Woman's Hour - HRT and dementia, Cookbook author Amy Sheppard, Cosplay

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Hormone replacement therapy may reduce the risk of dementia, a new study has found. Researchers tracked more than 180,000 postmenopausal women and their analysis suggests that those who had used HRT appeared to be less likely to develop dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and the greatest reduction was seen in women who had undergone surgical menopause. Anita Rani talks to Anne-Marie Minihane, Professor of Nutrigenetics at Norwich medical school at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study, asking her whether any conclusions can be drawn from these findings. Five time Tony Award-winning musical Kimberly Akimbo has its European premiere this evening at the Hampstead Theatre in North London. Jeanine Tesori wrote the music for the production and joins Anita to explain why she wanted to set the original play to music and song.The latest of our series where our academic researchers in residence talk about something that’s caught their eye this summer. Beth Malory is Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Health Communication at University College London. She’s been troubled by a phrase we’ve discussed a few times on Woman’s Hour: medical misogyny.As the ongoing cost of living crisis keeps food bills soaring, Amy Sheppard has made it her mission to show people interesting, budget-friendly ways to cook with what they’ve got. What started as a personal challenge to feed her own family has grown into several Sunday Times bestselling cookbooks and a community of more than a million followers on Instagram. Amy joins Anita.Cosplay, short for 'costume play', involves elaborate design with fans crafting outfits and dressing up as characters from the world of video games, comic books and films. Live from one of the world's biggest gaming conventions, Anita speaks to Rosie, aka valentinemoon, who is one of the leading cosplayers and a judge on an all-female panel for the competition, and the BBC's Laura Cress, who is attending this year.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Corinna Jones

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 ODbolo.com. Get more with BBC podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me,

with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. Hello, I'm Anita Rani, and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning and welcome to the program. A new study has found that HRT hormone replacement therapy may reduce the risk of dementia. We'll look at the findings and the limitations.

Janine Tessori, the multi-award-winning female theatrical composer, will be here to talk about her life and the European opening of musical Kimberley Akembo. What are you planning for dinner tonight? You might think it's a bit too early, but I'm always thinking about food and planning meals, as is Amy Shepard. He'll be here to inspire us with her new cookbook,

Speedy 10, 10 everyday ingredients, 100 dinners in under 30 minutes. And it's Friday, so who's up for a bit of dressing up? are discussing cosplay, short for costume play. Well, GamesCon, the world's largest gaming convention, is taking place in Germany, and there'll be a cosplay contest. People come dressed as a character from a video game, a comic book, or a film. We're going to be delving into this world, and if this is your world, tell us more. Who do you dress up as? Or what has been your iconic dressing up moment? Do you throw themed parties? Is there a box full of feather beavers and wigs in your house?

tell us all. I want to hear your fancy dress tales. Get in touch in the usual way. And of course, if you want to comment on anything you hear in the program or share your opinion or story, then all welcome. You can contact us on most smart speakers. You say, Alexa, ask BBC sounds to send a comment. You can text us. The number is 84844. You can email us by going to our website, and the WhatsApp number is 0700-100-444. The text number, once again, 8444. But first, hormone replacement therapy may reduce the risk of dementia. A new study has found. Richard, researchers tracked more than 180,000 postmenopausal women, and their analysis suggests that those who'd used HRT appeared to be 10% less likely to develop dementia and 16% less likely

to develop Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia. The greatest reduction was seen in women who'd undergone surgical menopause. Well, joining me to discuss these findings is Anne-Marie Minahan, Professor of Nutrogenics at Norwich Medical School University of East Anglia, who led the study. Welcome to Woman's Hour. So fascinating. Let's get straight into it.

So what prompted, first of all, Anne-Marie, you to investigate the link between HRT and dementia risk. Well, good morning, everyone. Yeah, we've been, so I lead the nutrition and preventive medicine group in Norwich Medical School, UEA and cognitive trajectory and women's cognitive health throughout the life course is a big area of research for us. Yes, sorry. No, no, carry on.

Yeah, so we've been quite interested in why there's twice as many Alzheimer's patients who are female compared to male and quite interested in the contribution of the menopausal transition to that higher lifetime risk in women, which kind of brought us around. to whether HRT may or may not be protective and supportive of cognitive health into older age and associated with a reduced dementia risk, which is an area who's kind of been investigating for a number of years now.

And this is our most sort of comprehensive and granular analysis to date. So where did you get the 180,000 from? And I can explain a little bit more about the study and the findings? Yeah. So three years ago, we put, published a paper which was quite a small analysis in about 2,000 women, which was cross-sectional.

So it was, it had a limited design. And we found in that analysis that it seems to be starting H.R.T. earlier seemed to be more protective for cognitive health. At least the associations were stronger. And it seemed to be stronger in women who had a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's disease. So we then went on and had a look for what are strong cohorts, existing cohorts, that we could further our research in, which brought us to UK Biobank, which is an amazing UK resource. You know, over 500,000 people were recruited between 2006 and 2010, and they've been followed up

ever since. And there's really, really comprehensive data available on these individuals. And interestingly, the UK Biobank is connected to NHS records. So we have all the information around what medications, people are on, what diseases they develop, etc. So we decided to use this resource as a really robust cohort to conduct our analysis on. Yeah, that's handy. What did you find? Yeah. So what we found, I mean, the first thing to say, these are associations not causal. And if we have time at the end, I can explain the difference. Yes. But what we found is when we followed women up for 13, on average 13 years, up to 16 years, we found that women who used HRT had a 10% lower risk of dementia, a 16% lower risk of Alzheimer's disease, which is the

most common form of dementia. And interestingly, the associations seem to be strongest in women who had undergone early surgical menopause, so a bilateral ovarectomy and a hysterectomy, and also in women who had naturally a shorter lifetime exposure to estrogen. So either a late menarch or late period and early menopause. So their life to. exposure to estrogen would be shorter. And we found the association were strongest in those group of women. And how... Which was a really novel finding, actually.

What does that tell us then? How significant is this? Well, it's kind of indicating that certainly for women who've had surgical menopause, which are, you know, a significant group of women and an often under-research group of women. And women who've had surgical menopause are the nice recommendation, is that they should immediately go on to HRT for all sorts of reasons. And the current research is suggestive that by doing that in women who have undergone surgical menopause, that it may reduce their lifetime risk of dementia. What the research is also showing, and this is coming through for other health outcomes also,

that if a woman is thinking about going on to HRT, and for example, if a woman has very bothersome menopausal symptoms like hot flushes, are night sweats or if they've got a family history of osteoporosis, it seems like that earlier initiation of HRT is better than later initiation. And in our research, actually, the associations with lifelong risk of dementia seem to be most evident in women who had started HRT between the ages of 46 and 56, which I think is a really interesting finding. It's not clear cut, though, is it?

Because there have been conflicting results from previous studies. Absolutely. So I think we're a long way off recommending H.R.T as a sort of proven therapy to reduce life long risk of dementia. There is a lot of inconsistency in the literature. But as the years are going by, we're beginning to get a little bit of a handle on this inconsistency. And it seems to be certainly if you start H.R.T. late, it doesn't help against dementia. If anything, it might be slightly harmful. What the research is now showing is that certainly earlier initiation of HOT seems to be helpful for all kinds of health outcomes. And it seems to be also for lifelong risk of dementia that early initiation may be helpful. But as you say, there's a lot of inconsistency at the moment. But I guess what our research is starting to tell us is that once we plan our future research, There are certain groups of women, but we might want to do the randomized control trials in. Yeah.

For example, to do randomized control trials in women in perimenopause rather than in later in life, also in women who've had surgical menopause, I think they're a really interesting group who may benefit. You mentioned there the timing of HRT being important. Why might women who start it closer to menopause see greater benefits? I think it kind of makes biological plausibility that you don't leave a big gap between your natural decline in estrogen and when you start HRT. Because HRT functionality is dependent on having functional estrogen receptors in your cells, and it's depending on having all the kind of molecular machinery in your cell to be able to utilize that estrogen. So I think if there's a long gap, the chances are the function or the effect of the effect of the effect of, of estrogen will be less. Also, as you get older, there's a theory around the healthy cell bias

that once damage starts to happen, for example, in your neurons and your cells, in your neurons in your brain, it's very hard for HRT to reverse that damage, that actually estrogen is much more effective at preventing it from happening in the first place, which again kind of makes biological sense to me. But this is an observational study, so it can't prove cause and effect. So how confident can we be that it's the HRT that's responsible for the lower risk rather than other factors? Like, you know, the women that are already on HRT might be, I don't know, healthy, well, they're certainly more likely to go and see a doctor. Yeah, I mean, you bring up a really important point. So HRT use is associated with a higher socioeconomic status, higher educational attainment,

more engagement with the health services, better overall lifestyle. We did correct for all of those in our models, which we had that data available, but there may be something else associated with HRT that we just haven't thought about that could be in part, we could partly be explaining some of the benefits. So that's the reason why you actually then need to go on and do the clinical trials,

where you take two groups of women, one on H.R.T and one not, and follow them up for a period of time and look at your cognitive outcomes. So this is association. We've corrected for a lot of the things we thought might be associated with HortTs, So we're reasonably confident that HRT is mediating the effects,

but certainly randomised control trials are needed to back this up. Yeah, yeah, more trials, more research. And your research is, as you said at the beginning, it's in nutrition, cognitive health, brain health, rather than HRT. So can you, whilst we've got you, give us some sound advice as to what we can all do to keep our brains as sharp as possible for as long as possible? I mean, I think it's becoming really clear now that for us women, perimenopause and early postmenopause is critical to lifelong health.

You know, between the ages of 45 to 55, us women really need to take care. So, you know, following the general healthy lifestyle guidelines is certainly, you know, it's more apt during this period than any other time during Edontill, I would say. Also, interestingly, we work on omega-3 fatty acids. Women are in premenopause are able to make the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids when we're pre-menopausal. that drops off and we're postmenopausal. So over the three fatty acids, I think, are critical for brain health and women, really critical.

Also, there's a lot of interest in the gut brain axis. Fiber is critical for the brain. We know that menopause negatively affects our microbiome. Fiber can kind of mitigate some of those changes. So I would say also ensure your fiber intake is as high as it possibly can be to kind of really maximize that gut brain axis effect. I'm actually taking notes whilst you've been speaking. So I've got five exclamation mark.

Amiga three exclamation mark. Thank you so much for speaking to us this morning. And once we've got some more research, it'll be fascinating to talk to you again. Thank you so much, Anne-Marie Minahan. And if you do have concerns or questions, then do speak to your GP. A burst from the Broadway recording of Kimberly. A Kimbo, a musical that has its European premiere this evening when it opens at the Hampstead Theatre in North London, already a hit on Broadway. This UK production stars award-winning actor and singer Maria Friedman,

described as joyful, heartbreaking and outrageous. I am delighted to say I am joined by composer Janine Tesori. A two-time, Tony Award winner, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2024. She became the first woman composer to open the Metro Metropolitan Opera season in its 139 year history. Janine has written the music for the production and has had a string of hits on Broadway and in the West End. And we are delighted to say that Janine is here. Welcome to Woman's Hour. I'm so pleased to be here. What was it like hearing a burst of it?

You were conducting along with it. Yeah, it becomes part of my heartbeat, you know, the shows that I've written. So to hear them, I think, like, oh, right, we did that. I forgot about that. You did that. An instant joy. it was played, even just that one minute. Michael Longhurst described it as a musical about using the time we have well, which I absolutely love. And we'll get into that. But before that,

tell us about Kimberly Akembo. What's the story? And why A Kimbo? So what we call the elevator pitch is that sometimes people are like, I'm not sure about that because the story itself is about a 16-year-old who has a fictionalized aging disease and she looks 72, which I feel right now. But she's really 16 years old. So she's going through. of the heartbreak of being a teenager, but because of this disease, she presents to the world as an elder. So the world treats her a different way. The expected life, sort of expectancy is to be 16, so she's on the brink of her 16th birthday. So it is about using the time, understanding that we run, it's the only thing we run out of is time. And to use it really well, which is really

difficult on a day-to-day basis when you're doing all the things that make up your day. It's about her dysfunctional family in New Jersey and a lot of the comedy comes from the way that we cope, especially as parents, with putting off heartbreak, which usually is very funny. And a good way of dealing with, I guess, you know, trauma within the family putting it into comedy. Yes, yes, speaking for a friend. Yeah, exactly. He's good to laugh, them to cry. Absolutely.

David Lindsay Abair originally wrote Kimbley Kimbo in 2000, but you said you felt it would work well as a musical. How and why? What was it about it? But partially David and I share the same, you know, people fall on a banana peel. It's usually one of us and we find that hilarious. I think we have that sensibility that when life and growing up

when we traded our family stories, that was much easier to laugh at the things that were happening. And I knew that, because it was an early play that it could sort of accept music. Sometimes musical ideas come from the strangest sources. And because this is, first of all, I wanted to write a character that a woman in her 60s could play. They're not a lot of those characters. You know, I feel like women can feel very invisible when they're in their 50s and 60s, their 70s. They're just, you know, my sister, who I have three sisters. And to prove her point, she and her friends stole a picnic table out of a park

And she said, no one even stopped them because they were 60-year-old stealing a table and no one even saw them to prove her point. I really wanted to write that a part for a woman in her 60s to be able to play and access those parts of ourselves and I think remain young. It opened on Broadway in 2021 and was voted Best New Musical in 2022 by a number of critics and newspapers. Later won five Tony Awards and has developed a cult following. Congratulations. Thank you. What's its appeal? I think its appeal is that it's a lot like life.

We put a family on stage that it's like the family I grew up with. It was David's family, so many of our families. And they don't really show up in musicals a lot of the time. Musicals are, and I've written some of them, they're for magical creatures. And this happened in opera in the very beginning that it was like gods and fairies and all that stuff. And then in opera and musicals, everyday people. started showing up to say, like, are you going through this? Does your family do this? Sometimes at holidays, does the turkey go flying off the plate when someone loses their mind or

someone has too many pints and they're getting, you know, sassy? And we wanted to put a family that was dealing with something and was ill-equipped of how to deal with this thing that was inevitable that their child was, you know, that she had a limited time on this earth. Yeah, you said there's plenty to be sad about, but it's not a lot of it. a sad show. No, it's quite funny, and that's people don't really believe that until they see it, because so much of the comedy comes from people who simply are trying to solve things the best they can from the mother who has double carpal tunnel syndrome and surgery, and she's pregnant, and she hurts herself because she doesn't want to feel the heartbreak of really looking at what's

happening to her kid. And her whole family operates in this upside-down. world's way and it's really a coming of age story for someone who looks like they're already aged. Yeah, it sounds already just with you describing it and there's so much heart and it's kind of making me feel all the emotions without having even seen it yet because it's opening tonight. Yes. You've come over to be part of the rehearsals at the Hampstead Theatre. Different to the US version. Different in that it's Mike Longhurst's version. Mike did Carolina Change and I really loved what he did with it. Mike is a serious artist, but he's seriously funny.

And so I think that to write a musical that makes you laugh through your tears and cry through your laughter is it's quite difficult. And it's a razor's edge because these people aren't silly. They're really doing the best they can. That's what every family, just talking to Amy and in the back about how to stretch a dollar while you're cooking. It's like that's what the day-to-day is trying to make our families work. What's it like handing over to somebody else, though, and allowing them to create their vision? I remember, you know, you send your kids to school

and you just think, God be with you. I hope that the world is kind to you and you let, if you do your job well, your kids eventually leave and go out to meet the world and you want them to be showered with kindness and that's not always the case and you don't have any control. That's what it feels like to let a show go.

What led you into composing? Can we go back in time into your own life? But you were three when you started playing piano? It was three. I just, when I used to play, it's funny because there's a piano right here. And you were tinkling earlier. I had a magical moment. It's a great piano.

And I've heard a rumor that I've been gifted this piano. I wonder if I can get it through security. Well, you can because you're, you know, women in their 60s can steal anything, can't they? I mean, picnic table piano is all for, I'll take a couple of mics with me. I am, I had a, I used to sit on. all these phone books, and I had this contraption that made the pedals for my tiny little feet. I just loved the piano. I came to it naturally. I think kids are three or four. I always tell parents just put instruments, you know, not that you want a kid to make more noise, but it's better

than, you know, some of the toys that make that endless rambling. And I just naturally went to it and started writing things. I had a wonderful first teacher who let me go. And then I got into some more serious programs which I really detested and quit music for a good three or four years. So it was looking backwards, but I understood why I did that. And then I found it when I was, I refound it when I was 17 and I had moved to New York and I came back my own way. You gave up training to become a doctor to find a career in music. I was in the pre-men.

My father was a doctor. My mother was a nurse, so we were a pretty much science-based household. My father had his office in our house, so some people would ring the wrong doorbell, and they would come in carrying their own thumb. And I thought, oh, you know, you just get used to. But the thing I loved is there is a science to music. There is a science to writing a show about getting together, being part of a team and thinking, why doesn't this show work and look at it? That is the part of medicine that I really admire most is the people who can look at something and say, what is going wrong here? and then get a solution.

And then to break into an industry and be across lots of different genres, musical theatre, opera and film as a female composer. I mean, quite not usual. Not usual, but it's becoming more usual. A lot of the women, the people who I mentor are women. Did you feel like you were carving, forging a path?

You know, honestly, no. I felt like I was just trying to live paycheck to paycheck. When you're young, it's like that. I did move to a lighthouse when I was in my early 30s to really understand how to use my time well because as a writer you're alone in a room a lot and I wondered if I was just going to eat dairy milk chocolates and sit and watch TV

but I didn't I really understood something about time as a writer which I didn't know I had. Oh, can we explore that a little bit more? I like this idea of you moving taking yourself to a lighthouse. I know so Virginia Woolf. So, Virginia, Wolf, and to just discover what would happen. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting because my father and mother didn't blink. And I thought, if my kid now said to me, I'm going to live by myself in an isolated lighthouse,

it would give me pause. They were just thought like, oh, that's just Janine. You know, she just has this new sort of crazy idea. But it was essential for me to understand as I was nearing 30 or my early 30s what time felt like. and how to use it and not be under someone's thumb, not have anybody else set up the tent pulls. I was setting my own, and I was really curious about it,

and not scared that I was going to be alone. I had seen the shining, and I knew what was possible. But in that idea of, like, what kind of life am I going to make for myself before I have children or get married? And what did you decide? What epiphany did you have? How did you emerge from the lighthouse?

How I emerged was that I never forgot, that I was there. Every morning I would wake up and think this is never going to happen again. You are, used your time really well. So it was, it changed the way that I really looked at time. And also being by a giant lake and watching it freeze and unfreeze, being with nature in a way and silence that forever changed the way that I see and hear the world. And how interesting that you did that in your 30s and here you are now with Kimberly Akimbo, which is exploring those themes. Can I ask you about your grandfather? Oh, my grandfather was a wonderful composer, not known at all. I have all of his manuscripts. He grew up in Sicily, immigrated to the states, and couldn't find his way as a musician, ended up pumping gas, and died of pneumonia when my mother was five. She and her sister were sent to a convent to be raised because my grandmother couldn't financially do it. So when I feel the pull, I

I say this to my students a lot. What is your ancestral pull? You are not alone in the room when you compose. There are people with you, your teachers, your ancestors. Who are they? Invite them in. And it sounds corny cornucal. But it's really true.

If you just ask yourself, what is the lineage? Who is in my line? You don't feel as isolated. No. And it's beautiful full circle moment that your grandfather, who was undiscovered but had this talent and that was his passion that now his granddaughter is, well, breaking boundaries at the top of her game.

It's remarkable. And how are you using your time well now? Well, it's a really good question. The world, I live in New York City, which I love. So much of the world is difficult there. It's really difficult for artists. So I feel like part of my job and this part of my career is to make the path not as difficult.

It's always going to be a struggle for artists to make a living. But I feel like I teach at Yale. And one of the things that I'm very passionate about is having students who want to go into the field and actually hiring them or having them clerk with me so that they can get practical experience, not just from the academy. And important for mentoring women?

Yes. Women, you know, we, a lot of us say, I'm sorry before we answer questions. people, women from my generation who were really coming forward, the advent of feminism, they still feel like they take up too much space. I've always felt that. I am too much. I ask too much. I think too much. I am trouble. I take up too little space, that constant evaluation. And that is a waste of time. Yes. Keep being trouble. Keep bringing us these magnificent stories. And thank you so much for your time this morning. Such a pleasure. Award winning composer Janine Tesori

and Kimberly Akimbo opens tonight at the Hampstead Theatre in London and runs until the 7th of November. Janine, thank you once again. 8444 is the text number. Growing businesses deal with the same problem. Too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform

fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information, and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service, Odu gives you one place to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's ODbolo.com. Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen.

Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription. Now for the latest in our series where our academic researchers in residence talk about something that's caught their eye this summer. Beth Mallory is Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Health Communication at University College London.

She's been troubled by a phrase we've discussed a few times on Women's Hour, medical misogyny. I think there is a kind of constellation of issues that people are trying to draw together under this umbrella of medical misogyny. things like dismissal of self-reported pain or symptoms, especially where there is a lack of concrete markers for diagnosis. And that's often the case with things like endometriosis and adenomyosis. It's often the case that you don't have something that you can necessarily find and pinpoint straight away. And we know also that there is an issue around women being less likely to have their pain treated. than men. So dismissal. Normalization is another one, you know, being told, well, that's, that's just

normal. That's, that's just what giving birth is like or that's just what periods are like. And again, that is very, very problematic in something that we need to negotiate as a society, I think. Where do we draw that line of normal? We don't want to over-pathologize things, but we also don't want to under-pathologize things. And people being told, this is just a period, this is just what a period is like, is actually really damaging when people are experiencing crippling symptoms of endometriosis, for example. Medical misogyny is a constellation of all these different things and is talked about in all these different ways around diagnosis and dismissal and gaslighting and expectations. But I would question whether that is the most effective way to combat these issues

or whether actually trying to do that, and especially without defining it, brings its own kind of raft of issues along with it. If you look at 10 different posts on Instagram about medical misogyny, they won't all be talking about the same thing. And I don't know how useful that becomes then, because if we're all talking about slightly different things, I don't know how we begin to combat that. And that's before you even start thinking about this demoralizing effect that that kind of discourse has on healthcare professionals in my work, which is much more focused generally on maternity contexts. There's a huge morale issue in terms of maternity care at the moment.

And I think if we continue to talk about medical misogyny as we are at the moment, it risks alienating the people who need to be at the forefront of combating this kind of gendered imbalance in care, almost creating an atmosphere of accusation around them. Possibly a bigger issue is that we don't have consensus, us on what the word misogyny means, let alone medical misogyny. In general usage, misogyny now tends to mean, and has, you know, historically and etymologically, meant hatred of women. And that's the use of the word misogyny that we associate with, you know, stories in the media

around the manosphere and online discourses, which are, you know, straightforwardly misogynistic and are around kind of hatred of women and punishment of women and that kind of thing. I don't think that that's what we mean here. And there are lots of academic disciplines which talk about misogyny in more nuanced and probably more appropriate ways for this. The philosopher Kate Mann talks about misogyny as the law enforcement branch of patriarchy. So trying to impose those gendered norms quite subtly and maybe insidiously by exposing women and girls to hostile. treatment because of how they perceive them in terms of gender. If we think about medical misogyny more from that perspective, I think it becomes much easier to think about medical misogyny

less as here is an individual healthcare professional who actively hates the person in front of them who is accessing gynecological care and much more useful and helpful to think of it in terms of here is a system which has misogyny embedded within it for historical, cultural and societal reasons. And each individual healthcare professional probably doesn't hate all women, most of probably trying to do their absolute best for every single person who's in front of them. But they are part of a systemic issue. And I think if we think about it as more akin into systemic racism or institutional racism. And we don't tend to talk about institutional or systemic misogyny in a healthcare context.

We tend to hear those phrases in relation to policing, I think, mostly in the last couple of years. But actually, if we think about it more as a systemic rather than an interpersonal problem, I think it becomes much easier to combat this. So I think it's less, it's not just that the term is really diffuse at the moment. And it's actually that we have quite problematic associations with the term as it is as well. So I think the question is both we need a phrase that does what medical misogyny is trying to do, that captures these issues that are clearly issues and it's great that these issues are being spoken about and are being acknowledged, but also that captures them in a way that's helpful and doesn't kind of alienate.

a workforce that's really struggling with morale at the moment anyway. But the deeper sort of linguistic issue is that phrases and words that work in one domain don't always work in another domain. And I think as important as it is to have a policy and media spotlight on this issue, whatever we're calling it, it's much more important, I think, that we make sure that the people who are at the coal face in terms of providing healthcare, are brought with us on this journey to actually improving care and not alienated. That was Beth Mallory, who's the Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Health Communications at UCL giving her thoughts on medical misogyny.

We are going to be talking about cosplay. So I've been asking you about fancy dress. I had a message here saying, I love fancy dress. My husband and I had a party after our wedding where everyone had to dress. where everyone had to dress up with something beginning with tea. Our friends and family didn't disappoint. We had a tumble dryer, a tambourine and a table. I'm now a primary school teacher and used dressing up as a tool to immerse my pupils into history.

For example, recent one was Queen Elizabeth I, where we recreated parts of Europe and worked out how she managed to defeat the Spanish Armada. Sarah from Chichester, thank you for that. 84844. Now, as an ongoing cost of living pressures impact food bills, Amy Shepard has made it her mission to show people interesting, budget-friendly ways to cook with what they've got. It started as Amy's personal challenge to feed our own family and has grown into several Sunday times best-selling cookbooks and a community of more than a million followers on Instagram. Amy's latest book, Speedy Ten is out now.

It came out this week and it features 100 recipes that aim to make cooking dinner quick, simple, comforting and affordable. Amy, welcome to Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for having me. I've got it in front of me. It's beautiful. It smells amazing. I always have to sniff books. You've built this huge community of followers by sharing your recipes, 1.2 million, to be precise.

So how did it all begin? I'm completely untrained. So I haven't got any formal cooking qualifications. So my social media started 10 years ago. But it really started when my boys were little, when I went on maternity leave. And I gave up my job for the council. And we were really broke. We were living in a flat in London and our income had halved.

To be honest with you, looking back, it was really irresponsible that I gave at work. But I desperately wanted to be at home with my boys. And so I had to really quickly kind of rally and find new ways to cook on a really tiny budget. So I kind of thought if I couldn't earn the money, then I would save the money. And that was kind of how it all started really. And I very much kind of lent into how my mum had cooked when we were. kids we had kind of very frugal upbringing. My mum is an incredible cook and taught me how to cook, but I'd kind of, I guess, moved away

from that a bit. And so I kind of came right back to sort of how it started. We've got to give mum a shout out, mum's name. My mum's name is Lynn. Lynn, okay, Lynn, who listens to Women's Hour every day. Morning Lynn, who must be having a very nice, proud mum. So then you were cooking for the family, when did you decide to take it online? So it was really strange actually because I'd been doing this for a few years and cooking budget food and we'd moved to, we'd moved out of London at this point.

And so still at home with the boys and still cooking these budget recipes. And lots of friends started asking me for recipes that I cooked when their kids had come over. And I started finding that I was sharing it. And at the time, e-books were all the rage. Like lots of people doing e-books and putting them out on Amazon. And I thought I could do that. I could just put my recipes in a book. And so I did it and I didn't tell anyone.

I told my husband and my mom didn't tell any friends and just got my head down and wrote this book, which was really mad thinking about it. It was very homemade, very homemade kind of photos. And so I put it up on Amazon's an e-book and nothing happened. And so I did a press release. I thought I'm just going to write a press release. And it went completely bananas overnight. All of the press, one morning, all of the press picked it up,

all of the broadsheets and the tabloids. And my social media, which I'd only set up a few weeks before. Yeah. Just, I got thousands of followers overnight. And this really homemade e-book went to number one in all books, which was mind-blowing. Yeah, you've really tapped into something. Yeah, yeah. And also, you did the thing.

You didn't just sit and talk about it. You actually made the book, wrote your own press release, and then it exploded. I mean, I've got the cookbook in front of me. It's called Speedy 10, 10 everyday ingredients, 100 dinners in under 30 minutes. something really comforting about all your recipes, autumnal, very slightly nostalgic cooking. Is that deliberate? It's very deliberate.

I think because that's where I sort of started doing, like playing into the food that I'd kind of grown up with and it was very, it was all very comfort food, lots of cheese and lots of vegetarian food as well. So close to half the recipes in Speedy 10 are actually vegetarian. But I kind of think they're sort of accidentally vegetarian, things that people wouldn't necessarily notice that it's meat-free. So it's still really family-friendly, even for people.

who eat a lot of meat. So yeah, that was very deliberate that all of my food is very much like the food I grew up with. So what's the concept of Speedy 10? So the concept is, so it's the second book in a kind of 10 series. So the first one was Easy 10, and this is kind of the follow-up to that. So it's 100 dinner recipes. So there's no desserts, no lunches, all dinners.

And each, there's 10 chapters. So each chapter has 10 recipes based around a really simple ingredient. Like rice or pasta or cheese. the kind of stuff we've already got on our shopping lists. So hopefully when you cook from it, you've got most of the stuff in the cupboard already. I mean, you recently joked that I saw it on your Instagram, that this book might get you cancelled

because you're using ready-made pastry cases. You're swapping chicken breast for chicken mince in a gel-frady. And potato waffles. Your 20-minute waffle fish pie even makes it onto the front cover. Tell us more. I was so pleased that my publishers let me put a potato. waffle topped pie on front cover. I wasn't sure whether they'd let me.

But yeah, so in the potato chapter, there are a couple of potato waffle recipes. I just wanted it to be fun. I want people to enjoy cooking and for it to be really easy and cheap. And so every single recipe in the book you can make in under 30 minutes. And that includes prep time.

Like you, because we were discussing this before we came on it, my algorithm is a lot of food. Food and dogs and feminism. And there's a lot of discussion about the impact of ultra-processed food versus from cooking from scratch and whole food ingredients, especially on social media. How much attention do you pay to the sort of food trends and those conversations? I try not to follow food trends too much.

It's something that I did, I think, early on. I was desperate to kind of, desperate to fit in online. Ten years ago, I think it was a really different landscape on social media, that it was very chefy and I really wanted, I desperately wanted to be part of, of that. So it took a few years for me to find my own kind of niche and so actually people just want fun food and they want it to be easy. So I am really where I want to feed my family really good food but I'm also not massively strict. I think it's all about balance and I think when I found when I found my stride and I found my own niche, that's where my following went up because

I found that other people are doing exactly the same. You know, they sometimes have fish fingers and they sometimes have potato waffles and, you know, that's okay as long as it's part of a balance meal. I guess, you know, I love watching chefs doing the chefy thing. Absolutely. But also something to be said for watching someone make something that, you know, oh, I can just recreate that. Yeah, definitely. Or, you know, reading it in the cookbook.

So what kind of recipes get the biggest reactions on your socials? I recently did a series and it was called Cooking Like It's the 90s, which it was so much fun. So I'm 46. I was born in 1980. And it is all about kind of recreating food memories that we had from when we were kids. when we were teenagers. So I did a, I don't know if you remember them. Do you remember the Finder's Krispy pancakes?

Of course, I was never allowed. I would aspire to a Finder's crispy pancake. My mum was too busy cooking curry from scratch. I know, do you know what? It was only when we were teenagers. We finally had them in the freezer. I mean, my brother just loved them. They were so good.

They were a real staple in my teenage years. So I kind of did a cheats version. We were using like mini wraps with those and coated them in crumbs. And it was just, yeah, so that went down really well. and also this scone-based pizza that my mum used to make when we were kids. And I thought it might have been just one of those things that was just our family. But it's so lovely when you share something. And there was just hundreds and hundreds of comments.

People were saying, I remember my grand making that. My mum made that. And it seemed to spark memories for so many people. And I just love it when that happens. Well, it's exactly that, isn't it? Like food sparks memories. It just takes us back to a place of wherever that might be. Definitely.

Me, it's the instant the smell of cooking can just transport me. You use plenty of tinned superfoods. I do. You do, beans and lentils. Why do you like those ingredients? I love them because they're cheap and they're high in protein. And it really feels like you're cooking something from nothing. I remember when I did hand in my notice at work, like I say, pretty irresponsible.

And my mum said, you'll be fine. You'll live on chickpeas. You'll be okay. And that kind of really stuck with me. If all else fails, store covered ingredients, are just amazing. So I love turning something really simple into something really exciting.

And a lot of your recipes, as you've mentioned, you've got families in mind. It all started with you when you're on a budget. So with the cost of food, you know, still growing, what advice can you share to help people who are trying to keep their families healthy, nourished, full and also just want to cook delicious things? Yeah, I mean, I would say make a list of all of the recipes,

whether they're new or whether they're old, and just work from that list of meal plan. I think meal plan is one of the biggest things you can do to save money. Few ingredients, find recipes that have got few ingredients that are shared across lots of recipes. And having some veggie dinners as well is just the cost of meat is so insanely expensive at the moment that if you can do a few veggie dinners a week, it will save you so much money. And if people have lost the routine or, you know, they think they're just too busy, where can they begin?

It's really hard, isn't it? because especially at the end of the summer, I mean, I know it's been our eating habits have been so chaotic over the summer. So it's really hard to get back into kind of the swing of things. But I would say, keep it really simple. Don't, you know, don't be scared of having beans on toast and jacket potatoes. And, you know, it doesn't have to be elaborate meals every day. Just have simple comfort food, you know. Scramble egg. You know, there's a micro, there is, there's a microwave scrambled egg with cowboy butter recipe in there. And it's my boys absolutely loving. And as long as it's balanced, it doesn't have to be elaborate.

Potato Waffles, fish pie for dinner tonight. Amy Shepard, thank you so much for coming in today. Thank you for having me. And her new cookbook, Speedy 10, is out now. Thank you. And it looks delicious. 84844 is the number to text. Now, to cosplay, short for costume play.

Broadly speaking, it means dressing up as a specific character from a video game, comic book or even a film. Some would say it's more than just putting on a, costume. It's a performance art that has devoted fans worldwide and is now also judged in international competitions. Someone who knows all about the amount of hard work that goes into it is Rosie, also known by her stage name Valentine Moon. She's a judge on an all-female panel for a cosplay contest at GamesCon. That's one of the world's biggest gaming conventions, which is currently taking place in Cologne in Germany. Over 300,000 people are expected to attend. She's a

cosplayer herself with over 3 million followers on TikTok. Rosie's here as well as Laura Cress, who is a BBC reporter and gaming expert, who's also at the convention. Welcome to both of you. Rosie, I'm going to come to you first and I have to start by asking about your incredible costume. Tell me, describe your look to me. How long did it take and who are you? Hi. So my name's Rosie and I'm a cosplayer. I am a cosplayer. I am currently wearing a ballerina outfit from the game Infinity Nicky. It took about three and a half weeks to make, late nights, a lot of late nights. And I think this is one of the only places and professions where you can actually dress as a ballerina just for fun.

You made it yourself. How long did it take to make? So this costume took about three and a half weeks to make total. And all the materials you've gathered yourself, you did all the beading. I mean, is it usual that people make their own costumes? So it can vary wildly. So cosplay is usually split into two different parts. It could either be a performance-based aspect, which is the play part of cosplay, or it can be the making part, which is the costume part of cosplay.

And typically, a lot of people do make their own costumes. So that's where the cosplay contest comes in, where people get judged and get to actually get feedback from people who, all areas of industry. So my industry base is in sewing, but many other people have industry bases in foam or technical aspects, such of electronics. You can find every range of person. So people might have electrical, like, I don't know, technical bits to their costumes as well. Okay, so yours is in cost. You have got a background in fashion as well, which is why your dress is so exquisite. The detail is amazing.

And your makeup and the hair and your headdress, all wonderful. You mean, you look like a character. Are there any challenges in realising the costume of an animated character? Lots. So I think the first thing is if you think to any of your favourite animated characters, I'll pull up to say Daphne from Scooby-D, she's a great example. When you think of Daphne, you see her in 2D. And there's no texture of the fabric.

She could be wearing any type of fabric. The shape of the dress is fit for an animated character. So one of the basic problems of cosplay is making it actually full. fit a person. So you can be any shape and size and it doesn't matter. You can always cosplay because you can make it fit. Is Daphne from Scooby-Doo very popular? She is. So you see a lot of Scooby-Gangs around. It's great. Why do you think that is? So I think it's because Scooby-Doo is amazing as A, it's our childhood media and that is something that a lot of cosplay features around. You see so many different childhood media is everything from Scooby-Doo to

My Little Pony is also huge. But I think, specifically Scooby-Doo, cosplay is so social. You do it with so many friends. You can do every single member of the Scooby Gang. You can walk through and you will see, you will see a gender bent cosplay. So that's people in different genders doing different characters. You will walk through and you could see a female Fred, a female Shaggy, someone dressed with Scooby-Doo and they might have little ears on. And it's all about the social aspect. So the Scooby gang is something you and a group of friends can put together as complicated or as simple as you like. You can get a purple dress in a I'm in Shumper. Everyone knows your Velma.

I love it. Laura, I'm going to bring you in. How big of a deal is GamesCon? Paint a picture of where you are. So I'm just at the UK stand, actually, here in Gamescom. Hopefully you can hear me okay, because there's lots of people milling around in the background. I have to say, I feel pretty underdressed in comparison to Rosie. Where's your outfit? I'm just like a normal T-shirt.

Yeah, I know. What am I doing? But, yeah, it's such a huge event. It kicked off for the public from Thursday, and it's going on until Sunday. as you said, I think well over 300,000 people expected to sort of fill all these halls. There's over 70 countries that come, you know, bringing their brands with all their games. You know, you see massive games from the likes of Xbox,

from the likes of Nintendo. But then, you know, there's all these kind of indie booths where it's one person who's made a game and it's their passion projects. It's something they love and they're bringing it here. And people just like check it out. And it's so lovely. It's such a, it's a massive event.

You know, one of these horsemen, is about the size of four football pictures and there's 10 halls. My goodness. And you just go and some of these big games have such a big, big booths, you know, animatronics. I went to the Tomb Raider booth and that had a huge dinosaur head that you could pose next to. So it's really good fun, but it is absolutely crazy. And 64% of cosplayers are women. Is that represented at the convention?

And why do you think that that demographic exists? What does that tell us? Yeah, it's interesting. It is, it does lead a little bit towards women. And perhaps Rosie might know as well, but I wonder if it's just because of, you know, I don't know really if it's because it's kind of an interest in creating something and the kind of fashion elements of it.

But you know, you do see plenty of male cosplayers as well. Why do you think it is, Rosie? So I see a mix along across the board, but I definitely do see it leaning more female. And I think it is partially because as women, we are encouraged more to go into things. things like sewing. A lot of the men I talk to maybe they weren't, for example, our course at school is where I first started learning to sew, but boys weren't in it because they were

separate kind of classes. They did tech or woodwork, which you see so many men doing lots of huge armour builds. But now it's amazing because a lot more men are getting into it. So kind of women are leading the way. We're leading the way and we're making the kind of bringing it to the forefront and it's nice to see it growing because all the amazing women who are at the top of their fields doing things that are incredibly high level just for fun are getting credit as well. Yeah, it sounds absolutely joyful from what I'm hearing from both of you. So tell me about the contest itself, Rosie, what's some of the judging criteria. How easy is it to judge these costumes?

Next to impossible. It is so difficult. So we have a panel of six incredible judges, all women jury, and we're all incredibly excited to see everything up close in person, but technically we've already seen them. So we do an online prejudging before the contest even starts, and we have to narrow down over 100 entries of incredibly talented people, of costumes ranging from giant armour builds from video games,

all the way to intricately hand-sown embroidery from, say, a film or TV and you have to somehow compare them and figure out what skill levels are what and how many skills they used. Once that happens, we go into pre-judging which is what we're doing tomorrow

and I'm so incredibly excited where we the judges get to see all these costumes up close. So we get to flip over the skirts and see how they finished it. Is it their raw seams and edges underneath? Did they put a line in it? It's down to the wire

and when you start to differentiate between the podiums and first and second and third, and you think, how on earth do we separate these? And that's where the judges come in. So we have the most incredible panel of judges. And if anyone can go and check them out, I would definitely recommend. And because we have an incredible makeup artist who is sponsored by the makeup convention, who sponsors the convention. She's incredible.

We have an armor builder. We have another incredible seamstress. so everyone can kind of put their input in and say I might not know how they did the electronics but I can say how they did the embroidery I mean I really love the sound of this judging panel all of you at the top of your game and an armor builder as well

there's also performance aspects it's not just about the costumes yes so after prejudging we have the main show so that starts at on stage and we've got to all go out and put the trophies down and give a big like oh my god and then everyone comes on and they have to do a performance based on their character. So it can be anything from, I've seen people do incredible soliloquies based on The Hobbit

to all the way to a dance before based on a K-pop character from a video game. So you can go from sad and emotional and practically to tears to laughing your heart out. I'm sitting here thinking, how quickly can I book a flight to Cologne and just disappear into this world? Have it.

I have a live streamed. Oh, live streams as well. Okay, that's good to know. Laura, why is cosplay so enduringly popular? You know what? I think kind of Rosie just summed it up there because anyone can can really do it, you know, and it can be really informal or you can go to this level of it being really competitive. And it's people's passions. It's, you know, video games and things that they're really interested in any way. And it's, you know, their way of sort of almost giving back to these games that they love and and joining the community because it's, you know, it is a community, even if it's competitive. People, you know, will share tips and share advice. And it's something that really can people can, people can, can, Bondover. And a safe community, a safe community for women to be part of.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Rosie, tell me about how you feel when you put your costume on. Incredibly, it feels like a full circle moment because after months and months, it can be months of work at times. This was three and a half weeks a month of work from the planning stage.

And when you finally put it all together, often you don't even try it on before you get to the convention altogether. the wig, the shoes, the dress. So you put everything on and you suddenly think, oh wow, it works. It feels so full circle. You go to the convention and people recognize you.

Everyone's so friendly. Like, you can go up to, you know, anyone. And you can be like, oh my God, your costume, you get pictures. And it's just community. And I think that's the beauty of it is everyone is so friendly. And as you were saying, you can go from, there's no way to cosplay. You can be the most competitive.

person and you can be the least it doesn't matter. Laura Cress and Rosie, aka Valentine Moon, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your convention. I'm going to read this one out. I'm a 49-year-old mother of two teens and I've been cosplaying for 10 years at Comic-Con and charity fundraising events.

I started out buying costumes, but I tend to make them now. So lots of people are involved in this. That's almost the end of the programme. But before we do end, in honour this week, we have lost a great feminist philosopher, Dolly Parton. We lost her this week, so I will end with a quote.

And she said, Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. Enjoy your weekend. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

And we are back for a 12th series. Everyone in that film is wearing their own pants. We're joined by comedians like Kyle Smith Bino and Desiree Birch Can't see how this would go wrong. We'll meet many medieval saints. Motivational speaker saint. With a sort of Madonna head mic on. We're doing a history of underwear.

Plus there's loads more. You're dead to me. Listen on BBC Sounds. Get more with BBC podcasts. Wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows. Like evil genius, good bad billionaire and your dead. to me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our

podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription.