed, that talking to an AI companion about sex can be a safer outlet than in-person interactions to explore desire. Did that come up at all of the conference, that kind of conversation around intimacy? I mean, what was really striking is that the businesses who,

the owners of the businesses who are creating these websites are primarily men and they are falling over themselves to try and present what they're doing as ethical and helpful. and particularly helpful to women. So it's really paradoxical because they, on the whole, within the adult industry, there's an idea that this is a safe place to work, that if you're sex positive, it can be very empowering for women.

But once you switch into AI, suddenly the male developers acknowledge that, there are a lot of risks in the industry and that they try and present themselves as doing women a favour by creating AI versions of women to do the difficult work of stripping on camera. And it's, I mean, in terms of how they offer a chance

to practice intimacy that might be expanded beyond the internet and into real life, I mean, a few of them did say that it's a useful training area where teenage boys might practice their skills in flirting. But they also said some fairly dark things as well, saying, you know, you can say things that you really want to say to women to an AI, to an AI girlfriend, that you might feel too inhibited to say in real life. So you could say quite freely abusive things to your AI.

girlfriend and there would obviously be no consequences. I did read some of the comments. One was Steve Jones, who runs an AI porn site and he said, do you prefer your porn with a lot of abuse in human trafficking or would you rather talk to AI? In a way, quoting some of those aspects that you mentioned there, Amelia. Gina, I mean, is there any protections in place? Because this is, I suppose, policing online. activity in a way, but very intimate online activity?

Well, first about protections. In the UK, images of children and some of these sexually explicit AI bots come very close to depicting young girls, young women, very young women. Images of children are illegal whether or not they are real people or AI people. And I think that gives us something to think about. As a feminist mom, of boys. I have told my teenage sons, listen, don't get AI girlfriends, whatever you do. I want you going out and interacting real people instead of learning bad habits. In a paper that we've got out, I have out with a co-author just this week, we talk about artificial sociality, the ways in which people are developing relationships with AI chat bots. Now, we didn't study sex bots specifically,

when people develop these relationships with their chat logs and the platform changes something about the rules or regulations or just makes an update, people can go through a real sense of loss. We tracked how they responded. They feel that they need to start over or start something new, leave the platform, or train up and adapt a chat lot. And what we're finding is that people really are exercising the sense of control. and again, as a feminist, teaching people that relationships are something you control

and people are something you control would be something I'm really worried about. I never heard that term before. Artificial, sociality. Sociality. That sums up a lot, I think, of what we're talking about here. I do want to read one comment as well of a female user talking about her AI companion

as I was researching this this morning. Before meeting him, I had a very normal life, a routine job friends. This is Vivian, who was the user. She said, suddenly I was a happier person, more creative, more intuitive. This is Valentine that she met online, who is a digital AI boyfriend, I suppose.

She said the relationship had caused her to start listening to more music, to wear makeup again. She'd return to writing poetry. Amelia, I'd be so curious for your thoughts on when you hear that. Well, I think I saw a much darker side of the business when I was in Prague.

There was an acknowledgement by the people running these companies that the vast majority of people signing up for AI girlfriends are currently men. And when you get into the kind of the weeds of the sort of women that both the website developers think men want and the kinds of options for men to create their fantasy girlfriends, It's just incredibly depressing, I suppose, because it goes back to kinds of really unhelpful stereotypes about women that seem to be being embedded in these organisations. So on the whole, you can kind of, when you go onto a website, you can think about what kind of hair you want your AI girlfriend to have, what size of bust, what size of, bust. of waste, the kind of the first questions are primarily about appearance. And then you click through and you get into personality types and there will be drop down boxes of different

personality types. What are some of the options? Well, they say, you know, do you want your AI girlfriend to be, for example, and I'm quoting here, submissive, obedient, yielding and happy to follow? Or with you rather, she was innocent, optimistic, naive and someone who sees the world with wonder. And they offer you different kind of professions as well. And on the whole, they tend to be things like yoga teacher or florist. So it's just incredibly regressive. Do you think, Amelia, just before I let you go, that, and I'll be curious for your thoughts on this, Gina, as well, will AI girlfriends put sex workers out of work? I spoke to a woman called

called Lily Phillips, who is a British only fans star, who we heard about quite a bit recently because she's, I suppose, does the same kind of stunt that Bonnie Blue does in terms of taking on very extreme challenges to sleep with large quantities of men in short periods of time to boost her only fans following. and she said she was considering getting an AI twin of herself

so that her fans could request to see her do different things all the time and that would be a way of, I suppose, monetising herself more efficiently around the clock because, of course, if you're an AI girlfriend taking your clothes off, you don't get tired, you don't need to have a day off, you don't get ill, you don't feel humiliated ever by what you're being asked to do. So she saw it as something that would complement her work rather than make her redundant. Gina, just very quickly. And the questions we have to ask is, what does that mean for society and what does that mean for real women?

What does that mean for women who are non-sex workers who are now having to interact in a world where the cards are literally stacked against us? Professor Gina Neff and Amelia Gentleman there. Amelia's article is obedient, yielding and happy to follow the troubling rise of AI girlfriends which you can find in today's guardian. Estella got in touch who is listening.

She says it's totally misleading and falsely reassuring to call these AI-created objects girlfriends. Can we feminists come up with a more appropriate name to reflect its reality? Well, if you want to give that a go,

8444 is one way you can do that. I will keep an eye out. Now, I want to turn to Sane, Takaichi. She has been elected as the new leader of Japan's ruling conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party, known as the LDP. Parliament is expected to confirm her as Japan's first female Prime Minister on the 15th of October, two days after the 100th anniversary of the birth of Takiichi's personal political inspiration, Margaret Thatcher.

She was a government, a former government minister. She was a television host, as I mentioned earlier, a drummer in a heavy metal band. And she recently told a group of school children that her goal was to become the Iron Lady. Well, to find out what she means by this and how likely she is in what way to lead her country. Let me bring in Mariko Oye, who is a journalist and presenter of the BBC's soon-to-be-lached podcast, Asia-specific, with the BBC World Service. Good to have you with us, Mariko. Hi, Leila. Good to hear you.

Let's tell you a little bit about Sanei Takichi. She's a name that won't be known to many of our listeners. What do you think is the most important thing about her for Japan? Oh, goodness me. That's a difficult question. I mean, obviously the fact that she's a woman and she will most likely become the first ever female Prime Minister of Japan, that's been grabbing a lot of news headlines around the world.

But it's been really fascinating to see kind of the different reactions outside of Japan and inside Japan. So, as I said, a lot of foreign. media were very excited about her being a woman. But at the same time, in Japan, she's a very well-known politician within Japan. But the reaction from those, you know, from those, you know, journalists, who I would call feminists, wasn't exactly an excitement. And, you know, some of them were really harsh in their comments saying, you know, I've been dreaming of a day when Japan would have a female prime minister, but she's just not it. And that's basically because of her previous

comments which have kind of labeled her as ultra-nationalist, a very right wing and so on. She was once photographed with a neo-Nazi politician, for example. I'm talking about many, many years ago, of course, but there were also incidents where she opposed the word invasion in describing what Japan did to China and other neighboring countries. Again, many, many years ago, and her views may have changed. But as a result, she's seen as one of the most conservative politicians. And that's why the reaction hasn't been just the overwhelming joy and excitement.

But at the same time, it is interesting to point out her personal background because in a country where many politicians are sons, grandsons, sometimes great-grandsons of former prime ministers and other politicians, she actually didn't come from that background. Her parents famously told her it's a waste of time and money to send you to a university because you're a girl. So she started working part-time, saved money to send her. herself to a college and basically graduated and enter politics after, as you said,

being a TV host and so on. But also, you know, she talked openly about her struggles to have children. She got married and then got divorced, but then she remarried the same partner and adopted her children and so on. So a very interesting character. And I think we just have to see how she would govern despite all the reactions that we're getting. And what about her comment saying she wants to be Japan's Iron Lady? Yeah, that's an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, she has always said that she was very much inspired by Margaret Thatcher. There's a picture, there's a photograph of her young Sana'ai Takaiichi with Margaret Thatcher.

So she's obviously been very, very inspired by her policies. Some analysts say that her policies are anything but, especially when it comes to her financial, economic policies, but that's obviously who she really respect. Also, you know, she made a comment in her acceptance speech after she won the leadership race of the ruling party that she wants to just forget about work-life balance and she's going to work, work, work, work, and that got, you know, that raised an eyebrow in certain sectors because obviously, you know, Japan has been infamously known for deaths from overwork and so on. But at the same time, others are defending her that as a prime minister, you do need somebody who,

will be working, working, working because she's inherited a very struggling economy, you know, challenging situation with the US and other neighboring countries as well. So, yeah, again, interesting reaction. And I think the fact that because she's a woman, she gets judged and criticized for things that maybe male politicians wouldn't. You know, I think, you and I have experienced as well. Even as journalists, women tend to get a lot of comments about our appearance when male colleagues may not.

So there's a certain bit of that. Yeah, I think she will actually be quite tough when it comes to just ignoring all these comments and doing what she believes is right for the country. It's interesting. We talk about Margaret Thatcher as a predecessor, shall we say, in the political world that she looks up to. What about Shinzo Abe? Because you have made programs about the womenomics, if I've got that word correctly, policies that were to encourage more women into the workforce and provide support once they were there. I mean, it's always a question with Japan, isn't it, when it comes to who is doing what in the sense of it's really an ageing population and a plummeting birth rate and questions about women's role within society very much affects that bottom line when it comes to Japan's economy. I wonder, is that on a list of priorities of trying to get other women to forget the work-life balance? I think that was the kind of the fear when she made that. that comment. She was seen as a protege of Shinzo Abe, who was also known as towards

a kind of conservative side of the ruling party. I think when it comes to women's rights, you know, that's where some of her critics argue that she's actually not a champion of gender equality because she's against, for example, a married couple having different surnames, even though she herself initially took her husband's name and then got divorced. And then when she remarried, her husband then got her family name. So basically married couples have to have the same family name. That's something that, you know, some activists have been wanting to change. And the public is quite, you know, approving of that trend. But at the same time, you know, she's been quite against it. But I think it is important to point out that the fact

that she is a woman and, you know, I've been covering womenomics topics for many years, 10 years now. And Japan has been really struggling to increase the number of female leaders. And I remember feeding, you know, when the LDP and other parties were asking celebrities, singers who get interviewed about their policies, and they clearly just don't have any policy ideas, I used to get quite frustrated that, you know, it shouldn't just be about women being asked to run, because it should just be the best person, shouldn't it? But at the same time, I spoke to my school friend, who is now a lawmaker in a small prefecture in Japan, and she actually said, but it actually does help.

You know, it just helps to have more women in parliament or in diet or whatever you want to call it. Because when she first started as a lawmaker, she told me, and it was shocking. She said, you know, they then told us, please clear a schedule for today and tomorrow until about 8pm, 9 p.m., because we're going to keep discussing overnight. And because she's a mother of a young child at the time, she was like, what about my kid? And at the time, this was probably 10 years ago. She said there was nobody else who would back her up. But things have been changing because there are more women, more working fathers as well,

who are speaking up against those very kind of conservative views of let's just keep debating until the morning and keep talking until we come to a conclusion. But instead, let's just go home at, you know, 7 o'clock and then we start again tomorrow morning. So I think it is important that she's going to set hopefully a role model for other young women who may, you know, now think that, because I remember my daughter actually said to me, do you have to be an all-mount to be a, you know, prime minister or president? And I said to her, no, no, no, you know, New Zealand at the times of Syntha Arden, you know, Germany had one too.

And now I told her, you know, Japan now possibly is going to get a female prime minister. And, you know, she got quite excited. Obviously, she doesn't know much about her policies. So I think, you know, instead of being too critical about some of her policies, I think we just have to, you know, see how she goes. But obviously we have seen kind of a return of revolving door of prime ministers in Japan. So let's see what happens. But, yeah, it's an interesting time, definitely.

And I think it won't be too long, Mariko, before your daughter will be well up on her policies with you as her mother. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll see how that goes expected October 15th. So we'll keep watching that. Mariko Oi speaking to me today from Singapore, she has a new soon-to-be-launch podcast, Asia-specific, with the BBC World Service. And speaking of such things, have you called? caught up on the Woman's Hour Guide to Life yet. Episode two is all about ambition without burnout,

how to chase your goals while protecting your well-being. It's only on BBC Sounds. To hear more, go to BBC Sounds, search for Women's Hour. Maybe you have it on front and centre. And in that feed, you will find the Guide to Life episodes. Just scroll down a little and it's there. You can text Woman's Hour 84844. On social media, we're at, excuse me, at BBC Woman's Hour.

or you can email us through our website. So hopefully you have a couple of our contact details saved. Get in touch with us any way you'd like on some of those conversations. A new season of Love Me is here. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender. I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day.

I just stole myself on the floor. It's coming on really straight. It's like he's trying to date you all of the sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Now, I want to turn to the turn of the 20th century. And to a small village in Hungary,

there was a midwife known as Aunt Zuzzi, who was more than a caregiver. She was a confident of many of the years. of the women in the village. But over a period of 20 years, she was central to helping women poison their abusive husbands, killing up to an estimated 300 people

in the region, this particular sisterhood, as it is called. In the book, The Women Are Not Fine, the dark history of a poisonous sisterhood, journalist Hope Reese investigates what happened in that village

and why the women went to such extremes and also how they got away with it for two decades. Hope's in the studio. Welcome. Thank you for having me, Nula. Such a read. I had to kind of, the minute I started reading it,

I had to bring up Google Maps and start having a look at exactly where this little village was. Yes. So we're talking about early 1900s Hungary, which was a lot bigger than it is currently. This is before World War I. The village was, still is,

southwest of Budapest, about a three-hour drive right now in a place called the Great Plain along the Tisa River. The Tisa is one of the biggest rivers, rivers in Hungary and it's farmland, yeah.

Najdrov. Najrave. Nagrave, working on my Hungarian. But as we can imagine, that would have been very remote then at that point, you know, there wouldn't have been anybody traveling to Budapest

like they might today. But in this particular village in Hungary, I think first perhaps we should mention what it was like being a Hungarian wife. I know you have a whole chapter on that. Right. So this was interesting to learn about from me. Marriage then was very different from what it is today.

So it's hard to get yourself in the shoes of these women. But essentially these were not love marriages. These were really economic partnerships. Often they were arranged marriages. They were always related to, like they had a saying equal, equal lands. So these were units that were made for practical purposes. The women also had a very central role in the household. They were not women sitting around drinking tea. They were women in the farm, on the farm, in the kitchen, you know, at the front of the shop, and they were very

much involved in, you know, getting their hands dirty. They were central to this unit. They also did have the ability to divorce, so asking what marriage was like, which I had been surprised about when I found out, but they often didn't take that route because of there were many obstacles to divorce. And there was a stigma to being divorced, but not a widow. Exactly. This is a Calvinist village, and the church was very central. It took the place of the kind of leader in the village community. People listened to, people listened to the pastor. People obey these very strict rules and, you know, they dictated what you could wear at what age you could wear it and your clothes got darker as you got older, which pew you could sit in. Anyway, in this particular

village, there was a gap in the religious leadership and there was a bit of room for someone else to take that leadership role. There was a phrase at that time, a wife is good when beaten. Yes. Which I'm throwing that out because that kind of underpins in a way the amount of domestic violence, even though it wouldn't have been called at that time, that did exist in households. Right. This is a real core part of the story.

Often those women were enduring domestic abuse. Sometimes other villagers knew about it. Sometimes it was written about it. the paper, but a lot of it was completely accepted and a part of marriage. I mentioned divorce, but women could not use domestic abuse as a reason for divorce. Well, first to say there was no such term as domestic abuse, but it had to qualify as their life was in danger. Otherwise, it was accepted. So a wife is good when beaten. This is something a Hungarian friend of mine, a girlfriend told me this phrase, you know, as I was working on the book,

and it still resonates among Hungarians I know, which shows you how enduring that idea is even today. To add to that perfect storm was, it was the years after World War I, men returned from the war with PTSD, with alcohol issues, and there was some very fractious, fights that took place or a very unhappy households.

But in the middle of all of this, we talked about some of the leaders within society. Another one was Aunt Susie, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly. She was a midwife, an older woman with authority. Yes, Auntie Zhugei was the central figure and the story. She was not by any means the first woman to poison a man in Nigeriv, but she was the one who took this idea and spread it among the women.

There's a whole network of women here, and no woman killed alone. So Auntie Jouji was the lead midwife in the village. She had a position of authority. She was paid a nice salary, had a nice home, was treated with respect. Midwives at the time were one of the few roles women could have where they could lead an independent life.

She would go to the Kochma. She would brag about her exploits. She would carry voids. vials of poison with her. Men were afraid of her, but she would also listen to women. Yeah. How the poison was made, flypaper is another part that's in this. It was basically boiled up and the liquid used, for example. But give us an idea of how widespread this was in this particular area. We're talking about a small village. Right. So yes, the fly paper, common everyday item, they could go to the general store and just boil it in water. How widespread it

was it lasted for decades. So the earliest known poisoning was in 1911. That was connected to the midwife. However, the trials didn't happen until 1929. That's almost two decades of poisonings. People were very reluctant to bring attention to the authorities. They were afraid. Some were writing anonymous letters, but often they were fearful. And so it continued. But as we talk about this, I know Aunt Juzzi used to always say, why bother with him when a husband was abusive, violent, whatever it might be. But did the women take on poisoning their partners lightly? So it's a really tough question to answer. We can't kind of get into their minds, but we have a lot of evidence that shows that women sometimes were enduring abuse for decades before they began poisoning.

Rosalia Takach was one of the older poisoners. She was married in 1886, I believe, and she had been abused for three decades before she turned to a neighbor for help. And she began, she poisoned her own husband. And then she started helping other abused women. There were about five of those that we know of who were later found to be connected with her. so sorry that that is really you're answering the question whether they took it lightly or not it's hard to know I mean they did end up in trials there's photographs and whatnot in your book as well which I think is so

such an insight really but some of them stood by their guns so to speak on why they did it as an act of service taking it lightly it's hard to know but many of them it seemed that they were this was a last resort and you can imagine this is

not an easy solution idea to come to. But women around them were doing it. They were influenced. There's a power of the crowd mindset here as well. But you're just thinking all these guys are dying and nobody's joining the dots. I know somebody was married to one of the coroners who would have decided the cause of death and he was afraid of them so he would kind of pass it off, so to speak. But that is also quite shocking that it continued for a couple of decades. And Susie killed herself before she was caught, I think, with the police coming after. It's a fascinating read, I have to say.

I don't think that I'm giving anything away when I say that. But some of the others were convicted. Yes. So we had 28 people on trial in 1929 for over 100 deaths, although, as you said, up to 300 were killed. Maybe more even that we don't know that. So this is what people in the village say. Even today, they're saying, okay, Najraev is the only town, the village that was found out. It could have happened elsewhere.

This big investigation that the police dug the graves up, investigators exhumed the bodies and shipped off the corpses to Budapest to test for arsenic. I mean, I was shocked that there was autopsies taking place then that could detect, for example, the poison that there was from the fly paper but that was something I learned reading your book as well some were executed

some went to prison but I was also intrigued about the line that poison is often the choice of women to go and this connects a bit with this idea of

that you said did they take it lightly I think they considered poison a bit differently first of all poison has been a quote unquote woman's way to kill for centuries. There have been so many poisoning. Poison is the main way that women have killed over time. It's a very much an accessible option. It's a household

option. It's also more of a silent death, you know, and it's, I think it was easier for the women to let themselves off the hook to have the illusion that they were helping the husband. They often use that language in the court. They would say, I was help. him or I was putting him to sleep. It's also complicated because, as you said, some of these men were injured. They had been veterans. They were suffering from PTSD. In some way, they may have actually believed they were helping. Either way, they convinced themselves that this was an okay thing to do and a necessary thing to do. But poison is, yeah, it's different in that respect because they didn't, they had a longer time span. They didn't see an immediate violence.

death. And it's very interesting you go into the details of how men and women kill. How do you feel towards the women? I think there's no way not to be sympathetic to their plight in general. So their plight, but you could say they committed. Of course, mass murder. So they did. And the thing is that this is so intrinsically connected to the domestic violence. And we see this even today. So many women are in prison today for protecting themselves from abusive partners. So really that kind of drove my interest in the story. There's this flip side. It's all connected. The men had experienced violence. They became even more violent towards their wives after the war. And the women really had, were doing what they had to do to

protect themselves. I can't imagine this was an easy situation to be in. It is a fascinating read. Even get into more recent day urban United States when it comes to why women and men kill. The book is called The Women Are Not Fine. The Dark History of a Poisonous Sisterhood. It's out now. The author is Hope Rees. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Nula. Now, the news of author Julie Cooper's death at the age of 88 yesterday happened just as we were on air. So this morning, we want to

wanted to mark her time on the programme. Her book sold more than 2 million copies, included riders, rivals and polo to put her name firmly on the romance map. Queen Camilla led the tributes describing her as a legend and a wonderfully witty and compassionate friend to me and so many. Here's Jilly

talking on Women's Hour. This is November 2023 about her book Tackle. Emma Barnett asked her why she had set it in the world of football. Well, I think football's exciting and it's the most, I mean, more people watch football and it cheers the world up. I mean, somebody said it was more cheered people up more than sex

because, you know, people watch it and if their team wins, they're terribly excited for a week and they're happy and then they get a bit sad the next week. And I think we all need cheering up at the moment. It's a brilliant game. I believe you sat with Alex Ferguson and heard from him a bit about this world. I sat next to him at lunch and he was a bit scared because I thought he might be sort of too important to sit next to me, but he was so sweet and so funny. And we giggled so much, and I told him a few naughty stories, and he told me some, and I just fell in love with him and just thought, why not write a book

about football? What naughty stories do you tell Alex Ferguson at a lunch? Not sure that it's, um, no I do you think, I... No, it's about a lot of naughty mice in Scotland. I don't think I want to tell you to do. You can't blame a girl for trying. Okay, so there's a lot

of football, there's a lot of intrigue, there's a lot of characters and plots, as there always are in your books, and slightly less sex than normal? Well, slightly less sex because I think I'm 86 now and I always in my life I always like to write about things that describe things as I

go along and because my darling husband died 10 years ago I mean I haven't really got some an example I think there is a bit less sex but there's quite a lot of sex but not as much as it was I mean and you know it's an important point to sort of write as you find the world and as you are

but it is something that people do associate with your books and remember fondly perhaps sneaking their mum's copy and having a look and learning a lot. How do you feel about that? No, I love it. You've been an unofficial sex educator. I think it's wonderful.

I mean, because I've always thought sex was heaven if it's enjoyed it. And I think people should enjoy it. And it brings an enormous amount of pleasure in life like footballers. So I think it's lovely. I've encouraged people to have more sex. I'm very pleased. Dame Jilly Cooper there. And if you do want to hear the whole of that interview,

just go to BBC Sounds. It's Woman's Hour from the 8th. of November 2023. Now, when you think about music from 500 years ago, you might picture monks chanting or the voices of choir boys. But what has been largely forgotten over the course of history is that some of the most striking music during the time was been written and sung by nuns.

But they were hidden away in convents across Europe. My next guest is Laurie Strauss, and she's the co-director of Musica Segretta, an all-female Renaissance ensemble. Together, they discover and perform music written by and four women between the 15th and 17th centuries. We've Laurie here and four other members of Musica So Greta in studio with us. Laurie, good morning.

Good morning. Thanks for having us. And I want to give a shout to Elsa Campbell, Annie Eli, Christina Watt and Luthian Brackett, who are all standing by their microphones about to perform for us in just a few minutes. But let me talk about the music with you, Laurie, first. So you rediscovered music from a very old choir book for your latest album, Recordanza. What did you discover? This book is the only book of composed music for nuns that we can actually locate in a convent from the 16th century. It's, I mean, unique.

This was a village kind of outside Florence? That's right. It's about 45-minute walk from the middle of Florence, about a mile up into the hills. So it's not a, it wasn't a rich convent, it was quite a modest place. And yet it had this wonderful, beautiful, rich, colourful manuscript of music prepared for it in 1560. And were you able to decipher exactly what the music was from that? Yes, mostly. I mean, well, I have reconstructed some of the music because the manuscript is kind of crumbling to bits.

I can imagine. holes in it, where I've had to rewrite some of the music. But yes, I mean, I've transcribed the whole book. It's 78 pieces. It's an entire year's worth of music for these women, for their devotions, for their services, for their recreation. It's just their whole musical world. But isn't it interesting that we don't really think about nuns singing, perhaps, in the same way that we should? Well, yes, because I think I think what's happened is that over the centuries, as nun singing has dwindled and convents themselves have dwindled, we tend to associate sacred singing with male voices, particularly with the cathedral choirs and the choirs of the other colleges in Oxford and Cambridge in this country or Westminster, you know, it's a very male dominated sound.

And so we forget that women's voices were actually much more common and anyone could wander into a church and hear women singing. They couldn't hear the Sistine Chapel or they couldn't hear, you know, they couldn't hear the big courts of Europe, those chapels, those male chapels, but they could go into any convent. There were dozens of convents in European cities and hear fabulous music. We're going to hear some in a moment. What are they going to sing for us?

It's a piece called Da Pachem Dominé in Deibus No. and I chose it because the book was written at a time when the convent had been through war and plague and famine and it's this so this piece is asking for peace in our time but it's just one of those prayers that I think they would and what do you think we should listen out for because it's all female with the way the voice cross I mean it choral music we tend to associate with like soprano also tenor bass and in music for nuns all the voices are singing

in more or less the same pitch so you can you know the the girls will be working very hard for you to hear the individual voices but they all blend together let us sit back and listen The Papadam dominion

the end the deities trees no hostries Olives, alinevus who who

prune to nis to know to us Weissitou deus nostal. Nisitutévoste. How beautiful was that? It's extraordinary music.

I mean, I feel like I should give silence to it. Well done. Thanks very much. I just want to name it's music as a great again, the singers there, Elsa Campbell, Hannah, Eli, Christina Watt and Luthian Brackett. Why do you think we don't know more about this music? Well, history is written by the victors

And I totally agree with Virginia Woolf. Anonymous was a woman. It's very easy for women to drop out of the historical record. You know, it doesn't take centuries. It can take just a matter of years. You know, there are female composers who are absolutely at the top of their game from the mid-20th century and we don't know about them anymore

their music might have been played at Carnegie Hall or the festival or whatever but we forget about them because women just seem to drop out of history what do we know as we rediscover about the lives of these nuns in the convent? Who were they?

They were the daughters of Florentine families relatively well off They weren't, you know, they weren't the princes and princesses, but they were minor nobility. But they would be the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth or the sixth, the daughter and the family. And only one daughter could marry. So all of the cities, excess women, would be going into convents. And once you entered a convent, you couldn't leave.

I mean, this is, it was like a life sentence. Yes. But you weren't in public life at all then. You weren't in public life. Your voice could be heard, but you were not in public life. Nobody could see you. Even your family couldn't see you. You could go into the parlorio and speak with your family through a grate.

But the grate was a sheet of metal with holes punched in it. It wasn't just like iron bars. You were not allowed to be seen. And their lives were hard. They sang more than they slept. and that was the choir nuns themselves, the servant nuns. These women would be living on very little food and they would also be contributing to the city's economy

as seamstresses or copyists or spinners or whatever. It's quite evocative though, isn't it, the thought of, because you say they sang more than they slept. Singing all day? Singing all day. They had eight services and then however many masses, They were paid to sing for the souls of the departed. And they sometimes sang as part of their recreation.

And they were teaching, you know, the choir mistress would have to teach the young girls how to sing psalmody. And they did a lot of singing from memory. A lot of this was from memory. You had to sing through all of the Psalms over the course of the week. And so they, and they wouldn't, some of them couldn't read. So they would be singing from memory. Do we know when nuns and women more generally stop being associated with church music? There's always a pocket somewhere where the nuns are singing, right, up into the 19th century.

But I think it was kind of the mass dissolution of the convents across Europe that Napoleon did it to wherever he was, you know, wherever he conquered. And then Spain also dissolved the convent. England's convents have been gone for centuries by that time. So I think that's really when women's voices stopped being heard. Coming back specifically to that poor convent that you mentioned outside Florence, where you found the manuscripts, you discovered the Galileo's daughter I'd been there? Yes, that's right. She and her sister entered the convent in 1612.

And in fact, one of the nuns whose names is on the... on the manuscript, Clemencio Sostenny. She died in 1612, and her place was taken by Virginia Galilei, who became Suor Maria Celeste Galilei. I had the piece of paper with their names on the same thing. And Virginia Galilei was the daughter, the niece, the granddaughter of musicians. She had musical ability, and she became the choir mistress

about five years before she died. And I am almost certain that this manuscript, script would have still been at the convent and she would have used it because there would be no reason for it to have left. So it was there when she, when she entered and I just can't imagine that it would have left. So she probably would have used it. Music is a greater secret music. Yes. I mean, do you think, do you have like some dream of something else that you want to find or are you on a hunt looking for more music? I'm always on the hunt. Don't tell my family. They think I should retire.

But there is, I'm sure there is more. I'm sure there is more. It's just that it's not catalogued. It's not considered important. And one of the things about the manuscript is that, oh, the music is anonymous, or almost all of it is anonymous. And it's very hard to place something that is anonymous into a stream of kind of like the great men narrative, the way that history is often taught. So anonymous music kind of falls by the wayside. A lot of it is not in the repertoires now

So I suppose that's probably a goal for you to get it in It really is And so many women want to sing There are always more adult women Who want to sing in choirs than adult men Is that a thing? Yeah, it is a thing And I really want to give women ownership of this repertoire It's been so long since women actually felt

that they had something to sing or from this period it's such a rich, rich period of music and yet it's not yet settled in women's voices. We cracked female choristers nearly 30 years ago girls started being

accepted into cathedral choirs but the adult women when they come out at the other end they can join mixed ensembles but there aren't that many professional female groups still in the country and I would love them to kind of take proliferate proliferate, yes, exactly.

Laurie Strauss, thank you so much. The singers from Musica Segretta, their album Recordanzi, a record of love is out now. I see Georgina, or let me see her, Christina got in touch, she says, I tuned in to unexpectedly hear the wonderful nun's music. What a treat. Thank you so much. Also, Georgina got in touch.

She was saying suggesting the term sex pannion for our first item we were talking about with AI girlfriends. Do join me tomorrow. I'll be speaking to the French philosopher, Manon Garcia. She watched the court proceedings of the Pelico case in France in which Dominique Pelico and 46 other men were found guilty of the severe rape of Dominique's wife, Giselle.

In her book, Living with Men, she examines French and other societies in light of the case and also asks whether anything, has actually changed. I do hope you'll join me tomorrow. See you here at 10. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. The figure's face was featureless and its entire body was jet black. I'm Danny Robbins and throughout October I will be sharing uncanny listeners, real life ghost stories. That's one every single day as we count down to the spookiest time of the year.

Suddenly, all hell lets loose. The sound of glass smashing, heavy objects being thrown, doors being ripped off hinges. It was coming from the cellar. I looked up and was staggered to see a humongous black triangle floating silently over the rooftop. Join me as uncanny Countdown to Halloween every day in October on BBC Sounds. new season of Love Me is here. Real stories of real, complicated relationships. It's not even like a gender. I mean, it's wrapped up in gender, but it's just a really deep self-hate. I think I cried almost every day. I just stood myself on the floor. He's coming on really

straight. It's like he's trying to date you all of a sudden. Yeah. And I do look like my mother. Love Me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.