Woman's Hour - Eclipse, China's fake brides, Female climbers, Dr Amanda Cole & Tourette syndrome

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

One of the most spectacular solar eclipses the UK has seen for decades is taking place this evening. The extraordinary celestial event will see the Moon move across the face of the Sun, creating a partial solar eclipse across the UK. Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, and Zara Gray, an amateur eclipse chaser discuss the phenomenon.There are now 30 million more men than women in China due to China's one-child policy and that has led to many single men desperate to find a wife. But desperation can also make people vulnerable to exploitation. The authorities in China are warning of a rise in marriage fraud as scammers target those single men. Nuala is joined by the BBC China Correspondent Laura Bicker and Times columnist and author of the Chinese Whispers Substack Cindy Yu Britain's star athlete Keely Hodgkinson is competing in the women's 800m at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham. She is in the semi-finals tomorrow, with the final taking place on Friday. Team GB are hoping for gold. It has been called the race of the year, but the record has remained unbroken for 43 years despite huge advances in training, nutrition and technology. BBC sports journalist Emma Middleton explains more.Women climbers have defied altitude, expectations and convention. Journalist and author Rosemary J. Brown joins Nuala to discuss her new book, Moving Mountains, which uncovers the extraordinary stories of pioneering female mountaineers and the peaks named in their honour.When Dr Amanda Cole found out she had Tourette syndrome in her twenties, she thought it would destroy her life. Now a professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Cambridge, she is the subject of a new BBC documentary about her experiences with the neurological condition. Having previously kept her Tourette syndrome hidden, Dr Cole joins Nuala to discuss sharing her diagnosis with students at Cambridge and how being diagnosed has influenced both her personal and professional life.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Dianne McGregor

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. Hello, this is Newellamoghren, and you're listening to The Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, if you're listening to the bulletin there,

you'll know that one of the stories is about the solar eclipse. Have you got your solar eclipse glasses at the ready? Now, I know they can be very hard to track down, so maybe your kitchen colander will have to do. There is great excitement among eclipse chasers about what will happen, starting in about eight hours' time. We are going to hear from a leading female astrophysicist and also a woman who does spend her free time chasing,

eclipses around the world. Do you have plans to witness the rare and dramatic partial solar eclipse this evening? How, where, with who? Maybe you're introducing your children to it. Maybe there's a group of women. You're getting together

to share this particular moment. It's going to be a while until it happens again. You can text the programme. The number is 844-4. On social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or voice note. The number a 0-3-700-100-144.

Or on most smart speakers, you can say Alexa ask BBC Sounds to send a comment. So that is one exceptional event. Another is the women's 800 metre race at the European Athletics Championship. It has been called a race of the year. But the question we're asking is why is the current record so hard to beat?

Over 40 years it has stood, so we'll talk about that. Also for the intrepid. We're going to hear about the female mountaineers who made history. They're all in a new book, Moving Mountains. Plus this hour, the lonely men in China, susceptible to marriage scams. And Amanda Cole will be here. She is the Cambridge professor who has opened up about living her life with Tourette's,

and in doing so, has opened up a conversation about the syndrome. But let us begin with what is expected to be, one of the most spectacular partial solar eclipses the UK has seen for decades taking place, yes, this evening. It is an extraordinary celestial event so the moon will move across the face of the sun and create that eclipse across the UK.

In Cornwall, as much as 95% of the sun could be obscured. Variant percentages depending where you are in the UK. A woman who knows exactly what, where, when, how. And who is Dr. Becky Smythurst, who's an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. Good morning. Good morning. And it's a good morning if it's an eclipse day. Exactly. You know, there's another woman who I think would agree with that characterization. That's Zara Gray. She's an amateur eclipse chaser, currently on a campsite in Sussex, I believe. Hi, Zara.

Hello, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us at short notice from close to your tent. Maybe you could describe who's around you or what's around you where you are at the moment, Zara. Well, at the moment, I'm just on quite a mellow, nice little campsite. I'm not sure how many people here are going to be viewing the eclipse, but I will be travelling to Hearst Mansou, which is in East Sussex, because they have an observatory there, and they've got an eclipse event. So I will be gathering with lots of like-minded people

and viewing the phenomenon. And Becky, what is it? I gave very short order there of what's happening, but why is tonight such a special evening for those that like to watch the sky? Yeah, so I mean, what's going to happen is that the moon will pass in between the sun and Earth and block out the sun.

Now, people get a little bit confused about why this doesn't happen every month because the moon's going around the earth, it does that every time we have a new moon, it passes between the sun and the earth. But the moon's orbit is angled five degrees compared to how the earth goes around the sun. So we don't always have the right alignment.

It's usually at least every 18 months that you have this just right alignment to block the sun's light with the moon. And any specific location on Earth, there's only sort of like every 400 years, it gets a total solar eclipse. So for those in Spain and the Belericabwe, islands today. They're the lucky few. They're going to get totality. But this is the biggest

coverage of the sun that we've had in the moon, where the alignment's been right to do this in the UK, like you said, since 1999. So, I mean, we're not going to get totality, sadly. But I mean, people who even don't know the eclipse is going on are going to notice that the lights doing something weird. You know, if it's sunny, it's all of a sudden going to start looking a bit like a cloudy day in winter rather than a summer's evening. I was lucky enough to experience one in Missouri, St. Joseph's Missouri in the United States in 2017 and was sent for work. What a lovely

job to do. But the thing I really remember as well, maybe because I'm an hour old person as well as visual, is the sounds. And how the nature immediately changed, whether it came to the birds, for example, that were obviously trying to get on board

with the eclipse as well when this sudden darkness came. And the wind seemed to change as well at that time. So, even if you weren't looking at the skies, you would know that something extraordinary was happening. Zara, tell me a little bit, because this is not your first rodeo.

Tell me a little bit about the appeal and what you've seen before and what you're looking forward to tonight. Well, as you just said, during an eclipse, whether you know what's happening or not, there's a very palpable shift in how you feel and what's going on around you.

So, for instance, I saw one in Turkey, which happened to be on my birthday, which was fantastic. And although, and I viewed that from the beach with my mum, and although waves are caused by wind, when there is an eclipse, there is atmospheric changes. And so what happened during that one? When you get totality, obviously the moon completely covers the sun,

you can take your glasses off and you see this great big eye in the sky staring down at you. You can see all the solar flares and the corona of the sun. and all around you, I remember looking at the ocean and the waves had dropped and were just really suddenly gently lapping at the shore and it's a very, very profound experience and one that, you know, people from ancient civilizations

would have seen with great awe and wonder and I find that really interesting. I think you've summed it up so beautifully, Zari. It is almost, Becky, like living on a different planet for a few months. moments. Yeah, definitely. And I think we're very lucky on this planet that this even happens because it's very much a sort of cosmic coincidence that the moon is 400 times closer to us than the sun, but also 400 times smaller. So it's actually strange that they're roughly the same

size in the sky and that's why we even get total eclipses in the first place. If the moon was any closer to us, it would be too much too big. If it was any further away, it would be too small for this to happen. So we really are in a privileged position. We really are in a privileged position. are. You mentioned there, Zara, as well, the total eclipse, that you were able to take the glasses off. The glasses, I know, are a much coveted item at the moment.

Gold dust. But, you know, the warnings are very clearly not to take the glasses off during a partial eclipse, Becky. No, no, no. Yeah, definitely not. I mean, one time I, when I saw one in Austria, I was up in the mountains

and I was lucky enough to be able to photograph that one. So I had a lot of the kit. But funnily enough, for this particular eclipse, I've dug out my old eclipse glasses from my camera bag. So I'm hoping they'll do me well. Can you use the old glasses? Becky, do you have any advice on that? Yeah. So if you're guilty like me of shoving things like this into a junk drawer and then only remembering about them a few years later, please, please, please double check them for scratches or damage before you look at the sun. So my advice is put the big light on in your house, you know, the brightest light you've got. Look at that light. If there's anything leaking,

him round the edges, if there's any scratches, if you can see anything coming through, do not look at the sun with them. They filter more than 99% of the light. So if there's anything coming through, they're no good. If you haven't got eclipse glasses, my favorite way is to use a colander, which you mentioned. Yes, it's very, very fun. It's very fun with kids, especially. You don't use the colander to look at the sun. Never, you know, don't look at the sun during eclipse. What you do is you turn your back to the sun and you hold the colander over your shoulder and then you look at the colander's shadow. And if you put like a piece of white paper down there, it'll be even clearer. But essentially every hole in the colander acts as like a little projection of what the eclipse is

doing. So you see the moon's chunk, the bite that it's taken out of the sun. And instead of these perfect circles in the shadow, you get these little crescent suns, like the sun is smiling at you. So amazing. So, but I, of course, Sarah, Sarah probably has a selection of eclipse glasses. Okay, lots of people getting in touch. Let's go through a few of them. Myself and two friends, doing an eclipse sea swim, an angle sea where we live, swimming over a mile from one beach to another, then going to watch the last hour of the eclipse from a beach facing the setting sun to the west.

That's Lucy and her two swimmer mates, Karen and Louise. How gorgeous. Another, hello, this is my fourth eclipse. I've been lucky enough to happen to be in those places. My third one, I didn't look up, but just stayed and looked at familiar light changing and observing the shifts in my own body. There are so many ways to experience this.

clips without glasses. How about that, Zara? Just almost looking inward. It's just such a profound experience, you know, until I had seen my first one, which was in Antigua, I didn't really appreciate the effect that it does have, but it does feel prophetic. You know, it's, and, you know, being a nature lover, you know, it's kind of like the ultimate display, but a very, I can connect with the spiritual aspect of it when you look back at how people, you know, built temples around the stars and the sun and, you know, the eclipse would have been a huge, huge event for them. And yeah, I find that really inspiring. And also, they occur in such different various places around the world. It's a great way to see different environments,

and it happened in different environments. The one I, when I was, in Missouri, to me, the way I'd almost describe it was like a festival atmosphere. Everybody excited and working towards the same time, almost like when your favourite band is going to come on or something. It's like this exciting thing that's going to take place. And almost when it happens, maybe like that first moment when, you know, the lead singer comes out on stage, it's like everybody is united in this one aspect that is happening.

Here's another message. Going to watch the eclipse on the beach. in South End on Sea with my girlfriend. We've packed a blanket to sit on and a homemade pinhole camera. I watched the 1999 eclipse in Dirdle Door as a teen. It seems fitting to watch it by the sea again. That's Rachel. Now, Becky, let me come to you because I understand that eclipse initiated

or was a catalyst for you in your career. Definitely, yeah. I was nine years old up in Lancashire and I remember watching it and it being the first memory of me realizing that everything is just going on above your head and is whirring away up there. And it had a profound effect on me. And I think it was definitely the catalyst for sort of that sort of interest in space. All of a sudden, every birthday and Christmas, I wanted space books and telescopes and things like this. So I think it just directly led to me, you know, choosing this for all of my university careers and things like

that and then career going forward. So I think it can have a profound effect on people. And that's what I love thinking about tonight's eclipse is the ripple effects it might have, whether it is just to inspire someone to get outside and go stargazing that evening as well just to feel more connected or whether in a decade's time. It's, you know, what kid or teenager has been inspired by this year's eclipse to study it later in life. Yeah, maybe by hearing the conversation and the joy that there is from this particular event. I do want to also, Becky, as you're in that world, and I know there's so many women that are joining the astro world, shall we say, whether it's astrophysic. or other related fields.

It's not just the eclipse to watch out for tonight. There's also a meteor shower. There is, yes. It's just one of the best days, honestly. So it's the peak of one of the best meteor showers of the year tonight. And we've got exceptional conditions for that this year because what you want is the darkest skies possible. So you want a new moon.

Eclipse has happened at new moons. So we happen to also have perfect conditions for the eclipse. So after you've watched the eclipse, it's about seven, o'clock the peak i think the best plan is you know you watch the eclipse you go in have your dinner you come back outside when you don't have any dinner let your eyes adjust to the darkness and just spend half an hour 45 minutes just lying down either on a picnic blanket or on a sunbed or something i feel like we've all got them out because of the heat wave so uh star beds is what i like to call them you know look lie down look up and just just digital detox disconnect for a while you know and just look out for these

streaks of light going across the sky, you know, just almost blink and you'll miss it, that are these tiny bits of rock burning up in the Earth's atmosphere as shooting stars. Well, I think any little girl, or maybe bigger girl, listening to Dr. Becky Smithhurst, astrophysicist at the University of Oxford and Zara Gray, who's an amateur eclipse chaser, although I'm going to get rid of the amateur there. You're on number five.

At this stage, you're professional. Joining us from a campsite in Sussex, I hope you both have a wonderful evening and thank you so much for sharing some of your enthusiasm and joy about the eclipse and the Perseid shower this evening. Thank you. Amazing. Enjoy your star beds, everyone. We have a new name made. 844-844 if you'd like to share your experiences. Now, there are more than 30 million more men than women in China

due to China's one-child policy. and that has led to many single men desperate to find a wife. But desperation can make people vulnerable to exploitation, as has happened in China. The authorities are now warning of a rise in marriage fraud, as scammers target those single men. To discuss this, I'm joined by the BBC's China correspondent, Laura Bicker. Good morning, Laura. Good morning. How are you?

Very well. We also have Times columnist and author of the Chinese Whisperist Substack, Cindy, Hi, Cindy. Morning. Let me start with you, Laura. Can you explain? how these so-called flash marriage scams work? Yeah, so we went to Guadro to be at the heart, really, of the flash marriage industry.

Now, one of the reasons that sprung up there is they say that the so-called one-child policy, this family planning policy, that saw a preference also for boys, didn't, wasn't really strictly enforced in this rural province. So they say they have women ready to get married. That has attracted a number of men desperate. to find a wife. And so these agencies, you give over your money and you spend time in a blind date room. Sometimes you'll meet women for 10 minutes and then you'll say, no, no, she's not for me. Sometimes you'll meet them maybe two or three times. On some occasions we've met men who've just met a

woman maybe three or four times for 10 minutes each and then they've gone, the couple's gone, yes, she's for me. They've got married and they've handed over their life savings and then the women either disappears and then the matchmaking agency disappears. It's becoming such a problem here in China that five different government agencies have now launched a crackdown for the next six months. State media has called it chaotic. So I think when it comes to how it's being regulated, that's now beginning to raise some eyebrows in this country where authorities and the police are wondering whether they have to start cracking down, whether they have to start regulating the industry. We met a number of men, several men, who'd been victims of this kind of fraud.

And many said they'd just really struggled to find a wife. This was their last resort. And instead of starting a new life, they've now lost absolutely everything. Do they have any recourse in a scam like this? It's quite difficult for them to have some recourse. Because when it comes to prosecuting a crime like this, it's difficult to prove that perhaps the bride, The woman herself didn't want to really marry you.

She was just looking for the money because most of the women then can turn around and go, well, it was a love match. But after a few weeks, I realized he wasn't just for me. The big problem that they have, especially these men, is that you have to pay in China a traditional bride price. So not only are you paying the marriage agency, you're paying the bride to marry you. It's a traditional amount of money that usually goes to the bride's family.

Now, that can be quite a high sum. It can be up to about 20, 30,000 pounds. And so many of these men save up this money to go towards the bride's family. The bride gets married. She takes the bride price. And then what we're saying is the bride runoff. Certainly, Wang Duang was one of the victims I met who was prepared to go on taking, prepared to go on camera for the BBC.

And after several weeks of wondering what was going on with his new bride, he found out she'd actually been married three times. before, had three children. She was a former karaoke hostess. So when he made this discovery, challenged her, and she says, I'm not giving you back the bride price, but I will give you a divorce. So he's lost his money.

And with that, as you mentioned in your article, you know, some could be seen, perhaps even this woman, as being quite vulnerable themselves, being deep in debt, has a number of children. I wonder if it's possible to know about the relationship, between the matchmaking agencies that I put in inverted commas and the women that are involved.

So in one scam that we found in the records, we found that one of the matchmaking agencies was going to a local karaoke bar and offering a lot of women money. They'd actually scammed 128 men using just several women from a karaoke bar. And many of them, yes, too, this is the kind of money that they, you know,

they only dream of that they can, you know, would spend years trying to make. However, when it comes to this kind of scam, women certainly perhaps fail that they all have the upper hand because when it comes to marriage, certainly the 30 million extra men that you're saying in this country because of the demographic crisis China is facing and because of the one child policy,

means that women can afford to be more choosy and they are being far more choosy about who they choose as a soulmate and their life partner. And of course we hear about that. that falling birth rates, really, across Asia, China being one of those countries as well. Let me bring you in here, Cindy. What do you make of what you've heard? I mean, these unintended consequences, as opposed of a policy that took place years ago. Yeah, it's such a fascinating story that Laura has picked up on. And I think it really just goes to show the desperation with which

so many of these men and their families now feel. You know, got to bear in mind that China is a deeply family-focused culture, the millennial of Confucianism, kind of telling you to kind of pass down your name, pass down your line, as it were. And these men, not only are they unable to find partners, but because they are only children themselves, that means they are the end of their family line unless they have their own children. So it's now getting to pretty desperate measures. And that's not just a symbolic kind of continuation of the line. It's also in a country like China where the welfare state is pretty barren, where if you're elderly, you really need your children to look after you. So it kind of has all of those implications as well for your future retirement, too.

So yeah, I mean, it's probably fair to call it an unforeseen outcome of this policy, although there were voices at the time even saying, you know, you can't do this in a culture like China, you can't do it in a society like this, and you would have all sorts of problems, which those voices have now proven to be right, but they were sadly silent. at the time. So you speak about some of the aspects of why marriage is important to Chinese society traditionally, which it has held on to, particularly in the eyes of these men. How do women feel about marriage if it's possible to know? Yeah, women generally have a slightly easier way to find partners. I mean, there's that kind of statistical asymmetry we've

already talked about that there are a few of them anyway, but also women tend to marry up You know, it's a patriarchal society. That's one of the implications of a patriarchal society is that when a man marries, he wants a woman who's younger, poorer, less educated than him. But when a woman marries, she wants someone who is going to be materially better off than her. And so that means that they're marrying up, and when there is that kind of asymmetry in the statistics, that leaves the men at the bottom of the rung. For women, you know, we are seeing the most educated generation of women ever in China. You know, bear in mind that footbinding was still prevalent just a hundred years ago,

bear in mind that women didn't go to school until maybe, you know, during the communist era, that actually now women are going to university. You know, they're able to kind of travel to different parts of the country, for example, from the villages to the cities, or some of them travel abroad to go to other countries. And so their choices are much more diverse in a way, and that is also causing part of the problem. And then the other part is that their education perhaps is leading them to think, well, I don't want to get married anyway, you know, because if marriage is going to be this patriarchal noose around my neck, then why should I bother? I'm financially secure. I'm educationally independent. So like I could just be myself. And so that's why we're also seeing marriage rates declining recently as well. So 10 years ago, we talked about leftover women. Now women who are 28 years old and they're like, we're too young to get married and we're not going to get married until maybe ever or maybe until we're 35. And maybe not wanting to take on with the sort of marriage that some of these men may have in mind looking at some of the ads, for example, that were answered that are in Laura's article looking for a woman who was prepared to have a more traditional lifestyle in the home and take care of the man. Has the government, Cindy, had any initiatives to try and address this?

Not just clamping down on scammers as Laura was discussing, but in the sense of this imbalance. of how to rectify it? Well, you know, this imbalance is already going to die out soon. Sorry, I don't mean the men will die up, but I mean the imbalance has already got better in later generations. So we're talking about men basically born in the 80s, 90s, where the gender distortion is the most concentrated, and in the 2000s as well.

But actually, as they get older and as a new generation of young men come through, bear in mind that the one-child policy in 2016 was abolished, to become a two-child policy, then 2021 that became a three-child policy. Also, China has taken measures to, when you're having a pregnancy, to ban sex selective abortions. And actually, in some parts of the country, you can't even be told the sex of your baby anymore for fear that people will kind

of go to underground abortions. So a lot of this stuff is to tackle both the kind of one-child policy created preference for boys, but also a very traditionally Chinese preference for boys as well. Even before the one child policy, we have to remember that actually killing of female babies was not unusual. And so, you know, abolishing the sex selective abortion is one way that they can do that. But otherwise, this imbalance is not going to get solved anytime soon, but it will just kind of move up the age ranks. And in the future, it won't be so bad.

So coming back to that point that you make there, Cindy, so there is still a preference, for a male child? Yes. Yes, it depends on where you are in the country. I mean, if you're in a more rural area, where perhaps even now farming is still more important, or just generally kind of traditional notions of men being better, basically, than women.

There are still that preference. But I think if you're in the cities, actually, most people don't really care anymore. And actually, there is a stereotype of only girls, only daughters from three provinces, I think it's Juergians, Zuchang, and one of them, Shanghai, where actually those daughters are the most privileged of all because they're only children, and they are not kind of discriminated against by their parents.

So I think it is a country in flux on that perspective, but yes, that kind of centuries-old patriarchy still very much remains. Cindy Yu is the author of the Chinese Whisperate Substack. Thanks very much for joining us. And also our BBC China correspondent, Laura Bicker, Laura's report, on the BBC News website right now. Also on our website right now is a live page.

All about the eclipse. A lot of you are very excited about it. Here's Cévan. She says, I've been in Northern Spain a week now preparing for today with my husband and we're getting excited. Christina, I experienced a near total solar eclipse in the north of New Zealand in November of 84.

I was a student on a dairy farm and will never forget being out on a fence repair job in the middle of nowhere on my own. It went so dark in the mid-afternoon. 84844, if you'd like to get in touch. Well, as we talk about looking at the skies, let us begin to also look upwards because we want to spend some time

learning about women who made history on the world's highest peaks, often without the fame or recognition that is afforded, or has been afforded, to their male contemporaries. There's a new book. It's called Moving Mountains. The author is Rosemary J. Brown,

and she explores the lives and also the achievements of female climbers. These women also inspired Rosemary to take on her own summits and adventures. You're very welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here. This is my summit. This is your son, excellent. Well, we're very glad to be on the summit with you.

So tell me about the inspiration for the book, this trying to, I suppose, bring recognition to these women. Well, I've always said women in history. shouldn't be a mystery. And with my own interest in nature and mountain and adventure, I started looking into mountains named after women. And the point is there are not very many. And we must also realize that naming mountains might not be appropriate because they do have indigenous names. But I started looking and each story was so incredible. And so I've kind of made it my goal to get women adventures, hidden women adventures, back on the map. And so here they are physically, metaphorically and literally. Well, let us start with Sakajua. Many listeners will be familiar

with her, others won't. You kind of start with her, which I think is a great place to start. Good. Native American woman in US history, but I suppose ended up on an expedition with a heart-wrenching story. Yes, Saku Juea did not have a choice. She was at the tender age of 12, she was robbed of everything except her life. She was kidnapped by another tribe and taken a thousand miles away from her Rocky Mountain home. There she was enslaved and forced into a marriage with a Canadian fur trapper named Tucson Charbonneau. And when the Lewis and Clark expedition rolled into that part of the world to spend the winter, they were recruiting people. They recruited her husband and invited him to bring one of his two wives. He chose Sackagiaiaia. She was a teenager. She was a teenage mother of,

when they left on the exhibition, a teenage mother of a little boy 55 days old, so not only was she climbing the mountains and being an interpreter and guiding when she could. She was nursing a baby boy. He was on her back. John Baptiste. That is the image that I think of when I think of Sakajua, this small baby as she's doing these incredible feats. Absolutely. And the expedition would not have been a success without her in my view. She came equipped with a great knowledge of edible plants, natural medicines, and foods. And she also, her very presence made them safe because here's a mother and a child. And they were walked going through territory that was rife with all kinds of people that could have really gone after them. But when they saw

Saka Jua and her little baby, it created the image of a peaceful expedition and a friendly expedition. She became a motif then for the women's suffrage movement, really fascinating her history. But I do want to go a little bit closer to where we are now. British-born, this is Gertrude Benham. She was climbing in the early 1900s, but didn't start until a little bit later in life, like some other of her contemporaries. Absolutely. It's not unusual to find women adventurers and mountaineers that don't start until their 30s or 40s,

because they are usually the ones left at home to look after the aging and, ill parents and that was exactly the case with Gertrude Benham. But as soon as they were gone, she was gone too. She just got on a boat and went straight to Canada. Which would mention she had some money in her pocket as well from an inheritance, I imagine. Not too much. She prided herself on never spending more than 250 pounds a year for each of her almost eight expeditions. And she did that by making and mending her own clothes, by camping, by, she created sketches and embroidery and watercolors, and she would barter them for artifacts in the country she visited. And now those 800 artifacts are in the Box Museum in Plymouth.

And although we can't see her, we can learn more about her by seeing these amazing, oh, there's her Tibetan, boots, there's a beetle in a jar that she carried with her for quite some time. There's jewelry. There's everything you can think of. What a resourceful woman. She was, tell us that there was a dispute really about the naming of peaks, which you alluded to at the beginning with a male explorer at the time. Yes, I love it. It's called the Fay incident because Gertrude, once Gertrude got to Canada, she climbed 19 peaks in one summer. And one of them that she, she had her eye on was called Hiji. And she had, I don't believe she knew that it was already named for Professor Faye,

who was the pioneer of Canadian Mountaineer? A man. A man, absolutely. Professor Charles Faye, very distinguished mountaine. And she set her sights on it, and she got to the top, and he didn't, and he was furious. And then he commissioned, he asked the Canadian, board of geography if they would give him another peak that they could name after him. And she'd already climb that too. So in the end, he had to make this second ascent of Mount

Fay, which it is still known as today. It should be Mount Benham or Mount Gertrude or it should keep its original name of Hiji. I want to move on to Elizabeth LeBlond. This is another one in that you, this is the late 1800s. Let's talk about her clothing because we have to think about how women were climbing. They weren't in, you know, the high-tech gear that we see today, even though I know it's made much more for men still than women, however. Well, Elizabeth Blonde was a wonderful Irish aristocrat who stopped climbing social ladders and started climbing mountains. And women, she and her contemporaries were meant to wear dresses or skirts on the mountains. But it was dangerous. You could lose your life. Your skirt could get caught on a rock. And,

And so what they all did, including Meta Brave Art, she's the first one who ever wore trousers, but they would hide the trousers under their skirts, climb up the mountains, and then take them off. Now, with Elizabeth and probably others, but we know that with Elizabeth LeBlond, she left her skirt under a rock. And then Avalanche came along and swept it away. And she knew that she couldn't go back into town with just trousers on. So she asked her guide to go back down to the hotel where she was staying and get her another skirt. And he turned up with an evening gown.

I know. Oh, she was probably one of the most eminent mountaineers of her time. And something that people don't know and need to know is that she was a pioneer of mountain photography. And there's a lot of her photographs in my book. and she also was the first mountain filmmaker. Let me, I can't let you go without talking about Junke at Bay, who is one of the women that you also talk about, made her own hiking gear, the first woman to Summit Everest that was in 1975,

but seems like such an inspiration for women today. Absolutely. Now, last year, 1975 was the 50th anniversary of the first female ascend. of Everest. Do you think anybody was doing anything? Now, I love Hillary and Tenzing, but every ten years, there's a huge celebration for what they achieved, and this is 50 years. So a group of us got together and created Team Junko UK, and we were at the RGS, we were at the Alpine Club. The Royal Geographical Society. Sorry, the Royal Geographical Society, the Alpine Club. And then there were 15 of us, just like there were 15 women with Junco when she summited Everest, we climbed

a mountain. She climbed two years later, called Yala Peak. And we followed exactly in her footsteps because her family members gave us her diary and a hand-drawn map. So we got to meet her family. This is in Nepal. This is in Nepal. I saw some of the photographs and read your story of doing it. But I mean, that must be a life-changing expedition. It was a life-changing expedition. It was a life-changing expedition, and basically I didn't realize it at the time. I was doing what I want the readers to do. I was inspired by Junco. I didn't have time to train. I kept saying, I can't go. I can't go. The book is on deadline, and my daughter said, Mommy, you know you have to do this, and I did. And getting to the top with great help from everybody on the expedition, my fellow climbers and the

Sherpas, I got to the top of Yalap Peak just as the sun was rising. And so it was a lesson in follow your dreams. Don't, it sounds hokey, but go for it. Because guess what, if I can get to the top of Yalapalik in Nepal 5,550 meters, you can reach whatever summit you have. Whatever it is, it doesn't need to be a mountain. It could be an education. It can be painting. It could be anything that you'd like to do? The voter, you all look extremely happy as I noticed as you read as epic. It was a lovely read.

I loved hearing about the women. We've just, what would I say, did a quick snapshot through some of their lives, but I want to let people know that your book is Moving Mountains. It's out on the 13th of August. The author is Rosemary J. Brown,

who did summit Yellow Peak in Nepal. Thanks so much for coming in to join us. Now, nature, Let's stay with it. It's very intrepid women this morning. Here, let me see. I don't have a name, but she says. Look at the shadows made by tree branches and their leaves and some straight objects.

They seem to bend during the eclipse. The cloud often disappears when the sun is shielded. Don't look at it while driving. In Guadalupe, I saw a total eclipse. People crashed while looking and driving. Okay, very good public service announcement there. Do not drive and look at the eclipse at the same time. We're already talking about don't look at it.

directly. One more. This is Andrew. He says, I have made my pinhole camera for my grandchildren and delivered it a couple of days ago and another one for myself. What much of the reporting has not mentioned and it may only relate to the full eclipse is just before and just after totality the diamond ring effect. We talk about the coronae all right. How lovely. Keep your messages coming. Love to hear about your clips adventures that you're planning for today. 84844. Now, have you been watching? the European Athletics Championships which are taking place in Birmingham.

Britain star athlete, Keely Hodgkinson, will be running in the women's 800 metres. She's in the semi-finals tomorrow. Final is then on Friday. Team GB are hoping for gold. It has been called the race of the year. But for 43 years, the record for this race has not been broken.

That is, despite the huge advances, of course, in training, nutrition, technology. To speak to me more about it, is the BBC sports journalist Emma Good to have you with us, Emma. Hi, good morning. So let's see, this record has stood since 1983. Why has this record been so hard to break?

Yeah, I mean, 43 years ago was when the woman's 800 world record was set and it was done so by a Czech athlete called Jarmila Kratasvilever at an athletics meet in Munich. She ran a time of 1 minute 53.28 seconds. And actually that only shaved off 0.15 seconds from the world record that had been set in 1980 previously. But both those times, the fastest and the second fastest times ever in the Women's 800,

they're still unbeaten to this day. And I think as time has gone on, we've probably come to appreciate even more just how quick those times are because athletes, that is still the benchmark. and that's where all these athletes are trying to get to right now. But given all those advances that I mentioned, you know, recovery, shoe technology, why are some of the theories about why it hasn't been possible to bring that record down? And I think this is what seems so sort of amazing because, you know, for 43 years, I mean, since the 1980s, sports science has come on leaps and bounds.

I mean, when it comes to things like shoe technology, even to the minutiae of how shoes interact with the track, not let alone sort of how the issues are made. We've got the nutritional developments, things like supplements and how athletes are supported in terms of their recovery, understanding of how to fuel races, carbohydrate intake, pre-race, to maximise performance. And so all of these things put together, you know, you'd naturally think the record would be, you know,

would be progressing. And don't get me wrong, those times are getting faster and faster, but it's worth, you know, a big mention that there are lots of questions about Kratos Shvilever's time. and whether the record should still stand. And there have been claims that her performance in Munich back in 1983 was assisted by a systematic doping regime in her country at the time, but claims of which she has strenuously denied.

There was, I saw in your article as well, Emma, in 2017 European Athletics, floated the idea whether all records broken before 2005 should be banned. But I'd imagine that it would be like kind of, you know, rewrite the slate, so to speak, that would be quite a controversial discussion and decision. It certainly was. And when those proposals came out at the time, obviously, there were a few athletes that came out and said, you know, obviously it's taking a very broad brush approach to a lot of records that had been set pre-2005. And as you say, the governing body European athletics

proposed wiping out those records set before. It was 2005. And that was the year the World Athletics or the IAAF, as they were formally called. started storing blood and urine samples. And these proposals actually didn't go any further. I mean, it's worth stressing that all the records still do stand. They still do stand. But I think it was a strong signal that the credibility of some of those records was questioned before the turn of the century.

Keeley Hodgkinson, I need know we're just as Keeley now, right, has broken the indoor world record. She is one of the leading 800 meters runners in the world. But I suppose for the outdoor world record, does that make a massive difference whether it's indoor or outdoor? I mean, she's having a great season. I mean, that obviously indoor record was a huge marker in the sand in terms of where she's up to right now. And no one can rule her out. I mean, she started the Europeans really well, a very confident run in the heats yesterday.

She's the Olympic champion. She's won two European titles. And she's run a time, I think it was one minute, 54, 33 this year. and that's the seventh fastest outdoor 8,800 metre time as well. So certainly on paper it's all looking incredibly promising. I think it's worth of mention the main challenging challenger to her will be Swiss athlete Audrey Vero, who actually beat Keeley earlier in the season

and set the third fastest 800 metre time ever. So it will be quite a showdown if everything goes to plan and we see those athletes going head to head toe to toe in the final Friday. So there's Audrey Vero, as you mentioned, and Keeley. also Femme Broder's Ball Yes Femke Broder's Ball is certainly up there

in a name that's got a lot of people talking because she made the decision to switch from being, she's a 400 metre hurdle specialist and she's got an incredible record in that event that she's now decided to switch to the 800 and give that a go and already this season she hasn't had a huge amount of experience

running the 800 outdoors at all but she's already made some very impressive times I think it will very much depend on how the race is run. I mean, we've got the semi-finals to go, of course, before the finals on Friday. But if those finals on Friday turn into a much more of a final lap sprint, ball has got this incredible kick, and that could make things very interesting between those three athletes. Really interesting.

Thanks very much for coming on. Emma Middleton from BBC Sport there, her article about why it's so difficult to break that record. Well worth a read before we watch the semis and the final. and I'll love a bit of rivalry as well. Now, when my next guest found out that she had Tourette's syndrome in her 20s, she thought it would destroy her life. Now, Dr. Amanda Cole is a professor of sociolinguistics at the University of Cambridge and the subject of a new BBC report about her experiences with the condition.

As she previously kept her Tourette's hidden, but she joins me now to discuss the experience of sharing it with her students and also how being diagnosed has influenced her personal and professional lives. Lovely to have you with us, Amanda. Hi, thanks so much for having me on. Welcome to the programme. Now, you specialise in how language is understood and interpreted in society. Did your experience with Tourette's bring you into that field?

I'd love to say for the purpose of the show, yes, but I think probably no. It's come much more from my interest in accents and the way that people speak across the country. Which is a fascinating field to get into. but with Tourette syndrome, it's a neurological condition, over 300,000 children and adults have it here in the UK and there are different types of Tourette's as well. Tell us how you came to get your diagnosis. Well, so when I was sort of 15-16, I started getting a tick.

Well, I didn't know it was a tick at the point, but like a movement at the back of my throat. And eventually, so I saw various specialists and eventually with my mum we saw a neurologist, and the neurologist was the first to say, I think this is a tick. But at that point, it was just that one tick. It was kind of intermittent.

It wasn't something I was really worried about. And they said, you know, it might just go, don't worry about it, basically. Just get on with your life. And then as time went on, I just picked up more and more and more motor ticks. I saw a neurologist at various different points. I had various tests to roll out other things. And then it was sort of my early 20s, I think I started getting vocal ticks.

So I started saying things. And that was the point where they said, okay, we think this is Tourette's. But what was that like for, you know, a young woman, coming, there's a diagnosis, but even before the diagnosis for your body, your voice, to be doing things involuntarily? Yeah, it was, it was frightening. And I think what really frightened me was the fault of Tourette's, because I didn't know anyone with Tourette's.

There's still, I think, very little public understanding of Tourette's. And I guess I was also a victim to that, that to me, Tourette's was what I still think prevails, is this very sensationalised portrayal of it that we see in the media. Often where people are acting it, and it is absolutely this point of ridicule, and it is stereotyped, it's very extreme, and often it is people swearing or saying kind of vulgar things, which is a form of Tourette's, but actually it's a minority of people with Tourette's have that.

So between 10 and 30% of people. But obviously to me, this is just what I thought was going to happen to me, or I just thought Tourette's going to ruin my life. It's like everything I've been working towards, like what I'm learning at school, all of that is going to be basically completely invalidated because I'm going to have this condition outside of my control that is going to mean that that is all I'm ever going to achieve Tourette's. And what you mentioned there, because we mentioned there's different types of Tourette's,

coprolalia, is one type of Tourette's where people sometimes can involuntarily, say, obscene words or terms, which some people, I think, maybe have a stereotype that they have in their head sometimes about that. We'll come back to that particular aspect because it was in the news as well. But for you, your day-to-day life, how do you find it? So I think most people probably would have no idea that I've got Tourette's unless I tell them.

Or if they know me very well, they probably would then start to pick up on it and I would tell people. But the ticks are something I'm actually able to suppress to quite a high degree. And that varies from people, like from person to person with Tourette's. Some people can't really suppress their ticks at all. They just come out.

but I can kind of suppress them, which makes it sound like it's just not a big deal, but it kind of really is, because suppression is something that does take quite a big emotional and physical toll. Some people say it's like holding in a sneeze. I would kind of liken it to being like, just go about your life, but just never blink,

or only blink if no one's ever going to notice. So that's kind of how I so got about it. You know, if you weren't allowed to blink, you'd be like, okay, no one's looking at me right now. I'm going to like getting loads of blinks, or I'm going to turn away and blink. And that's kind of how I manage my ticks. and I think that's something

I've never even really done consciously but since I was young I've just, it's become so so highly tuned so fine grain now that I'm doing it so like so subconsciously that I tick when I think people aren't looking when I think can get away with it or even like the vocal tick

sometimes I can say in my head or just like say something quiet enough that I think it's going to just kind of take the edge off but I act and I think suppression can make sometimes people think that my Tourette's and other people's is mild or that it's not an issue. But it is, it's like this real feeling of like uncomfortableness, itchiness.

And it's something that really can like take your focus away. And that is something that actually is hard to manage. And when you say itchiness in the sense like an itch you want to scratch? No, like a neurological itchiness. Like a sort of like uncomfortableness in your body. You feel this urge. That's what I meant. Yeah, yeah.

Like an it you want to scratch in the sense of you want to verbalise something or move in a certain way. Yeah. And so you suppress that. And I can understand that it takes an awful lot of energy. to do that. And I think we're all multitaskers. You know, I think people without Tourette's, you're just going about your lives, you're at work, you're commuting. But with

Tourette's, you're doing your life, but also always in the background, you're thinking, am I ticking? Is anyone looking at me ticking? How am I going to hide this tick? Or even just doing that subconsciously, but it's something that is really kind of energy and time consuming. And that's why I kind of feel as well like, I don't

kind of want to be the sort of palatable face of Tourette's that it's basically okay because I've got Tourette's, but nobody notices. And I think I want to be able to tick freely and I want that stigma and shame to be kind of dismantled in society so that we can tick freely. And I would say also about coprolalia because I don't have coprolalia. I don't say vulgar things. But I think we have to as a society split apart the person and the tick. I want to come to that. But just as you were speaking, I was wondering, what do you think would happen if you did tick freely? I suppose I've had so much

kind of shame and embarrassment about it since I was young that I've never even really engaged that fault because it's just I've just thought I have to hide this from everybody. I think honestly what I think would happen is I'd probably get a lot of people being like, have you got something in your eye? Are you okay? Have you pulled your pulled a muscle? I think I'd get a lot of that. I think probably I'd get more people looking at me. I think if I tick freely as well vocally, like vocal ticks, people would obviously look at me and they'd probably say did you say something and I think it would draw retention. Fundamentally I think probably at the point I am now it would be okay and I think that's why I feel this responsibility now with where I am. I found a job

I love that I kind of feel I'm at the point where I want to share my experiences with people and let other people know that Tourette's doesn't have to be this kind of curse that is going to take over your life in the way that I thought it was going to be. You were inspired to speak out about your diagnosis I understand after an incident at this year's Bafters where the Tourette's campaigner John Davidson who has a copper-a-lawful. he involuntarily shouted racial slur because of an involuntary verbal tick while the cinema stars Michael B, Jordan and Deloy

Lindo were presenting one of the categories. It was so public, I guess. I'm just wondering what your initial reaction was to the fallout from that moment. Are your thoughts about now? I think it was just really upsetting. I just found it a very upsetting time and I think it was for lots and lots of groups of people

and I think people with Tourette's as well really did feel that it was a hard time. But I think it's a complex case, but I think one of the real things that struck me about it is that there's such a big societal misunderstanding of Tourette's. I saw lots of commentary around it being, like a tick being akin to like a Freudian slip or a person saying something maybe that they really mean,

but Tourette's is where, you know, you just don't have that filter that stops you. And that's just not the case. Often when people have coprolailic tips, they're saying, it's like their brain making them say the kind of worst thing that they could possibly say in that moment. And I think that understanding was actually missing in a lot of the commentary that I saw. And it actually isn't just about coprilalia.

It's about Tourette's generally. There's so little research. There's so little public understanding. There are so many misconceptions around Tourette's. And I think it really is time for us to kind of break those down. And of course, there's a lot of criticism as well about following the event. I know the BBC said that they profoundly regretted the events around that broadcast and that they apologised for the serious mistake that was made in allowing a race.

racial slur to be broadcast and then remain on the eye player overnight and into that Monday morning. They do say they understand the hurt and shock that the mistake caused. But you have, coming back to your bravery, you have spoken to your students at Cambridge about it.

How does it feel now? Does it feel different? I actually think when people know I've got Tourette's, it is actually somehow a bit liberating because then I do think, okay, well, if a tick kind of slips out or like, you know, if they notice, it does kind of take that pressure away,

I think of where I was constantly trying to hide it the whole time. So yeah, I think it has been a positive experience overall. Do you think your lived experience of Tourette's would have been different if you were born a man? Yeah, I think it would be, yeah, as I suppose it probably is for everything, all the experiences that we have as we walk throughout our lives. I think there's going to be that difference. But we do know that there are some differences in the way that Tourette's can kind of present

between men and women. And I mean, it's obviously not my area of academic expertise, but we know there has been lots of research that has shown that. But even within the research done, so much of it is focused on men. In fact, nearly all of the research on Tourette's is on men or within those studies, if there are women, predominantly the subjects of men. So our understanding of Tourette's is still very much skewed masculine. And we do know things like women or girls tend to have a slightly later onset.

we know that women are less likely to have remission of ticks over the lifespan and that's something I felt like I was told by a neurologist in my early 20s by the time you're 40 you won't even have ticks anymore like they'll just get better and better but actually they just seem to be getting worse and worse and actually it's only when I kind of looked into it that I read oh actually the female experience does actually tend to go more that way and I think I've been told a lot of the way that it presents in men right so just there is not that research that we often come up against in any medical conditions that women have and I know that

there was a study from the movement disorder clinical practice that they were talking about long term overall positive prognosis for individuals with Tourette's but as you mentioned it's mainly studies are done on men you do have just in our last 30 seconds

or so let's talk about some of the positives you have hyper focus I hear yeah so Tourette's very rarely comes alone so 90% of people who have Tourette's tend to have it with other conditions so such as ADHD OCD, autism. So we actually kind of have to think of it as this sort of profile or like a cluster of different conditions.

But specifically within Tourette's, there have been showing there are loads of benefits. So things like hyperfocus, high levels of empathy, creativity, tend to be articulate and have good communication skills. And these are all great things. And I think it just shows that Tourette's is a specific way of being rather than something that has to hold you back. Dr. Amanda Cole, really interesting to hear your experiences.

Thank you so much for joining us. She's a professor at Cambridge. You can read her story on BBC Online, as well. You can also look at what's happening with the eclipse that we've been a little bit obsessed with today. Thanks for all your stories. We're back with you tomorrow. I'll see you then. That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Christmas, 1988, a plane takes off from Heathrow Airport. 38 minutes later, everyone on board is dead.

A Libyan man, Abdul Basa al-Magrahi, is convicted of murdering 270 people. But that's not the end of the story. Almost four decades on, fresh evidence and a new trial. I'm Miles Bonner. In this podcast, I'm delving into a world of extremist groups, mysterious intelligence agents and global politics. From Radio 4, this is Intrigue, Lockerbie. Listen first on BBC Sounds.