Woman's Hour - Fiona Hill, Baby loss, Why do we lie?

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

As the Ukraine conflict rages on, questions have arisen over what the endgame is for Russian President Vladimir Putin. There have been continued reports of rape and violence being used against Ukrainian civilians by Russian soldiers. Durham-born Fiona Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has been a foreign policy adviser for three United States Presidents. Seen as one of the foremost experts on Russia, she joins Krupa live in the studio to talk about the invasion and what happens next. The footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodriguez have announced the death of their baby boy at birth. The couple were expecting twins. Their baby girl survived. Clea Harmer is CEO of the charity Sands, she joined Krupa alongside Katie Harris, who lost one of her twin daughters, Abikara, during pregnancy. Women live longer than men in the UK but new analysis shows that life expectancy for women living in the poorest 10 percent of areas in England is lower than overall life expectancy in any OECD country except Mexico. Figures from 2019 show that millions of women living in the most deprived areas of England can expect to live 78.7 years compared to 86.4 in England’s wealthiest areas. Jo Bibby is from The Health Foundation and Alice Wiseman is the Director of Public Health in Gateshead. Why do we lie? Do men and women lie differently? In her new book The Social Superpower, Kathleen Wyatt looks at lies from many perspectives and reveals her own history of lying. The latest in our series Threads about the emotional resonance of old clothes. Listener Helen tells the story of the skirt she made from bits of curtain and old dresses to go to the Reading Festival in 1973.Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Emma Pearce

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Krupal Bhatti and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello, welcome to the programme after what I hope was a wonderful Easter weekend. Many of you will have seen the news shared by the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo about the death of his newborn son. The baby's twin sister survived. Speaking out on social media, the Manchester United player said that for him and his partner Georgina Rodriguez, it is, I quote, the greatest pain that any parents can feel. Only the birth of

our baby girl gives us the strength to live in this moment with some hope and happiness. There is no right or wrong way to grieve the passing of a baby. For myself, tomorrow marks nine years since my beautiful little girl Elora died shortly after her birth and no doubt hearing the news of the loss of a newborn will bring back difficult memories for some of you listening. We're going to talk about this so please during the programme do get in touch with whatever you wish to share on this subject. Or maybe you just want to remember your baby and share their name. Also, we live in a time where a changing media landscape has in part given rise to fake news,

disinformation and misinformation. We're going to speak to the former Times journalist, Kathleen Wyatt, about her new book on lying. When and why do we lie? And what do lies tell us about society? We want to hear from you about the lies you've told or might still be telling. And whether you're a good liar. Do you think there can be good lies and bad lies? To share your experiences, please do get in touch. Text us on 84844. You can email us via our website and you can also find us on social media. We are on the handle at BBC Women's Hour. And we're going to reflect on this. If you are a woman living in the richest parts of England, you could expect to live almost eight years longer than a woman in the poorest parts of the country. That's according to

a new study that might surprise you. And there's another layer to this. woman in the poorest parts of the country. That's according to a new study that might surprise you. And there's another layer to this. Women in the poorest areas in England die younger than almost every other comparable country in the world except for Mexico. The author of that study is going to join us to tell us more. But let's begin with Ukraine. We are almost two months into the Russian war in Ukraine where forces moved into the Donbass region, that's in the east, and this triggered the current conflict. Within days, major Ukrainian cities were under attack, and since then, five million Ukrainians have fled their country, mainly women and children, and others have been displaced within the country. Now, most men have had to stay in Ukraine to fight for their country and to support the efforts on the front line.

And currently, Ukraine is still in the hands of the Ukrainian President Zelensky. And this is despite a sustained offensive across the country by Russian soldiers. There have been countless reports of brutal warfare, including the rape of Ukrainian women and children. Durham-born Fiona Hill is a senior fellow at the public policy organisation, the Brookings Institution, and has been a foreign policy advisor for three US presidents. She's seen as one of the foremost experts on Russia, and she joins me live in the studio right now to discuss the current conflict. Thank you for your time, Fiona. Let's start with the events of this weekend. We've had that shelling in Kiev. We've seen strikes that

hit Lviv. And Lviv, of course, considered a safe haven for so many Ukrainians. And then we've had this announcement this morning from President Zelensky saying that the battle for that eastern region of Donbass has begun. How do you read what has happened? Well, I think as you've just laid out there, that of course the focus is now going to be on Donbass by the Russian military. But all of these other strikes are a reminder from Moscow and from Vladimir Putin that no one is safe in Ukraine. It's meant to keep the entire country on their toes

and also a reminder to all the rest of us as well watching this to underscore the fact that Putin's goals have not really changed since the beginning of the conflict, which was to inflict maximum punishment on Ukraine and also to subjugate the country. I think, you know, overall, over the longer term, his goal also remains unchanged of hoping to dislodge President Zelensky, I mean, as you mentioned, he's still in place. And clearly, one of the early phases of the invasion was intended to provoke the surrender of the Ukrainian military, and potentially then in rapid succession, the overthrow of Zelensky's government. So Putin intends to keep the pressure up, even though now the concentration of the military operations is in and around Don Basque, this area around the Sea of Azov, where the cities of Mariupol, Melitopol and others that we've been reading a lot about and seeing in real terms of the destruction there are focused. And I think that the intent at this particular

point is to secure Russia's hold over the whole area extending from the top of the Crimean Peninsula all the way along to the Donbass even if that means laying it waste and literally reducing most of these major cities to rubble. You mentioned the Crimean Peninsula there we saw the annexation by Russia of Crimea in the south of Ukraine back in 2014 as someone who has been watching Russia for so many years, does this invasion surprise you, especially considering the close cultural ties both Ukraine and Russia share? It doesn't actually surprise me because actually, if you look back to the early 1990s, which is even a longer timeframe than we've been discussing since 2014, obviously, there was a lot of pressure

being put on Ukraine just after the independence and the collapse of the Soviet Union by various figures in Moscow, who wanted to see the restoration of the Soviet Union, who didn't like the idea that Russians and Russian speakers were now outside of the Russian Federation's orbit. And clearly, over that period of time, over these multiple decades, there have been various points in which it's been clear that Ukraine's whole future was under some question mark. Cut off of energy in the 2000s to Ukraine as well, trying to put leverage and pressure on the Ukrainian government, making sure that they didn't have freedom of manoeuvre and freedom of choice. Now, the extent of the invasion, as you're suggesting here, its brutality, I think, is somewhat surprising, but only to a point. We've seen this kind of brutality before in Chechnya, in the Russian North Caucasus, during the civil conflict that was there in the 1990s.

We've seen the brutality in Aleppo, in Syria, that the Russian government participated in on the side of Bashar al-Assad to keep him in power. But of course, at the beginning of this conflict, the whole point was supposed to be that Ukrainians and Russians were one and the same people. And that this was an exercise of bringing the Ukrainians back into the Russian fold. Well, now it's very clear that if Ukrainians are one and the same people as Russians, they're thought of as traitors. And they're now being dealt with in the most severe terms possible. And this is now an exercise in punishment. And the levels of brutality, I think, are surprising also for be feeling when it comes to the time this invasion is taking,

the time it is taken to take Ukraine. We had the sinking of the Russian warship over the last week, the Moskva, and Russia says that it was a fire on board that caused that explosion. Ukraine says it was a fire on board that caused that explosion. Ukraine says it was hit with missiles. But what we do know is that this is the biggest loss of a Russian warship since World War II. We now have mothers in Russia breaking their silence, demanding to know what has happened to their sons who were on board that ship. How does this sinking change the dynamics of the war?

Well, it does complicate things for Vladimir Putin. And as you're suggesting there, now the resurgence of the soldiers' mothers was real people. I mean, we're talking about the loss of children at different points in the programme today. This loss of a child, a mature child in battle, is something that obviously has stirred not just maternal but family sentiment forever.

I mean, since we've all been engaged in wars. And in the case of the Soviet Union during the Afghan war, at the end of that conflict when so many people were lost, there began to be the stirrings of a civil society movement in Russia that became the Soldiers' Mothers Committee. That also became very well organized in the 1990s to push back against hazing and brutality in the ranks for conscripts. This was a phenomenon that was extraordinarily problematic in the Russian military and always fed into a lack of discipline and poor command and control.

We're seeing all of that play out in the Ukrainian conflict as well, and the kind of brutality that was meted out against conscripts. The conscripts themselves started meting that out against civilians in other conflicts. And during the war in Chechnya that I referenced before, again, heavy losses of conscripts. The Soldiers' Mothers Committee became extraordinarily well organised. Now, on the eve of this conflict, Putin and the Kremlin tried to suppress the ongoing Soldiers' Mothers organisation, as well as Memorial, which is an organisation that was set up to look into the crimes of Stalin and all of the

terrible events that took place under the Soviet period, all the repression and purges, for example. And it looked like in a way they were clearing the arena for the kinds of things that we're seeing today. But exactly as you're pointing out, when you have something on that kind of a scale, where you have a lot of losses all at once, they're concentrated either in one section, one branch of the military, or they're concentrated in terms of a geographic place. So there's, for example, an airborne division from town Kostroma in Russia, which is actually linked with my home area of County Durham. They've had huge losses from that airborne division in the early parts of the invasion into Ukraine. That has a backlash because you've got a lot of people all at once who've suffered a loss. They're very well aware of it and they start to push.

Now, the question is, how will Putin deal with them? And I think that's something we're going to have to watch very carefully because will that have momentum? The Russians, or at least let's just say Putin, the Kremlin, always bank on the fact that the Russians are not unified behind any kind of opposition leader. But this could very well prove to be something of a coalescing force. Again, we'll have to see. Very, very interesting analysis there. Let's talk about Mariupol. There has been huge concern for weeks now about what is going in there. It is, of course, so hard to verify information. But on the subject of humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol, there seems to be no consensus as to how this can be achieved from

both parties. And of course, it is largely women, children, and the most vulnerable civilians who are stuck inside that city. That's right. I mean, it's very difficult. And look, the Russian government doesn't care about this. I mean, they're looking to see how they can score points. I mean, we've seen recently with the International Committee of the Red Cross that the Russian government tried to sort of manipulate their desperate efforts to get in to try to rescue people, trying to, again, play the International Red Cross in a very negative light internationally, again, deliberately done. Because this is all really about Putin's own grip on power and the narrative that he is playing at home in Russia. They're very keen on having refugees being brought to Russia itself. I mean, there's been forcible deportations in many respects of refugees from the Donbass and other regions into Russia. People didn't want to go to

Russia, obviously, given what's been happening. They wanted to go to Poland or maybe somewhere else in Ukraine. But the Russian government wants to show that this is all about Ukraine attacking Russian speakers. They wanted to have a kind of perverse show and tell with refugees coming out of Ukraine itself and seeking refuge and assistance in Russia. And so they don't really want to have the International Committee of the Red Cross involved. They want to show up all of the international institutions. They want to show up all of the international institutions. They want to manipulate this. So unfortunately, we're finding ourselves in the middle of a very crude, callous and horrible political game that's being played by people in and around the Kremlin with complete disregard, not just for the people of Mariupol and all of the other cities, but for their own soldiers and personnel, as we've already discussed as well. We don't know the gravity of the situation inside Mariupol but we do know what what will be discovered when when people are allowed to re-enter is going to be horrific like we saw in Bucha and what we saw in Bucha was of course evidence of rape being used as a weapon of war as is sadly seen in so many conflicts. Does this brutal tactic surprise

you in any way in this in this case? Not slightest. I mean, as you said, every brutal conflict seems to basically, well, we seem to see this in evidence. I mean, it's just devastating to think about as a woman and, you know, as just anybody watching this, that just the very fact that every time you have a conflict, there's always these reports, because it is, of course, a tool of war, and was deliberately so in many other conflicts. And if we think back to the end of World War II, one thing that we've not really discussed in detail that's come up in the books of some historians because of the circumstances,

it was when the Soviet Red Army entered into Berlin in the last days of the war, there was mass rape of German women that were basically left in the city. And time and again, we see this in conflicts, a bit less so in Chechnya or in Syria, for example, although there were also quite a few reports. But I think this is also evidence of the brutality that has become rife within the Russian ranks. It's also a feature of a response to guerrilla warfare,

where, you know, so many Russians died unexpectedly in this combat, and the entire population is fighting against them, not just the regular Ukrainian army, but territorial defence and the people themselves taking up arms. And so in a way, this is now collective punishment that's being meted out in the most horrible ways imaginable. And again, rape is a tool in these kinds of conflicts. And what can the international community do when it comes to rape being used as a weapon of war? What more can the international community do? Well, we ask this every time, don't we?

I mean, every conflict that we discuss in some way, this comes up. There's all kinds of prohibitions against it. There's all kinds of effortsitions against it. There's all kinds of efforts to hold people to account. We can only keep on doing this. But unless the Russian government themselves hold people to account, I only know of one or two instances where that happened in Chechnya, for example, then we're not going to get much of a response from Russian society or the Russian government. Now, there are reports of soldiers, individual soldiers, talking to their wives and mothers about this.

So, again, this is also possible that the societal level in Russia, there may be some pickup on this issue and some pushback. But again, you know, I'm not especially optimistic given the amount of repression, the propaganda, and just the fear that has been instilled inside of Russia itself. But you really do need the Russian government to hold people to account too. Whilst we've been speaking, we've had this text come into us saying women all over the world should make a stand together against war. And that leads me to what I want to talk about next. And that's the diplomacy because yesterday, the Kremlin accused Ukraine of changing its stance on issues that have already been agreed at peace talks. And those diplomatic talks internationally seem to be hitting a brick wall. We're seeing an increasing number of women in

Ukraine choosing to stay and fight and support the efforts on the front line, including many MPs. But when we look at that negotiating table, Fiona, there aren't any key women at those talks. Would having women there lead to more progress? I'm not so sure about that, to be honest, unless there was women on the Russian side. And in all of my experience, in all of the times that I've worked on Russia

inside of the government, Vladimir Putin and the people around him genuinely think that we're trying to emasculate him or to basically disrespect him when the US and other delegations show up with women. I mean, this is a misogynistic, sexist setup in and around the Kremlin. Yes, there are women there, but they're not in the most prominent positions. They're in the press secretariat, for example, some of the spokeswomen for the Russian foreign ministry and also for the Kremlin,

of course, and a lot of TV and other personalities in the central bank. But in terms of the hard security ministries, that's not the case. But of course, it is in Europe and in the United States and elsewhere. And I do actually agree with the person who texted in that women should stand up. Absolutely. And all of the refugees, at least for the most part, the refugees from Ukraine, of course, women and children, and they can play a very important role. And if we look around, you know, our European neighbours and in the United Kingdom, the number of prominent women, it's very important to make that stand. But the Russians will take this completely in the wrong way in these negotiations. And in any case, they're not interested in them right now. Putin wants to see what he can achieve on the ground before he's ever going to be in any

kind of mood to have a serious negotiation. He's not in the business of compromise. We have to keep at it. I think President Zelensky and his team know that. But the chances of any kind of success or breakthrough are pretty slim right now, unless the Russian military operation is blunted, and they feel that they can't push any further forward. Fiona Hill, a pleasure to speak to you. Fascinating to get your insight. I wish we had longer, but thank you for joining us here on Women's Era and don't forget our live page on what is happening in Ukraine is over at BBC News online. To lose a child is the greatest pain a parent can endure. The death of a twin adds another dimension to this tragedy and it was announced yesterday by the Manchester United footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and his partner Georgina Rodriguez that they had lost their baby boy

at birth. The couple were expecting twins and their baby girl survived. In a statement the couple said it is the greatest pain that any parents can feel and that the birth of their daughter had given them the strength to live in this moment with some hope and happiness. I'm joined by Aclea Harmer the CEO ofANS, which is the stillbirth and neonatal death charity of bereaved parents and this is after I too lost my newborn daughter Elora after a full-term birth which was nine years ago. So thank you for joining us and Clea let's start with talking about Cristiana Ronaldo being what is a very high profile figure, the most followed person on Instagram. What impact does this celebrity status have on breaking taboos around such painful loss and raising awareness?

Hello. Thank you. Yes. And just to say how much our thoughts go out to Christiana and Georgina today and how much I hope they're finding the time and space to get the support that they need. But you're absolutely right. It's so incredibly brave to have made the announcement to acknowledge their pain and their grief, because the death of a baby is such an isolating experience. People don't talk about it. and you're left as a parent feeling that you're the only person this has happened to that nobody understands and yet when somebody high profile can make a statement like this it actually allows you to know that you're not alone but it also helps other people, family, friends to know that they can find the words and reach out and actually give that support that's needed as well. And as you so, so beautifully have done as well, sharing your own experience. Again, anybody who shares their experience is opening the door for others.

And I think that's so important. It's interesting. the reason I choose to share is because of that loneliness that you mentioned because I remember when it first happened to me going online googling anyone who had the same experience as me but of course what I've learned over the years is that there is no uniform experience when it comes to loss. Each baby, each journey is so unique Katie Katie let me bring you in here talk us through your experience and your loss um yeah so as you mentioned at the beginning I um was pregnant with identical twin girls and I lost my daughter Abikara at 24 weeks

um it was quite a unique and as you you say, isolating experience because my pregnancy continued to 36 weeks until Cara was ready to be born. So I had experienced this loss, but I wasn't really able to grieve properly at that time. I was very focused on getting through to the end of the pregnancy. and then when I did give birth it was almost as if I had just given birth to a single baby and that it hadn't really happened and it was a very yeah isolating and lonely time. And clearly not the experience you would have hoped for and an emotionally conflicting time we can say because on one hand you've got the joy of the birth of your child and on the other hand you're grieving the loss of your other child absolutely yeah it was very it was a really difficult time to navigate through um and as you mentioned at the beginning it's just you kind of find yourself frantically googling and trying to find places to find support so um yes it was it

was difficult we i had a very good support from the bereavement midwives at the hospital and they were able to point me in the direction of the twins trust organization who have their bereavement support groups and that's where I found the most support really through this process. I found that speaking to people anonymously in online groups helped me a tremendous amount. Cleo, what support do parents need when they are experiencing such a loss? And of course, as I said at the beginning, there is no uniform pattern for grief, but there are some basics that we do share when it comes to trying to heal, isn't there? Yes, absolutely.

And I think one of the things that parents need to be able to do is to make memories of their baby. And listening to Katie's experience, that's so difficult, making those memories when you haven't ever met your baby. And I think most of us, when we grieve, although, as you say grieve differently it's using memories help us so making the memories of the baby who has died could be

spending time maybe if you're able to hold the baby or have photos or have something special of that baby is incredibly important but then also having the baby acknowledged and friends and family using the baby's name, talking about the baby, reaching out to you is, again, really, really important. And I think what's particularly important when a twin dies is to know that there is this conflict of feeling and to be led by the parent and the sort of terrible things we hear people saying are you know at least you've got one baby and that that if you hear at least coming out of your mouth you should stop straight away because it is such a a painful thing for a parent to hear and I really really want parents bereaved parents and families this morning who are listening to the news who may find it very triggering and very upsetting to know that they don't they don't have to do this on their own they they should reach out for support on this journey

bereavement journey that they're on and And SANS and other organisations are here for them because it's so difficult reliving your own emotions when you hear an experience like this. And I think that's why it's so brave of both of you to be talking about this because it is very difficult. Cleo, you mentioned talking about the baby, mentioning their name. Many of our listeners have got in touch to do just that. This person has messaged.

Kate says, I would like to share my baby's name. It was Anna. She died at 10 years old in 1994. She was my only child. I miss her every day. This one from Mike. My little brother Simon died a few hours after he was born in 1969. I don't think my mother ever got over this

and her mental health suffered, but there was no support in those days. Very sad. Rest in peace to all the little ones who did not survive. Another one here. Oliver James Balls, born and died nine years ago. He lived for only eight days, always loved and never forgotten.

The pain is still so raw. Katie, what helped you to get through those early days and when I say early days it's important to note isn't it that grief changes how you feel a week on than how you feel six months on six years on it's very different what helped you in those early days um I think probably the things that you've touched on really about people just acknowledging Abikara and acknowledging the fact that I had given birth to twins was something that for me was really important. My midwives were excellent at always speaking about Abikara as well so when they came to do their checks they would always mention her and ask if I'd been to see her at the hospital. So just acknowledging that I did have another baby that was still very much a part of my life and that was really helpful.

And then as I mentioned the Twins Trust has been almost like a lifeline at times, being able to connect with other parents that have been through that experience um especially because the loss of a twin is a very unique situation um and as you said very conflicting because you're going through grief and a new birth at the same time which is quite challenging um so they are on instagram facebook twitter and um can be found on twinstrust.org forward slash bereavement they've got really good support available and just being able to vent on difficult days with parents that understand what you're going through I think has been really therapeutic. Can you explain how it has impacted your daughter Cara L? So she's very young at the moment so it's how you fear it might yeah I think um I think my fears before she was born was whether or not she would kind of

you know whether she would know that some somebody was missing and whether she'd struggled to um settle alone and things like that she seems to be very much have the personality of two at the moment so I think it's given her double the personality. High energy. Yes I have heard other parents in the groups that I've been on say that they have had their twins when they reach older ages start to ask about their twin or kind of suffer with things like separation anxiety and whether or not they feel that's connected to the loss of their twin so I of suffer with things like separation anxiety and whether or not they feel that's connected to the loss of their twin so I think it's something that you're you're going to continue to have to navigate through with your surviving twin as well yeah absolutely well I do

wish you well with your your healing journey we've had this message from Loretta who says sands were amazing and a real raft at such a tragic time. My husband went on to run half marathons to fundraise. My second son did a first aid course, which his company, let me just expand this, arranged with Sands to help deal with people returning to the workplace following a bereavement. So I know that lots of parents who get stronger continue to support the sands charity this message who says my son jonathan died 38 years ago age one month old i remember him every day and celebrate his birth every year and please do continue to send in your messages and to share your memories of your little ones who you may have lost and And our thanks to Cleo Harmer and Katie Harris

for joining us to discuss this very important subject. You are listening to Woman's Hour. If you do want to get in touch with us, please do. The way to do that is via text 84844. You can also send us a message on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. And, of course, you can email us via our website. Now on to something a little different.

Why do we lie? Do men and women lie differently? And why does the journalist Kathleen Wyatt in her new book argue that it's a mistake to write off lies completely because some lies play a vital role in a healthy society? Kathleen is with me now. Thank you for coming into the studio. Your book is called The Social Superpower, The Big Truth About Little Lies.

What makes you say that our ability to lie is a social superpower? Hi, Kripa. Thanks for having me on. Well, the more I looked at lies and the power of lies and the more I wondered about whether or not they had the power to do good as well as their very well documented power to do bad, the more I realized how powerful the little lies we tell every single day can be. And the more I talked to scientists and investigators and criminologists, the more I saw the incredible thing we do with our minds when we tell any type of lie, from the whitest of white lies to the sort of darker lies that we sometimes get caught up in.

And the more I looked at this, I realized that for little lies to succeed, they need to work in secret. So effectively, we tell little lies about the little lies we tell. And the more I looked at this, the more I came back to that kind of DC Comics image of superwoman with ripping her shirt open and revealing this superpower. I know that you have two big lies which, in your own words, have frightened, shamed and changed you. Tell us about them. Well, they're very different. The easiest one to talk about is about being gay. And although I had told friends and family during my 20s, I just found it impossible to come out at work. It was like I couldn't handle the sort of public side of this secret that I'd kept for so long. And that was what really got me thinking about this book. It was the power of those little lies and how they really trapped me and made me hide certain parts

of my life. And when I came out, and I did it in the newspaper, because I thought if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it properly. There's no way I'm going back into the closet. I'm going to do it in the paper. The response was incredible. And I think people really identified with the idea of keeping secrets and how you finally confront them. But also they started telling me all their stories of the lies that they'd had in their lives. And this really got me thinking. The other lie is more complicated. When I was 20, I had a cardiac arrest. I was incredibly lucky and I was saved by an off-duty paramedic. My heart stopped for 10 minutes and I was in a coma for about three days and lost my memory. What I didn't know at the time was that my friends were having agonising

conversations about whether or not to tell my parents that nine days before I'd taken class A drugs at a New Year's Eve party. And they didn't know could that have been the cause? Excuse me. So they made this decision, this very brave decision to ask the doctors not to tell my parents so that they didn't add to the stress they were all facing at the time. And effectively, they were asking the doctors to lie. But they could because I was over 18. And all they did was omit the truth. But fast forward six weeks, and I was healing. And, you know, we were talking to the consultant, my parents were asking him, so what could possibly have caused the cardiac arrest? And he said, without even realizing it, well, there is the drugs issue to think about

and you've never seen anyone snap out of a codeine haze so fast as I did. At that moment the horror hit me that all these stories my friends had been trying to tell me were true, that I might have been the reason that everyone had been worrying and stressed and spending so much time in hospital. So the impact of that lie, which wasn't really my lie and was a very kind lie, is what really got me going on the power of white lies. And they're two very important lies in terms of your identity and who you are today. But as a mum to little ones who shower me with white lies about how much chocolate they've eaten, for example, I'm fascinated with children and lying. And you do talk about children in your book. At what age do we learn to tell lies?

Well, it all starts with pretend play. And there's some amazing research on this. And in fact, when a child starts to spontaneously pretend play and engage with another child, it's an amazing leap in their psychological development. And they're effectively transforming reality with their minds when they take an empty box and move it along the floor and pretend it's a truck or something. And the child they're playing with understands this. When there's no explanation, there's no pictures or diagrams, they just communicate with each other in this silent way.

So that's an amazing leap forward. And then tests have shown that toddlers start to tell fibs, not particularly believable fibs, but around 24 months. You know, three seems to be the age when most of them start to do it. And as I said, they're easy to spot. Well, yes, although I recently came up against a situation where I believed what my daughter was saying, only for her to turn around and then say, Mummy, I was lying.

But what was interesting was that she felt very remorseful. And I wonder when that dimension of emotion emerges. When do young children feel remorseful about their lies? Can I ask how old your daughter is? She's seven. Seven. Yeah, I think it is different for every child and the sort of background that they're brought up in. But what's interesting is that scientists, when they're doing early tests, trying to see whether or not a child will tell the sort of most low level little fib. They have to do it in a non-judgmental way.

They have to make it a game. And also they have to tell little lies themselves. So they actually film the child without the child knowing so that they know what their behavior is when they think there's no one else in the room. But the moral dimension is more complicated. It definitely applies differently to different children. And what's

interesting is there's another piece of research that if you make a child promise not to tell a lie, it actually has an effect on their behaviour. It doesn't guarantee they won't ever lie, but it does make them check themselves. More aware. Is there a difference between how boys and girls lie? When they're toddlers, not at all. What about when they're grown-ups? What about men and women? Do they lie differently? There's a very interesting, another very interesting piece of research on this that was conducted by Bella Paolo in the 90s.

It's very well known. It was so simple and it worked brilliantly. And it was to get people to carry a diary around with them. So 70 students and 70 local townsfolk, so they could compare the ages. And then they were to note down every interaction they had, the type of interaction, how long it lasted, and whether or not they intentionally misled the person. So no judgment, just a scientific experiment, everyone playing a part. And in that, they found that women students told more of those fibs than male students did. But the reason for that was that they had more interactions and more longer interactions.

So they had more meaningful chats. And in those, they told those positive white lies. How interesting. You've described in your book people who struggle to fib and then others who make exquisite liars. What makes a good liar? This is why it's such an amazing step in psychological development because when we even when we tell those fibs we have to be able to read the person we're talking to, read the context around them, think about what they know, what they might have been told before, what you've already told them, all of these things in just a split second.

So you have to be able to conquer all of that successfully. Then you also need to be able to control your facial expressions because there are so many tells to when we lie. Now, you do have to be a professional lie spotter to get really good at spotting them. But not only do you have to control your mind and what you're saying, but you also have to control your face and judge the context right. And then I think from what I've seen from all the people I've spoken to, a degree of charm helps a lot. You've got a great graph in your book, which talks about a lie scale.

Just describe that for our listeners. Well, as I started to look at lies, I just found there were more and more of them. And I just thought, wow, this is an incredible thing that we do every time we even tweak the truth slightly. So I thought, I've got to get a handle on how many words there are for this and how they all relate to each other, sort of map out, you know, what we do when we lie. So I started off with a sort of a simple point that is the truth, the objective truth, and then all the things we do to change the truth. So you start off with a little white lies, and then you go quite quickly all the way up to the sort of, you know, the dark, nastier kind of lies. And in between, I sort of, I charted out the effect of the lie from positive

to negative, and its distance from the truth. And so on that day when I did it, and on a different day it would have changed because my own experience has changed and I would have judged those lies differently. On that day I did it, it was very interesting where I put things and how I put them in relation to each other. And the more I looked at it and the more I compiled a list of words we use for things we do to the truth, I came up with 64 different words or terms that we use for fibbing. I found it very insightful. When we were talking about this in the office, someone said you mustn't miss out the effect of being lied to

and the effect that can have on a person. And we did do a series called Family Secrets and the repercussions for some of our listeners of being lied to, so finding out they were adopted, secret families, hidden infidelities, that list is endless. What are your thoughts on that? I find family secrets one of the most powerful lies that we get caught up in because they can really start from a positive place

and sometimes the effects can be positive. But more often than not, they build and they build and they build and they're very wearing for the liar themselves. You have to remember, you know, every time you go for the family meal, not to say this big thing that no one ever talks about. And of course, years later, they can cause absolute chaos. And when you're talking about much graver subjects, then they really become very complex. So again and again, as I was talking to people for the book, they mentioned family secrets, and someone finding out they were adopted when they were 60, and then only telling their son when they turned 80.

And the effect that had on the son when he found out that actually his whole family tree was a fiction was incredible. Thank you so much Kathleen Wyatt there talking about her new book The Social Superpower The Big Truth About Lies. A couple of you have got in touch to talk about this. We've had this message from Louise who says is Father Christmas a good lie? And another one from David from Stonegrave who who writes a quote here. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we first practiced to deceive. My grandfather's dedication in my first autograph book back in the 50s. I don't think he was reacting to a misdemeanor of mine. Thank you so much, Kathleen, for your time.

And on the subject of lies, on yesterday's bank holiday program, we looked at the fascination we have with the female con artist, Anna Sorokin and Elizabeth Holmes are two high profile women whose stories of deception have gone on to inspire TV shows, movies, books and podcasts. Here's a snippet from Maria Konnikova, author of The Confidence Game. The con actually means confidence as in trust. Do you have the confidence in me? Do you trust me? And they take advantage of other people's trust in a way that basically they don't steal, we give. They don't necessarily lie. We supply the things that they don't say themselves, although they lie too. It's like a magician, but it's a magician on the stage of real life. And we love magic.

We love magicians. And we actually just forget, very conveniently forget the victims. And you can access that full clip over at BBC News Online. Now, women live longer than men in the UK, but new analysis shows that life expectancy for women living in the poorest 10% of areas in England is lower than overall life expectancy. And that is according to and that is in any OECD country except Mexico. Figures from 2019 show that millions of women living in the most deprived areas of England can expect to live 78.7 years. And this is compared to 86.4 in England's wealthiest areas.

Jo Bibby is Director of the health charity the Health Foundation and Alice Wiseman is the Director of Public Health in Gateshead. Thank you both for joining us. Jo let me start with you, talk us through how you came to carry out this research yeah thank you so um at the health foundation we want to improve health and health care in the uk so as part of this work one of the things we do is look at trends in life expectancy and we've been particularly interested in women's life expectancy because in recent years we've started to see the sort of long-run improvements that there's been in life expectancy starting to stall, and for some women we're seeing life expectancy actually now falling.

So this week we published some work looking at how life expectancy for women in England compared with other comparable countries, so members of the OECD, the Office for Economic Cooperation and Development. And our analysis highlighted three things. First, that life expectancy for women in the UK is the second lowest in Western Europe and in the bottom half of OECD countries. Second, that the gap in life expectancy between richest and poorest women in England is more than seven years. And then finally, we wanted to put this into some context to illustrate this point.

So we showed that while if you're one of the richest 10% women in England, you can expect to live as long as the average woman in Japan, which is at the top of the OECD life expectancy rankings. But if you're one of the women in the poorest 10% of England, your life expectancy is at the bottom of the table, second only to Mexico. So now this is part of a long run trend that's been going on for a while. But why it's important at the moment is the government have set goals to improve health of the UK population as part of their levelling up strategy. And what our analysis shows is two things, really.

One, that there is a big opportunity to focus on women's health and make improvements in life expectancy for women. This is what the comparison shows. But it also then underlines the importance of the government making sure women's health and improving life expectancy for women is at the heart of their strategy. And we are going to talk a little bit more about government initiatives. But what you describe there, those findings, they are stark. And what is surprising is that you say that these findings are long running. Just before I turn to you Alice, Jo when we talk about life expectancy there's often an assumption that we know exactly what that is and how it is measured. Could you just explain that a bit more to us? Yeah so I mean life expectancy is a statistical measure

and it's calculated in a similar way across the world so we can make comparisons like this and it takes into account what we know about current mortality rates for a particular population group. And it looks at changes in those mortality rates. So as mortality kind of increases or decreases, depending on different levels of disease and illness in the population, then life expectancy will also change. Thank you. Alice, let me bring in you here. What is your reaction to these findings that Jo has just described to us? Yeah, I mean, they are devastating, aren't they, for one of the richest countries in the world to be having some of these challenges

and seeing such disparity between our most disadvantaged communities and our most affluent. It's really shocking, but I have to say, it's not a surprise either. You know, so when I look locally in Gateshead, you know, we've got a life expectancy difference of just under 10 years between our most advantaged and our least advantaged communities in Gateshead. And actually, that's increased by two and a half years over the last 10 years. So at the moment, you know, what we're seeing is that it's getting bigger, that gap, you know, so really welcome the focus on trying to close that gap over the next few years. It's ambitious, but it's absolutely necessary. Because what we find locally, is that not only does, you know, ill health drive, you know,

sort of poor productivity, but poor productivity drives ill health as well. This is really an issue around poverty and deprivation. And it's really unfair that two babies born today in Gateshead can have as much as a 10 year difference in life expectancy due to the circumstances into which they're born. You know, and this is something that really drives both the Health Foundation's work and equally directors of public health up and down the country. So you are based in Gateshead up in the northeast, and it's not featured in the top 10 deprived areas. But as you touch on there, you do have a lower life expectancy for women. Just expand a bit more on what you are seeing on the ground on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, so I mean, working into some of our local communities, you know, people are talking to us about the challenges they have with poverty. And certainly this was true before the pandemic. And we know that it's getting even worse now with the, you know, cost of living crisis. Around one in five women in Gateshead, you know, are in persistent poverty. Around one in three of our children grow up living in poverty. You know, there's a real challenges and we know that there are particular challenges for particular groups of women so for example if a woman is a single parent they've almost got a one in two chance of growing up in poverty and we know that poverty creates all

sorts of stresses you know which impacts on health and well-being but also impacts on you know our ability to be able to support and provide care for our children growing up. And so really, unless we tackle this issue, we are storing up problems for generations to come. Jo, these figures are pre-pandemic. How different might things be now if we were doing this research today, do you think? I think, you know, obviously there's a number of things that have happened over the last two years that will have an impact on calculations. But I think what we know is that, broadly speaking, the pandemic has affected people living in more deprived areas.

And we've seen high deaths from covid there we also know that people are being left with poor health sort of long-term if they have long covered so i think there are things there that are going to be affecting future life expectancy but i think the other thing that we shouldn't lose sight of is the looming, you know, well, it's happening, it's real, the cost of living crisis for people. Because as Alice says, fundamentally, the thing that determines how long you live is essentially whether or not, you know, you have sufficient income, somewhere safe, warm, stable to live and can enjoy sort of family and community life. And these are the things that are most important to us. We tend to think about, you know, the importance of the NHS and we've seen how important the NHS has been over the last few years when we're ill.

But what we really need to pay more attention to is how we support people to stay healthy in the first place. And that's about giving people, you know, a good start in life and good conditions to live and work in. You mentioned health initiatives. A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said, we are committed to levelling up health across the country and our health disparities white paper due later this year will set out action

to reduce the gap in health outcomes between different places so that people's backgrounds do not dictate their prospects for a healthy life. We are also set to publish our Women's Health Strategy later this year to tackle gender health inequality and ensure everyone gets the high-quality care that they need. Jo, listening to statements like that, reading about these initiatives, do they instil faith in you? Well, I think the first thing is it's really good that this is being talked about.

We've been working on this at the Health Foundation for several years now and many other people for decades, you know, because it isn't a new problem, but it's got prominence now and government are concerned and they've made these statements. I think if we're honest, the challenge is, is they're not quite recogn order to reach some of the targets that government has set itself, we've worked out that it would take 192 years to reach their targets. So we don't also want to be completely defeatist about this. There are things that can be done and people like Alice are doing really great work in local communities to create better conditions for women that can support them to live well and be healthy. But I think unless government really acknowledges what a challenge this is and how fundamentally

it's tied to people's living conditions, to poverty, to hardship, to stresses that we, you know, we face through those hardships, then we won't kind of break the cycle that needs to be broken. Thank you so much, Jo Bibby and Alice Wiseman there. As we've been discovering in our series Threads, the wardrobes of women all over the UK are stuffed with items of clothing they no longer wear but will never part with. A Woman's Hour listener, Helen, got in touch to tell us about a skirt she made herself in the 1970s and happy to say Helen joins me now. Helen welcome to the program. Let's start with you describing that skirt to me.

Well it's just a huge skirt made from triangles of fabric that were in mum's sewing box. You say just a huge skirt but describe it to us. You said it's made from scraps in mum's sewing box. You say just a huge skirt, but describe it to us. You said it's made from scraps in mum's sewing box, but what were those scraps? Well, the scraps were just, mummy always sewed and made our clothes, made her own, shortened things, you know, made curtains. So she always made a little bundle of the scraps

and piled them away in this trunk. And so I just got them together when I needed something to wear and um make cut lots of triangles and just stitched them and and stitched them so it's multi-colored multi-fabrics mainly cotton yeah mainly cotton, yeah, mainly cotton, because it would have been, and yeah, and so now, looking back, it's got memories of my childhood. So in a way, I guess, it's a bit like the quilts of old, but it didn't start out like that. And it clearly means a great deal to you, because you've got it framed up on your wall now. So tell me a bit about Helen in 1973, what your life was like

and really the role that this skirt played in it. Well, I was living, we all grew up in a scrapyard in Dorset. Money was never very plentiful. So I was living there. had been my mum had gone my siblings most of them had gone few had come back by 1973 but um basically i wanted to go to reading festival had nothing to wear and thought well i'll look something up um because i'd always sewed and so I did. So it was enormous. It grew and grew and grew

so much so that I could wrap it around me as I slept next to a campfire at the festival. It was huge. Later on I had to slim it down a bit to make it more practical because I wore it a lot. And you've kept it all these years on why? Well when we were growing up we never threw anything away you know we didn't have a dustbin

tin cans went in a car scraps of food went to the pigs wellington boots went on the rayburn you know nothing was thrown away so I'm afraid i don't throw much away either and you know recycling has always been something we've done and i guess i've you know quite fond of it where it's a fancy dress parties i mean i've got lots of clothes from that time lots of clothes because clothes are like friends really um and i like them to have a bit of wear a bit of history and so i'm comfortable in them and i sort of wear them from time to time well helen i'm sure many of our listeners can resonate with what you are saying about their mothers making their clothes about keeping their clothes because they just don't want to waste things so thank you so much for getting in touch

and sharing your memories that's a listener helen who got in touch as part of our series called Threads, where we are talking about clothes that are in your wardrobe, but you no longer wear as well. I just want to spend the last minute of the program reading out a few messages that have come through to us on the subject of baby loss. After having heard the news about Cristiano Ronaldo's baby son passing away. This one, my twin brothers were born in 1943. One survived, the other was christened, then taken in a shoebox and buried with someone who died in childbirth. My surviving brother died in 2000. He was an amazing man. He said he always felt a part of him was missing. Thank you, Jenny, for sending in that message. And this one from Rosalind in norwich who says i've con i've listened to you for decades yet this is the first time i've contacted you why because of your words get in touch even if it's just to hear your baby's

name read out on the radio today is the 43rd anniversary of the birth of my second baby and second daughter amy esther green who who died nine days earlier at 37 weeks. It was the worst experience of my life. I'm 67 in a couple of months, though I realise it could have been much worse. I mourn the loss of the potential and the opportunities and experiences that me and my living children have missed out on. Thank you so much for getting in touch, Rosalind,

and to all of you who have been in touch to share your baby stories. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Do join us again next time. Hello, this is Jane Garvey with some good news. Life Changing is back. And I can honestly tell you that we have found some really remarkable individuals for this series. People have lived through extraordinary life changing moments. Now here's just a quick taster of what's in store for you. And I was calling Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, and a ship answered. And I thought, thank goodness, we've got the starboard railings in the water, we're rolling around, and we're sinking. So he said, what is your position? So I said, we're about halfway between the port of East London and Durban. No, what are your coordinates, he says. So I said, well, I don't know what the coordinates are.

And I could hear sort of, what rank are you? So I said, well, I'm not a ranker, I'm a guitarist. And he said, what are you doing on the bridge? So I said, well, there's nobody else here. You might need a strong brew and some steady nerves for that one. It's quite a story. Honestly, I've been blown away by what so-called ordinary human beings are capable of. Don't miss this series of Life Changing.

These stories and these people are definitely going to improve your day. Join us if you can. Subscribe now to Life Changing on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year, Subscribe now to Life Changing on BBC Sounds. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.