Woman's Hour - CPR on women, AI toys, Maimuna Memon

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

There are new figures out which show women are less likely than men to receive bystander CPR, with one in three female cardiac arrest patients getting no CPR until crews arrive on scene. The CEO of Thames Valley Ambulance, Amanda McLean will join Anita Rani to talk about what is causing this reluctance, plus we'll be joined by Chloe Lipton, a woman who is campaigning for female manikins to be mandatory in CPR and defibrillator training. Yesterday Mandy Wixon was jailed for 13 years for keeping a vulnerable woman captive in her home for 25 years. She was found guilty of two counts of requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour and four charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Gloucestershire police have said that the victim was kept in 'squalid conditions'. BBC West of England Journalist Chloe Harcombe picks up the story with Anita Rani. Cambridge University have conducted research into AI toys, which are marketed to children as young as three. But what are they and what is the impact of this tech on such young children? Joining Anita is Dr Emily Goodacre from the University of Cambridge's Faculty of Education. Monika Radojevic tells Anita why she took the inspiration for her debut novel Shadowlands from her own parents' love story. Set in the early 1990s, these two immigrants from Brazil and Montenegro, then part of Yugoslavia, fall deeply in love in London. However it takes journeying across continents and into the start of a civil war for them to be together. She joins Anita. Maimuna Memon is an actress, singer, composer, and playwright. Last year she won a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in the musical Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar in London. Maimuna talks to Anita about the real-life stories behind her latest show Manic Street Creature.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids. I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure. The story has always been, no.

I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story. Definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is Creation Myth, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Neula McGovern and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. And while you're here, I wanted to let you know that the Woman's Hour Guide to Life is back. You might have listened to some of the episodes from the first series, including Ambition Without Burnout, or turning aging into your superpower.

Well, we've got six new episodes. for you over the coming weeks that will give you practical tips on issues like self-promotion without feeling awkward, caring for aging parents, navigating infertility with family and friends, and also how to love your face, whatever your age. I'm really excited about this series of the Woman's Hour Guide to Life, so I really hope you'll join us. You will find the episodes in the Women's Hour podcast feed on Sundays. It's only on BBC Sounds. But now, back to today's Woman's Hour with Anita Rani. Good morning. First Aid training is largely done on male-bodied mannequins, but every year, around 30,000 women are admitted to hospital due to a heart attack. And women

are less likely than men to receive a bystander CPR. Well, now there's a campaign to try and make female mannequins mandatory. We'll be finding out. more. The multi-talented actress, singer, composer and playwrights Mehunna Memon will be here to tell us about her production Manic Street Creature and she's going to be performing live so we are in for a real treat. Now imagine turning your parents' love story into a beautiful debut novel. It's exactly what Monica Radovichyovic has done with her first book, Strangeland. And talking of love stories, this could be the beginning of a beautiful one. Yesterday at the races at Cheltenham,

winner Tom Bellamy's mum, used the opportunity on live TV to put a plea out on her son's behalf whilst being interviewed by ITV racing. What a moment for your boy? What dreams are made of. It's just amazing. Big price.

Great for the yard. The lads, lasses everybody. And the mother who has to put up with him on the way home, if he's gone badly, you know? You were saying, though, the result of this might mean that he gets what going forward? Girlfriend, maybe. Anybody out there.

He's a nice lad. Just anybody? So this morning, are you a parent who can relate to this? Have you tried to set up your kids? Why and how did you step in? I want all the details. Did it work? And are you the daughter who did or didn't appreciate the help?

Get in touch in the usual way. 84844 is the text number. You can WhatsApp the program on 0300-100-444. You can email the program by going to our website and of course follow us on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. But please feel free to get in touch with your stories of being set up by your parents

or being the parents setting up your kids or anything else you hear on the program. Your thoughts and opinions always welcome. But first, yesterday, Mandy Wixen was jailed for 13 years for keeping a vulnerable woman captive in her home for 25 years. She was found guilty of two counts of requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour and four charges of assaulting, occasioning actual bodily harm.

Gloucestershire police have said that the victim referred to only as Kay was kept in squalid conditions. BBC West of England journalist Chloe Harcum has been following the story and she joins me now and things where they are about to discuss some of you. may find distressing. So Chloe, morning, welcome to the program. It is a very shocking story. But let's start with what we know about Kay. Yes. So we know that Kay went to Randy Wixen's house when she was about 16. That was in 1996. We know that she has a learning disability and of course she's very vulnerable. And what do we know about the types of conditions she was kept in? So that house that they lived in in Chooksbury was very, very crowded.

At times there could have been at least 13 people living in the house. And Kay was kept in this room that was very, very untidy, very dirty. We've seen pictures from the police. It's covered in all over the walls. And Kay wasn't allowed to leave the house. She was seen out in the garden by neighbours sometimes, but we've heard in court that she would receive beatings if she tried to leave. How did she end up at Mandy Wixen's house in the first place?

So Kay was born into a troubled family, and this troubled family had a loose connection to Wixen. That's how they knew each other. And as I said before, she ended up moving in with Wixen when she was about 16 years old. And sorry, could you repeat the question? Yeah, she was just very vulnerable and moved in when she was 16. And she was kept captive.

I mean, it's the length of time as well, isn't it? 25 years. Yeah. How, and you say that neighbours saw her in the garden, but nobody knew anything. How did she eventually get her freedom? Yeah, so we say that neighbours saw her and everything. We've heard that social services were contacted in the late 90s, but there was no sort of record of that afterwards.

She kind of got lost in the system. But it was actually one of Wixen's sons that raised concerns about case welfare. So Wixson is a mother of 10. And yeah, so he raised concerns about her in 2021. And that's when Gloucester Police attended the house. And they found Kay missing a lot of teeth. She had large calluses on her feet in her ankles, which they think was caused from her constantly being on her hands

and cleaning the floors. And they said that when the doctor saw her, they said that she was malnourished. And the dentist said that she would have been suffering in agony for years because she had so many infected. and that in her teeth. Yeah, as I said, it is a really shocking story. It's really difficult to sort of imagine at all.

What did the judge say in his summing up in court? So the judge said that Wixen was cruel and persistently held the woman captive. And of course, that resulted in persistent trauma. And that trauma remains with Kay to this day. And there's obviously very strict rules as to how you can report on it. And you were only allowed the details really recent. weren't you? Yeah, yeah, we weren't allowed to report anything until it all came out in court with the conviction. And what's it like when you're just having to hear, you know, the details,

level of detail of what happened to Kay? Yeah, obviously it's awful. It's horrendous. You know, you can't imagine this happening. And the police praised Kay for, you know, for coming forward and telling all of her story and everything. We had a note read out from her yesterday in court and she's just sort of said that she still has trauma and nightmares after all this time, and she's going to carry that with her every single day. Do we know how she's doing now? So things are looking up for her. Since she's been rescued, she has moved in with the foster family.

She started attending college, she's been on holidays abroad, and she's also receiving therapy now. As I say, she's living with this foster family. We've heard from the foster mum, and her mom says that she loves her, and she's just trying to help her sort of build up her strength and everything. We heard that in the first week, Kay wouldn't want to hug anybody, but within a week she turned around and she now sort of builds that trust with them. So that's really, really good.

And Kay has also said that the family is helping her to rebuild her life that was taken away from her. But in spite of that, of course, she's not going to get those 25 years back. Yeah, indeed. Thank you so much for shedding light on that story there. She's Chloe Harkham. And we have asked Gloucestershire County Council for a statement but have not yet heard back. Elsewhere, a spokesperson from the council has said, we'd like to praise the person at the centre of this case for her bravery in reaching out for help.

We first became aware of her tragic situation in 2021 at the start of the police investigation. Since then, the victim has been supported by our adult social care services. Now that this case has concluded, we'll be conducting a review to ensure that all agencies do everything possible to spot and prevent such abuse. 84844 is the text number. Now, each year, 30,000 women are admitted to hospital due to a heart attack and coronary heart disease kills more than twice as many women in the UK as breast cancer. Despite the numbers, heart attacks are sometimes considered a man's disease

and first aid training is largely done on male-bodied mannequins. Well, new figures from Thames Valley Air Ambulance show that women are less likely than men to receive bystander CPR, with one in three women not receiving any CPR until medical crews arrive on the scene compared with one in four men. So what's behind this reluctance to help women experiencing a heart attack?

Well, I'm joined by Chloe Lipton, who's campaigning for female mannequins to be mandatory in all CPR training, and Amanda McLean, CEO of Thames Valley Air Ambulance, an organisation which has already incorporated the use of female mannequins into their training. Welcome Chloe and Amanda. Welcome to Ormond Sauer. Chloe, I'm going to come to you first. What led you to the campaign? Tell us more.

It's funny, really. I never really went out looking for this figure. I was actually working on another project. And through my research, I came across a study by Duke University. This was the first time I came across this, which said that women are 14% less likely to receive bystander CPR than men. And obviously I see this. And I'm sure as most women would feel found it's kind of horrifying. So naturally, I entered into a rabbit hole of what I refer to as productive procrastination, which is I was being very productive, just absolutely not in the thing I was supposed to be doing. I can relate. Yeah, but yeah.

Productive procrastination. We'll save that quote for another item on one is out for another day, but yes, carry on. So I went down rabbit hole of researching, firstly, into more studies that have been done on this. More recent studies show that the figure might be closer to 30% less likely, and as you were saying, one in three women might not receive CPR until professionals arrive at all. And then into what studies have been done, into what we can do about it, which is how I came across this idea that introducing fuel mannequins into training, so into training that's done through schools, first aid at work,

can have a significant impact on people's confidence in helping women in these situations. And we'll come back to the mannequins in a minute. But Amanda, I'm going to bring you in here. Good morning. Welcome. Why do you think this is happening? Why, you know, when you read figures like that 30%, what comes to mind for you? Why are people less likely to help a woman? We think it comes down to the modesty factor

and people are very reticent about touching and exposing women's chests. And we understand that. So what we've decided to do at Thames Valley Air Ambulance is to talk about it a lot more and try and remove the stigma and make people aware about how important it is. So we do that by providing CPR training,

by getting female cardiac arrest survivors to share their story, by having realistic photographs, and also the small mannequins we do use in our CPR training, half of those have what the manufacturers like to euphemistically call female accessories. We call them breast attachments, because if we can't even use the right language, how are we possibly getting to break down the stigma? Email accessor is another one I'm writing down.

What did you find the response to be? We've had a fantastic response. It's opened up a wonderful conversation, whether it's through our social media posts, through the things we've been being face-to-face with people. And we don't want to make anybody feel bad about having these concerns. We want to bring them out into the open and address them. So we're increasing people's confidence

and making them understand how important it is. It's only by doing that that we're going to make it more likely that people will step in if a woman's having a cardiac arrest. Sure. And Chloe, in your own way, doing the same thing. You posted on social media showing a female mannequin's torso. What happened? Well, I mean, naturally, you talk about breasts on social media for six months. You're going to get a range of reactions.

A lot of them were very positive. And a lot of people saying things like, oh my God, I'd never realized I'd never thought about the fact that I haven't done training on a female mannequin, or they hadn't thought about if, that this could have. There were some other concerns predominantly from men. I won't go into detail about those ones because I'm not sure I can on the radio.

Woman's hour, you know, within reason, you can go for it. But yes, I think we can use our imagination. Yes, yeah. So there were some that were, we'll just leave it at inappropriate. And there were others that were voicing people who were genuinely scared of things like being accused of inappropriate touching, which, you know, I can understand to an extent But again, as we're saying before, having the conversations around this just shows how important it is because these accusations really don't tend to happen in cases of CPR.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no recorded cases of anyone being charged with sexual assault from giving a woman CPR. And I couldn't really find any substantiated stories of people being accused. So I think that having these conversations is so important to help reassure people and make them more comfortable and confident. Yeah. Amanda, what happened when you put a picture of a male mannequin torso up on social media? So one of them, the post, was taken down completely. The other one, the photograph was censored. It's now back up again with nipples blurred because female nipples apparently aren't acceptable on social media, which is just, I'll say ridiculous and shameful and save some of the more extreme words elsewhere. So we're going to keep doing it and we're going to keep talking about it because, as Chloe says, we do understand some of them. people will be concerned, which is absolutely right. Nobody knows of any cases, of anyone having

any significant issues at all with doing that. And what we've got at Thames Valley Air Ambulance is some incredibly powerful stories of female cardiac arrest survivors expressly saying, I'm really glad someone did that. I'm really glad they didn't have those concerns, because if someone had had those concerns or hadn't acted, then I wouldn't be alive today. Exactly. Life or death situation and the numbers of women not receiving bystander CPR compared with men, they're quite striking. Let's talk a little bit about this reluctance to uncover a woman's chest and breasts, even in an emergency situation. I mean, people are just very nervous about doing that. And the only, I mean, people are nervous about giving CPR generally, to be fair.

So we're doing a lot to break down the stigma around that and increase people's confidence. If you think someone's in cardiac arrest, male or female, the worst thing you can do is nothing. So, you know, you need to call for help. You need to call 999. You need to start CPR. And you need to see if someone can go and get a defibrillator and then follow the instructions because it will talk to you and tell you what to do. So we want to increase people's willingness to give CPR generally.

And then very particularly talk about doing it on women. So most of our training sessions that we run, some of the mannequins do have breasts. We have the bras on. scissors that are in the kit, we encourage them to use those to cut the bra off to increase confidence. Okay, good. We're going to get into it. We will talk about how to do CPR properly. I think it's really important that you tell us, lots of people won't know. But what are the logistics of removing a woman's bra or a top potentially address? It could be quite complicated, particularly if someone's in the middle of a major medical event. How should you best approach it?

And do you have to? So you can give CPR without removing clothing if you need it on top of clothing. I mean, I'd suggest if there's big coats or something like that, you remove that. Where it becomes really important to remove more of the clothing and the bra is when you're going to use defibrillator. And there are lots available in public now. Most people know where they are. 999 caller will tell you where the nearest one is. They will come with some scissors so you can cut the clothing away.

And just stress, again, if someone is in cardiac arrest, they're effectively they're clinically dead. So at that point, you don't need to worry about damaging clothing or exposing chests. You just want to do everything you can to give them the best possible chance of survival. I'm just going to read out a message we've had from Phil, who's listening. He says, Phil, whilst a volunteer at a COVID vaccination centre, I was sent for CPR training. One man said he would not cut off a woman's bra to apply the electrodes in order to protect her modesty. Even when the instructor pointed out that the woman would die, he would not be persuasive.

weighed it. I believe female mannequins should be used and anyone not prepared to treat women the same as men should fail CPR training. What do you think of that, Chloe? Absolutely right. I mean, as we've said, if somebody requires CPR, there's not a lot you can do that's going to make their day any worse. And as I said before, I'm not going to sit here and say I'm definitely speaking for all women, but I highly suspect I do. If we are in a situation where our heart has stopped, we require CPR or the application of AED pads, just do it. We don't care about our modesty at that point. As I've said before, if that's what's on your mind, enjoy the view.

I really don't care. Just do what you need to do. Yeah. And tell us about your petition because you've received over 10,000 signatures, which is what you need to warrant a government response. So what are the next steps? So yes, we are currently waiting on the government's response. What we're hoping for is that the government will work with organisations

such as the Resuscitation Council to implement this as a minimum standard for all accredited first aid and CPR training courses. We asked the Department of Health and Social Care for a statement but I haven't heard back in the past. They have said, though, NHS England runs training sessions on first aid CPR and the use of a defibrillator both in the community and in schools.

This training should help increase confidence in performing CPR on women. Amanda, we've got you on Women's Hour. What are we meant to do? How do you do CPR? So, I mean, it's basically doing chest compression. So you need to kneel in front of someone. You need to lock your hands together over their chest,

and you need to push down hard and fast in a rhythm. Most people say the easiest one to listen to is the BG is staying alive, and that will give you the rhythm to do. It's quite difficult to do for a long period of time. Hopefully there'll be people around so you can swap in and out if you need to, but you need to keep doing that until a medical professional arrives and can take over and tell you to stop and can take over from you. There's lots of places you can look online to find out how to do that,

and I'd really encourage people to have a look, have a go, watch a video, book into a course. And still, if there are people listening, thinking, well, what is there a difference between men and women? What am I supposed to do? Tell us what is there and what is there supposed to be anything done differently? In terms of CDPR, it's the same, but the anatomy of a woman, the breast, people may be concerned that they're in the way,

or they'll be touching them. You do it in exactly the same way, but it's just making sure with a woman, if you're attaching the pads from the defib, then it's really hard to do that when they're wearing a bra. It's going to be delay massively, mean the pads are probably going to be in the wrong place. That's the point at which removing the bra becomes absolutely crucial. And if you've practiced on a female mannequin,

you're more likely to have confidence in doing that. And what about the way a heart attack presents in men and women? Is there any difference? And there can be, it can present it in a different way if we're talking about heart attacks rather than cardiac arrest. You probably want a clinician to explain the difference in there. The only thing we would say, if you think you're having a heart attack, seek help straight away. That's one of those occasions where you don't wait and see how it goes. And Chloe, what's been the response to your campaign so far?

As I said, generally, people have been very positive about the change. Because in my opinion, it's such a no-brainer. such a simple, easy change just to introduce these mannequins into training. And the reward is potentially saving the lives of thousands of women. I'd like to thank you both, Chloe Lipton and Amanda McLean. And if you have any concerns, do contact your GP. I'm going to read out a couple of your messages. When I trained as cabin crew, we had a female torso called Resus Annie.

And another one here saying here in North Wales on an outdoor first aid courses, we always train on male and female mannequins. We discuss all the issues. and females on our courses always agree that they would much rather have a chance of survival than first aid is feeling embarrassed about their breasts. Yes, it's not the time for feeling embarrassed. It's just get on with it.

If you can do it and save someone's life and you're capable, then you should just do it. Thank you, both of you, for speaking to us. 844-844 is the text number. I also asked you to get in touch if you are a parent or a child who have been set up for a partner and a message here saying around a year ago

my mum told me I should meet a boy who started working at the local pub with her. She insisted I would really get along with him and that he was a great guy. So I reluctantly agreed to be introduced to him. I proceeded to spend the summer in the pub garden with my friends, making frequent trips to the bar to talk to him.

Eventually I asked for his number and we went on a few days. Although it didn't work out, I did really like him. And therefore my mum was once again right. Though at 19, this was painful to admit. Right, keep the stories coming in. 84844.

Now, parents, you might have seen a new breed of toys while scrolling online. AI toys often marketed to children as young as three. But what are they and what is the impact that this tech has on such young children? Well, researchers at the University of Cambridge have conducted one of the first tests in the world to answer this question and are now calling for tighter regulation of AI toys for toddlers. Joining us now is Dr. Emily Goodacre from the University of. of Cambridge's Faculty of Education. Good morning, Emily. Morning, thanks for having me. Absolutely our pleasure. Tell us all about this.

First of all, what prompted you to study these AI toys? Yeah, so the group working on the study, we research children's play, we researched children's development, and we started seeing these toys coming out, kind of advertised for really young children. We were saying, hold on a second, like, we don't know anything about these. We need to know if there's any research evidence. for their impacts on children. So that was kind of what got us started on it, was just these questions about the social impacts

and how children form relationships. What are these toys? How do they work? So a lot of them are kind of soft toys, like a teddy bear, something like that, but with a zip in the back, and essentially you open it up, pull out like a voice box sort of thing.

And it just has like a microphone and a speaker and it will be connected to the internet and just whatever the child says, it essentially runs it through a chat bot, so something like chat GPT, runs it through an AI model, and then it spits out a response to the child, and that means that it can have a conversation with them.

And so what did you find? How do you think these toys could impact children's social skills? Like what give us some insight into the kind of conversations they might be having with toddlers? Yeah, so we saw quite like varied conversations. So we watched some children between the ages of three and five playing with the toy. And we just sort of were like, okay, what do kids do with them? Some of the kids would kind of have a back and forth conversation.

They'd chat about things that kind of fairly expected, fairly standard. But there were a few things that we noticed. One was that the turn-taking was children were really struggling with it. The toy would interrupt them or it wouldn't hear what they were saying. and there was some kind of, I guess, like unnatural conversations going on. There were also things like children. Like what? Give us an example of how that might happen. So for example, there's the toy will play like guessing games with children.

So there was one child that was playing a counting game where it was kind of saying like, oh, count how many animals it would describe there's two ducks in the pond and there's a, you know, something in a tree. How many is that? And the child would kind of do the counting before the, like before the, toy had finished talking and it would start saying the child would be saying, you know, it's four, it's four. And because I think what happens is because the toy hadn't quite finished talking yet, it hadn't yet started listening. And so the child starts getting really kind of

frustrated being like, it's not listening to me, you know, maybe my answer's wrong, keeps, you know, kind of shouting it louder and louder. And it's just one of those things where in a human interaction, the child would say the answer, maybe, you know, before I finished talking, but I would still hear what they said and I would still be like yeah you're right um so there were just some like kind of unnatural things there where kids were really struggling with um turn taking and one of the reasons that's so important is because it's in these early years that children are learning these skills like turn taking in a conversation is this is when children are kind of learning to to have relationships have friendships have friendships these interactional skills and so a toy that is struggling with that

is something that might be problematic yeah because your background is in studying children's social relationship. So, and your concerns go beyond this because you're highlighting issues like data collection as well. So what's going on there? Yeah. So I think one of the things with these being unregulated at the moment is that we're kind of relying on the companies to like do what's best, you know, out of their own goodwill.

So a lot of the things that we're worried about with other types of tech, you know, where we're thinking about, okay, privacy, you know, that's. what's got a microphone in it, where is this data going, how long is the data being stored for, is it being sold to third parties? Suddenly we've got all of these questions in a toy that's being marketed to young children. And where children are kind of saying things,

the whole interaction with it is the children talking. And the kind of, well, you tell me, my mind's going to jumping to all sorts of places, the influence in the sort of child development and what the child's relationship, and what the child's relationship is with the toy. You know, these, I mean, we all kind of fall in love with our teddies, don't we? But this is something that talks back to us.

And then eventually what happens when Teddy needs to move on? And you don't want to let go because it's, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm going into something completely on a tangent. But tell me where you ended up with us and what more you found out. Yeah, so we actually, we spoke to quite a few earliest practitioners as part of the research. And part of that was we were kind of like, these are the people that work with young children, every day. They know young children best. Let's find out what they're worried about. And they expressed that same concern. They were saying, you know, we see children getting attached to toys. We see

children getting attached. And what happens when that toy can suddenly talk to them and can suddenly kind of maybe affirm, you know, say, I'm your friend or, you know, kind of affirm to them, I don't know, that they can trust or whatever it is. So that was one of the big concerns was about what that might mean for children. So one of our big recommendations, so one of our big recommendations for this obviously is regulation, making sure that the toys aren't allowed to kind of build relationships with children in certain ways. But the other thing is also for parents to make sure that they're getting involved with the play with children, you know, kind of playing together. If a parent decides to buy an AI toy, play together, make sure if

something, you know, if the toy says like, oh, I'm your friend or something, talk about that with the child. What does friendship mean? Can you, you know, can you be friends with a toy? And it's complicated because children might say those sorts of things about toys that aren't AI, right? And so it's something that I think is just, it's really worth families talking about together. I'm just thinking about the three-year-old who might be upset and might want to tell the Teddy that it's sad. What happens then? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that kind of question of can and AI provide emotional support and should it?

They're kind of two different questions. Sure. You know, whether it can and whether it does a good job of it is one question, but also then even if it's great at providing emotional support, is that what we want? And that's a question I guess we're all still grappling with. Some people say like, yeah, do you know what? If it can do it and it can do it well, why not? And then some people say, no, that really should just be for humans. And I think we're only just starting to think about these questions. How widely used are they at the moment? It's a good question. I don't know from a perspective of how many have been sold or anything,

but we're seeing quite a few different models pop up on the market. So there are kind of of lots out there. There are lots that are available to purchase and the prices are coming down on them so they are becoming more accessible. But I'm not sure about numbers of, you know, how many have actually been purchased or in homes so far. So what regulations do you think should be brought in? I think there are a few options. I think one of them is around what toys can say to children and kind of making sure that, for example, they're not allowed to say things like tell me a secret or, you know, I'm your friend, you know, things that I think would kind of worry us. The other thing I think that is really important is quite a few of the parents and

the earliest practitioners we spoke to just talked about like a distrust of big tech and not being able to know kind of how to choose a toy. If they needed to choose a toy not being able to know well which one's the best one. So potentially some product labeling so that we can see, you know, well actually this toy has passed certain tests, it's past certain requirements. It's been designed in a certain way compared to another toy that hasn't, that would really help consumers to make a decision about, yeah, buying the right toy if that is a decision that they want to take. Fascinating stuff, and another thing for parents to have to think about.

But thank you so, just another thing, yeah. But thank you so much for coming in to Enlighteners on that. I'm sure it's something we'll be talking about again. Dr. Goodacre, many thanks. 84844 is the text number. I'm going to read out a couple more of your messages coming in about the CPR item. I had to perform CPR on my mother-in-law after she went into cardiac arrest. It was a profound and shocking experience.

This is from Nick, he says, but luckily I've been on a first aid course for rugby just two months prior to that. So what I needed to do was fresh in my mind. I'm incredibly thankful that I was able to bring her back after just 30 compressions. Goodness me. And another one here saying I tried to get our lead at the NHS Trust I work for to purchase a female mannequin. However, I was told he is waiting for a more realistic one

that represents a broader range of. female shapes and sizes to be produced. I pointed out that the current male mannequin isn't exactly representative either. To my knowledge, we still do not have a female mannequin. Fascinating stuff. Maybe you could just get some female accessories

and strap them on. Sorry, I'm just, can you believe that the breasts, female accessories? That's going to stay with me for a while. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids. I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid.

Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure. The story has always been no. I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story. Definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is creation myth.

Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to bring in my next guest. In fact, the two next guests are sitting in front of me, but I'll introduce them individually. First up, for her debut novel, Strangeland, Monica Rododjevich has taken inspiration from her own parents' love story. It's London in the early 1990s. And Aligria, who is Brazilian, meets the handsome Yovin from Montenegro, who at the time, which at the time was part of Yugoslavia. They fall deeply in love, but there's a catch.

Allegria's visa to the UK is only for three months and she has to go back to South America. Meanwhile, across Europe, civil war is about to tear apart the Balkans. How can they be together and will their love survive? Monica, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Congratulations. Thank you so much. It's a huge achievement, debut novel.

And you based it on your parents' love story. Yes, I did. I mean, growing up, I'd always ask, you know, how did you and dad or how did you and mom get together? And the story that they told me at the time, you know, when you're a kid, it seems just quite normal. And then as I grew up and started dating and started meeting people, I quickly realized that actually my parents' love story was really extraordinary and done in a time where there was no real internet access. There was no really way to call internationally. So my parents fell in love were separated and then found each other in Yugoslavia in the middle of a war zone without any internet access whatsoever. And I just think that's astounding.

I mean, imagine traveling to a country you've never been to that's in the middle of a war to meet someone that you've only known for a handful of months and potentially to spend the rest of your life with them. And you have no way to call home if something goes wrong. And something did go wrong. And my mother, and as the character in the book, had no way to find my father in this country.

She landed in the wrong part of the country. And in the book, the character has to undertake. this very intense bus journey to try and find him. And yeah, it's just an incredible story. It is an incredible story. It's a beautiful story. How much of the book is based on their actual experience? Everything that happens in the book actually happened to my parents.

Okay. So they first meet in 1990. It's a love story, but also it's set in a particular period of history. And it's a turbulent time. There's hyperinflation in Brazil. I'm just going to take people back to 1990. It's the aftermath of the death of Tito in Yugoslavia, the breaking up of the country and the subsequent descent into civil war. And it's a huge impact in your novel to the lives of both your characters and your parents.

So why was it important to talk about the historical context as well? I think it's really, really important to contextualise why people decide to leave their home countries and come to somewhere like the UK. And I think especially now when immigrants are being questioned so harshly, vilified for the choices they make when they come over here. I think it was really, really important to contextualize that because my parents and these characters in this book, they come to London out of economic necessity. Both of their countries are not able to facilitate them to support their families, even though they are working the maximum that they can possibly work.

And the value of the British pound is still, and was it then so high that the jobs that they could get here, the income that they could earn here, would allow them to support not only themselves, but their families. And both of these characters in the book, they come from poverty. They have many, many people relying on them. And so to come to a country that is quite hostile to you and to work, you know, all kinds of any job possible, backbreaking labor, all kinds of hours,

just to be able to put food on the table. It felt like a very, very important reminder for people because I think people see immigration as a sort of luxury. And certainly for people like my parents or for economic migrants. It isn't always that case at all. And you mentioned it just there, but there is the backdrop of war, but also there is this sense of duty to family

and to provide for the family that you've left behind. So tell me more about that, but that brings with it its own pressure as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think anyone who has ever had the pressure and the responsibility of supporting not just yourself, but your entire family, including kind of aging, parents, understands that pressure and that feeling of constant. of having to make sure that no matter what is going on in your own life, you are bringing

home money at the end of the day and you are able to send it back. And I think that the consequences of that are quite profound on someone. They can make people, you know, they make you risk-averse. They make you more likely to make choices that you wouldn't otherwise make. They make you sacrifice things because at the end of the day, it's not just yourself that is relying on you. It's all your loved ones. And so the pressure that it put on my parents particularly, and that's something I really explore in the book with these characters. It constantly is something lurking at the front of their mind. It colours every decision they make. Sure. Can you read a piece? Yeah, absolutely. What a treat. So this is a part where these two characters, Gvoin and Aligria,

they are trying to understand what their life might look like at the end of just a few months because they know they're about to separate against their will. And so this is Aligria thinking about how she can introduce Brazil to this part. Her partner. partner. Jovoin would never experience Brazil the way she could, on her skin and in her mouth. It would never be home for him, and she had already found that Yugoslavia loomed large and foreign in their conversations. She was curious to see it, but the thought of living there felt impossible.

Not just because of the threat of civil war that lurked constantly on its horizon, or the language barrier, far more impenetrable than English, or the chasm of cultural differences between them, but because they both knew she'd never earn enough to support her family. Yugoslavia's economy was as catastrophic as Brazil's. All they had was here and now. So what was the point of falling in love as quickly and as deeply as she had if she was just going to go back home, alone and starving once again? That's it.

And everybody wants to now read the rest of it. Beautifully, beautifully read out how that was spine tingling. You talk about the culture clash Over things like religions I want to talk about this growing up Religion, food So much difference between the characters and your parents So how did this play out in your own family?

Yeah, growing up as a Brazilian Montenegro in London First of all we have three languages at home We had three different cultures And then we had two different cuisines And so if you think about, you know, I'm generalising here But Brazilian's kind of known for being very warm, very welcoming, very friendly

and Yugoslavians or Montenegrins, more specifically, are quite reserved, a little bit more conservative perhaps. So you have this massive clash in the household as well of this warmth and this kind of more reserved way of showing love. And it has really played out in the ways that my parents have taught me how to love each other, the ways that they've interacted with each other. And it has made me, I think, like one of the downfalls is that you kind of never feel at home wherever. You go in Brazil, I'm too reserved in Montenegro.

I'm too outspoken. So there is this, like, fun. slightly odd juxtaposition, but also it just creates an incredibly rich household. I mean, my family, our history, our culture, it's so rich, it's so diverse, it's fed into each other, and it makes me so proud to be from those places. And I think it creates a universality in that I've always felt most comfortable around people who are a little bit like me, who come from all kinds of parts of the world and who are a mix of all different histories and cultures. There is this openness and curiosity that it creates in you and this ability to feel at ease

in many different places. So I take that as a real gift and a real privilege. And it is how lucky you are. Exactly. What rich environment you grew up in. Yeah. But what's it like then when you step out of the door? I think when you step out, there is a lot of explaining that comes with it of, you know,

this is where I'm from, these are the languages I speak, this is the culture that I have. And there are constant culture clashes. And living in London, you know, I'm sort of in and out of the bubble. Like I remember once not knowing what Paddington Bear was. I think I was like 22 or 23 and someone turned around and was really. shocked it's because I grew up watching like dubbed Serbian Disney. So my childhood was very unique. And so sometimes there is a lot of explaining that comes into it.

And that's why I'm so proud of this book because Montenegro and Brazil, it's such a unique and unusual combination. And so I wanted to really, really showcase that in my writing. It's beautiful. You've honoured their story. You've explained so beautifully a sort of experience that lots of people can relate to who come from different cultures and find themselves. Britain. And you talked earlier about the sacrifice your parents made for you and their duty to

their parents. I wonder how much of this is, how much of you as the daughter feels that this is a requirement and you had to do this to sort of acknowledge what they did for you. I think that's a great question. Definitely a sense of wanting to acknowledge their sacrifices. And, you know, my parents, I asked for their permission to write their story and they gave me their blessing. But in it was this also, this attempt to be like, I recognize. what you did for me. And I recognize the sacrifices that you made to give me choices that you never got to have. And so this story is in a way, kind of an ode to the resilience of the immigrant and the strength of the immigrant. But it's also because my parents have such a

hopeful love story, I feel like we need hope in the times that we're living in. And so if anyone is looking for a kind of hopeful story about the power of love to transform you, but also to enable you to make these incredible sacrifices. I think this is really like a love letter to that as well. Have they read it? They have. My dad actually, so both my parents read the first draft and then my dad read the final draft and he called me and I've never heard or seen my dad cry but he called me and he

was in tears and he said, you've made me fall in love with your mother all over again. And that was a really like incredible moment and now they have date nights every week. Monica. Yeah. So like big achievement right there. It's a theme to this program today. Thank you, Monica, for telling us that story. But you're going to stay right there.

So we might hear from you again. Monica Radojevich and her debut novel, Strangeland, is out now. Thank you. I'm going to move on to my next incredibly talented guests because also joining us is Mehmmuna Menom, an actress, singer, composer and playwright. Last year, Memona won an Olivier Award. for her performance in the musical Natasha Pierre and the Great Comets of 1812 at the Donmar in London.

While now she's brought her one woman play Manic Street Creatures to London. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you for having me. What did you think of that lovely conversation? I could see you nodding along. Yeah, no, I just think you were so articulate in the way that you spoke about the story that you've written and about immigration, and about the strength of immigrants, which I really relate to as well. my dad and my mum both being immigrants too.

So yeah, really, really struck a chord for me. And I just, yeah, I thought you just spoke so beautifully. And I really want to read your book now. Excellent. Well, and there is a theme of, you hear a bit about immigration and yours because of the father character. But before we get into it, it took four years from first performing Manic Street creature at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to bring your show to the Kielm Theatre in London. Massive congratulations.

Well, thank you. It's a huge achievement. How does it feel? because you do everything in this. Yeah, you know what? It's been, in all honesty, a massive graft to get it here. And I'm so proud that we have got it here and that it's finally having the life that I've wanted for it for so long.

So yeah, I feel just so privileged to be able to put it on at such a beautiful theatre. Tell us about the story. Tell us about Ria, the main character. Yeah, so the story is about Ria who moves from Lancashire to London to pursue music. And she falls in love with someone. and that person she finds out has bipolar disorder. And the whole story is about her looking after this person, her being drawn to this person.

And really it talks about why we are drawn to certain people, what we learn growing up and how that affects who we fall in love with, who we're attracted to. And how we value ourselves in that process, I really wanted to speak about mental health from the perspective of the carer. I think so often we talk about mental health or we see stories about mental health

from the perspective of someone going through a crisis, which is so important. But for me, having gone through it myself, I really wanted to talk about what it's like to look after someone and care for someone who is struggling with their mental health and the implications of that. Where did the idea come from?

In lockdown, I was living with someone, who was struggling with their mental health. And writing music was a real way of healing for me. It was a way of processing what I was going through. And yeah, I started writing the songs. I wrote four songs. And then I thought this could be a story. Why the medium of musical theatre to tell this story?

I think music is transcendent. I think it gives people the permission, the audience permission to release themselves into something. And also I think when you're talking about something like mental health, Yeah, I think there's a lot of emotions there and you want an audience to be able to feel like they can just sit in the story and I think music gives people the opportunity to do that.

I do want to say, though, this show, although it is about mental health, there's plenty of comedy in there as well. Yes, very funny. And at the expense of people from Yorkshire, I might add, as well, a few gags. We can have that debate. No, not here, not down.

No, no, sorry. Oh, down here, we're all together. The Northerners unite. Right, we're going to hear some more music. This is a beautiful song. Insomnia. Tell us what's behind this. So it's a little bit further on in the story

and it's kind of an unconventional love story let's say and it's when Ria is sharing a bed with Daniel the person that she's fallen in love with and she is beginning to understand that there might be something else going on that there's something that he's not telling her and he's getting these nightmares and she's watching him as he sleeps

yes and she's kind of observing him and falling in love with him at the same time can't wait please take your position with your guitar And whilst Mamuna is just walking across the studio, I'm going to say you are joined by Rachel Barnes, who's accompanying Mamuna on cello and is also in the production. They collaborate on everything. So here is Insomnia. Side by side.

Oh, Mamuna. It's absolutely stunning. And Rachel Barnes on cello. Monica, what did you think? Wasn't that extraordinary? That was so beautiful. I loved it. Aren't we lucky to have witnessed that?

Yeah, thank you. So tender, so heartfelt, because in the story, Daniel Ria's partner, he is taking medication. And the impact it has, not just on him, it's Ria herself and the relationship. Why did you want to focus on that? What's the message you're trying to say? Look, it's a really nuanced, complicated, sticky subject. And I want to say that, you know, a lot of people take medication and it helps them so much. So it's not a negative thing about medication.

I think medication is really, really important. and it helps a lot of people. But I think from Maria's point of view in the story, Daniel is prescribed an antipsychotic. And within that, he gets better in certain ways. He's more social. He's eating better. He's sleeping better.

But he needs Ria less. And Ria realizes in that moment that she has this addiction to being needed. she feels like she has a sense of purpose when she needs to look after Daniel and it's almost a cycle being repeated from what she's learned as a child and also within that

Daniel's depth of emotion is cut off and she feels like she can't connect with him like she first did that feeling of the massive highs and lows that she had with him when she first met with him has now been cut off for better or for worse and she's trying to understand her place in this relationship now. And yeah, and how he might feel for her in that way.

As he said, it's multi-led. It is. It's complex. And it's a love story. And it's a love story. And love is complicated. And this is with, you know, I love the message of needing to take care of yourself within that space as well. You wrote this.

You're on stage. You're playing everything. You went out and got funding to get it put on stage. That's the labour of love. Yes. When you have, you're an Olivier award-winning performer. You know, why? Why go on this journey to tell this story?

You know, it's really interesting from the inside. You know, it's really hard to kind of take a moment to be like, oh yes, I've achieved all these things. So thank you for saying that. But I think as an actor, I'm speaking specifically here about being an actor, it can be very disempowering. Your success relies on other people's choices about whether they're going to cast you, whether you look right,

all this kind of stuff. And I've been very lucky that I've done loads of, loads of shows that I've really loved as an actor, but I've also had a hell of a lot of rejection. And also, you know, as a brown woman, I feel like there are more stories to be told, more nuanced stories to be told. When you think about how many brown women are writing,

directing, composing, we're still in the minority. And it's difficult for people to tell those stories in nuanced ways unless they've experienced that themselves. As a mixed race woman, I wanted to tell my story and not talk about religion, or oppression or all these kind of stuff.

I wanted to talk about something that I wanted to talk about. And I wanted to bring this story of mental health care, yeah, to the public. And as someone, I appreciated the first time, the first moment I heard the harmonium being played, it struck a chord in me instantly. And that's the simple sort of way in which I resonated with your story just by the virtue of you having a harmonium on there. I have to talk about something else that you were in, standing at the sky's edge. because it is one of my favorite musicals.

And I say that as someone who, I'm just going to say this in public, I have to like the music of a musical for me to like the musical. Is that a terrible thing to say? No, I think that lots of people aren't exposed to how very musical theatre can be. I think Sky's Edge is a prime example of Richard Halley's beautiful music being showcased with an incredible story by Chris Bush about like generations of people in this one flat in Sheffield and working class community. And I think there will be musical theatre for any person if they like music.

And I say this to people. If someone says, I don't like musical theatre. I say, well, if you like music, there will be something for you. And I feel really passionate about that. How was that experience being in that production? It was one of the most special shows I've ever done in my life. And I wish I could do it all over again. I miss it so much.

Maybe you will. Maybe. Maybe. I'm going to read this out. We've had an email in from somebody saying, I loved tearing. This is about you, Monica. I love tearing from your guest and book. based on her parents' love and very brave and courageous story.

I'm from Brazil living in the UK. I met the father of my children in Brazil in the early 2000s and moved over here to be with him. I can still remember when we were apart having to be in touch via the phone and using a dictionary to translate our conversation. I still have the battered dictionary as a reminder of that time. Hearing your guest brought so many memories, what a wonderful thing you have done

by turning your parents' story into a book. And both of you, I think you've sort of honoured your own cultures in your own individual ways. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming in. Mamuna, thank you so much. Tell us where they can come and see you. Come see us at the Kiln Theatre until the 28th of March.

That's in Kilburn. There you go. And if you have been affected by anything you've heard in the item or on today's program, then do go to our Action Line website where you can get links for support. That's it for me today. Join me tomorrow for weekend Women's Hour.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. What would you do if your deepest secrets were held to ransom? In 2020, every patient who had used a Finnish psychotherapy service called Vastamor had their therapy notes stolen and held to ransom by a faceless, remorseless hacker. It could be some extortionist gang from Eastern Europe or it could be somebody living next door to me. I'm Jenny Clemen. Join me as I discover just how vulnerable our deepest secrets can be. I think I'm going to have a heart attack.

from BBC Radio 4 and Intrigue, this is Ransom Man. Listen first on BBC Sounds. For years, I've sounded like a broken record. I do not want kids. I do not ever want to have kids. I don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. Don't want to have a kid. I'm in my 40s now. The door is almost closed. And suddenly, I'm not so sure.

The story has always been no. I'm just wondering to what degree it's just a story. Could definitely just a story. From CBC's personally, this is Creation Myth, available now wherever you get your podcasts.