Woman's Hour - Nadine Shah, Vivian Oparah, Baby loss certificates, Amber Heard trolling

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Through her songs, the Mercury prize nominated singer/songwriter Nadine Shah has explored mental health, the refugee crisis and feminism. The subject matter of her last album, Kitchen Sink, included themes of fertility, tradition and identity told through the stories of women at different stages of their lives. Now Nadine’s latest work - Filthy Underneath – is a raw collection of songs which chronicle a period of unprecedented turbulence in her life from grief to addiction and PTSD.The new podcast Who Trolled Amber? investigates allegations that Amber Heard was trolled online by an army of AI bots after her trial with Johnny Depp. Podcast host Alexi Mostrous and Professor Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, discuss this and the wider implications of abuse of women online.                                                                                                           Parents across England who lost a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy can now apply for a baby loss certificate as part of a new government scheme. Babies who are born dead after 24 weeks are officially registered - but this doesn’t happen for babies born before that stage. Every year there are thought to be a quarter of a million miscarriages and more than 11,000 hospital admissions for losses because of ectopic pregnancies. Now, campaigners say they’re thrilled that families will finally get the acknowledgement that their baby existed - for however short a time. Emma Barnett speaks to one such campaigner - Zoe Clark-Coates – who runs the baby loss and bereavement charity The Mariposa Trust and campaigned for these certificates for nine years.                                                                                                  Vivian Oparah played the female lead in British hit film Rye Lane, for which she was Bafta-nominated this year. She's now starring in a new TV comedy thriller called Dead Hot, playing the sister of a man who's mysteriously disappeared. Vivian joins Emma in the Woman's Hour studio.Presented by Emma Barnett Producer: Louise Corley Studio Engineers: Emma Harth & Gayl Gordon

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 Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Good morning and welcome to the programme. Today I can promise you live music with a searing message from Nadine Shah, some excellent drama from the star of the British hit film Rylane, Vivian Opera, and details of a new certificate thousands of women have been applying for. But first, let's turn our attention to something naughty, difficult and crucial,

a new line of critical thinking that perhaps women need to be particularly equipped with. The idea of this has come from a trial that gripped audiences around the world, for good or for bad. In 2022, a legal battle between the former spouses, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, unfolded in a Virginia courtroom. Depp had launched a $50 million defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife following a newspaper opinion piece in which she stated she was a public figure representing domestic abuse. Heard subsequently filed a $100 million countersuit, accusing Depp of defaming her by claiming her allegations were untrue. Depp won his defamation case against Heard in 2022. A U.S. jury, I'm sure you'll remember, found that he had never assaulted Heard, but he lost a previous trial here in the UK in 2020 on similar charges. That trial

found on the balance of probability that he had abused Heard on 12 occasions. As well as making headline news around the world, the trial dominated conversations on social media with strong hate and vitriol being directed at Amber Heard. She was brandished a liar and a manipulator by Johnny Depp's fans. But now we come to a new question or perhaps a new lens on this. Who was marshalling that court of public opinion? Because what was striking was the extreme vitriol that she faced in that online space on so-called social media. A new six-part podcast by Tortoise Media called Who Trolled Amber suggests she was trolled in online in part by a coordinated army of bots, some of them apparently operating from Saudi Arabia. The podcast host and head of investigations at Tortoise Media, Alexi Monstrous,

joins me now to discuss this and some of the findings, as does Professor Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Mindaroo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. And we'll come to some of those wider implications of the abuse of women online and also who is controlling what we think and why women are still in the firing line. Alexi Monstrous to come to you first. Good morning. Good morning. Tell us some more about this new way perhaps we should look at what happened and the link between the bots and this court case that you found. Sure. So when the court case happened in 2022, I actually wasn't that interested in it

because even though it was everywhere, I sort of saw it as a celebrity story, as a kind of celebrity spat. And then I spoke to someone kind of in the world of disinformation, a former spy, whose job it was to track disinformation campaigns perpetrated by states like Russia and China. And he said, you've got to have a look at what's happening with debt we heard because the patterns that i'm seeing online there are similar to the patterns that i'm used to when i'm looking at states and that kind of got me interested in what had happened online because there had always been rumors that there were bots and trolls involved in the case but you can't discount that there are also

thousands upon thousands of genuine, real Johnny Depp fans that feel very strongly about the actor. So we wanted to try and do something kind of forensic. So we got this database of a million tweets that had been posted against Amber in the run-up to the trial. And we got two data analysts to look into those tweets. And one of them found that in his conclusion, 50% of all of those tweets were sent from inauthentic sources, i.e. from bots or from paid a significant part in kind of framing the public debate about Amber Heard, even before the jury took their seats in the case. Do you know why, if this is the case, why this has happened? Who has asked for this? The question of attribution is like super difficult. I mean, it's difficult enough in this like AI age

to like tell a bot from a human being. But then to work out like who commissioned it is like the question. I mean, I think... Well, I'm happy we get to it then. Let's try to understand it because in all seriousness, the commissioning of such, if it was commissioned, is really important and for people to try and understand what's happening in front of them. Totally. I mean, one of the things that we found out from speaking to people in this industry is that it is really quite easy to commission like a bot campaign.

There are companies out there, lots of companies, digital PR companies. You only have to pay them a few thousand pounds and they'll do it for you. So the list of suspects around this is quite wide. It could be someone from Depp's team. It could be a fan. One of the perpetrators that we do think we've identified is someone close to the Saudi Arabian regime, because what we found were all these like Twitter accounts that looked like genuine Johnny Depp accounts. They tweet like 20 times a day about Johnny Depp and like against Amber Heard. And they're all in English. But when you put their details into the Wayback Machine, which is like this tool that saves historic versions of web pages,

you see that they've actually deleted hundreds and hundreds of tweets. And all these tweets are in Arabic. And none of them mention either Depp or any other celebrity. And they're all about bigging up the Saudi regime, and particularly the Saudi leader, Mohammed bin Salman. And if you look at Saudi Arabia's relationship with bots, they've got a long history of using bots to kind of prop up their supporters and disparage their enemies.

Have you had a response? Because we've tried this morning. We've contacted Johnny Depp's legal representative for comment, haven't had a response. We've also contacted the Saudi Arabia embassy here in London for comment and haven't heard back. What has been the response is that you've been able to garner? So neither of those two parties responded to us either. We have got a response from Adam Waldman, who's a lawyer for Johnny Depp, kind of Johnny Depp's like right hand man, because the podcast deals with his role in Who Trolled Amber as well. Instead of answering any of our questions, he posted snippets of the questions on Twitter with these like sarcastic replies, encouraging like a wave of Depp supporters to troll us.

So that's the sort of I think that's the sort of like environment that we're dealing with. And I mean, you've also pointed having written about this, you've also pointed to the fact that some of the money you said, some of the money that's come for some of Johnny Depp's projects has come from Saudi Arabia as well. Some of the links are there or how does that fit together? Yeah, it's crazy. So when we found these Saudi accounts, my first question was like, why would Saudi bother like supporting Johnny Depp? And then the more you look, the more you realise that like his last two films have been pretty much funded by millions of dollars of Saudi money.

But not only that, according to Bradley Hope, an author who we interviewed for the podcast, Depp and MBS himself have formed this like bizarre bromance where like Depp has been to Saudi Arabia for like, you know, seven or eight times in the last 18 months, he stayed on MBS's yacht. And the two, the two apparently have a kind of personal friendship, which I find pretty extraordinary. Because, you know, again, at the heart of this, you aren't able to show definitively, as I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, that this has been, these bots have been commissioned by Johnny Depp or the legal team working for him. There may also have been a decision because of

that relationship for these to be commissioned. There's also evidence in your programme about messages coming or networks coming from Spain and also Thailand tweeting pro-debt messages with these individuals getting in touch with companies that had worked with Amber Heard saying this brand supports domestic violence against men. So you've seen coordination away from Saudi Arabia and other networks. But I suppose if you're putting that information in front of people as you are with the podcast, what is your takeaway from that in terms of how we are to understand what's happening and

how perhaps we're being manipulated and how women come into this? of this well i i think for me it does raise a big warning about like how we all get our information today on on like so much of it comes from on online sources and and our evidence suggests that those sources can be quite easily manipulated by people with vested interests in making you think something that you might not otherwise think so So that's one thing. And then in terms of the misogyny, there was so much misogyny around the death case. And what a lot of these bots and trolls seem to have done isn't create that misogyny. They were kind of like agent provocateurs. They just like stoked it up. And they made the hate that was already there even more extreme and dangerous. And as you stay with us, Let me welcome Professor Gina Neff.

Gina, what's your thoughts hearing this investigation and the mapping that's been done about where some of these messages, a significant number, it seems, of these messages have come from? Well, I was saying to Alexi earlier, it was the first thing that I read yesterday when the Tortoise put the reporting out about the story. It's both surprising in terms of understanding the depth that foreign manipulated information played in this case, but also not surprising because we know women face an extraordinary amount of online harassment. They face more online harassment than men. And women in the public particularly have been complaining from journalists to politicians to actors, complaining about the state of online affairs for them. And when you hear that, you know, you may think, well, we've heard people trolling others. You think of real people, though. You think of people individually sending messages that will have those views. But when you hear about things that are

an organised campaign like this, it's an important thing to try and understand, isn't it, for the world we're living in when it comes from, you know, trying to access justice in a court case through to elections. I think this is what people have to understand. We're talking about the real world here. There's not some magical, mythical online space that this harassment is happening and that people can just simply shut it out. We're talking about implications for, in this case, justice, but in many cases for women's work and livelihoods, for their ability to connect with friends and family, for their ability to live their lives. We can't simply shut social media out. And people need to have access to means of recourse to be able to connect with the people they want to connect

and filter out those messages that are harming. In this particular case, we see that, you know, we have good evidence suggesting that a foreign government might have been involved in this. We know that 81 countries have spent from public intelligence sources. We know 81 countries spend money on social media disinformation platform spending. That's incredible. We need to be calling on our governments to cease those kinds of online ops that have happened. We also know that 61% of women have experienced some kind of online harassment. The platform companies have a responsibility to help put tools in people's hands that help them combat this kind of abuse when it happens. I suppose we've also talked a lot on the programme lately about children. We've talked about the Online Safety Act, as it is now.

And Alexei, if I could just come back to you on this. It's also going to be beholden until those things take place, until those changes are there for people. And I wonder if this is part of what you're trying to do to just have the awareness that things may not be as they seem and pictures in this case, or painted of women, and how women are being presented may also not be anywhere near where how that person should be treated or viewed. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think given that the platforms are not really properly dealing with this problem themselves, it would be good if people online kind of stopped to think about why they were thinking what they were thinking, where those opinions came from. We interviewed a fake journalist as part of this podcast called Julian, who worked for a PR company.

He wrote hundreds and hundreds of articles that were put out online in fake names. He pretended to be a nurse, a professor, and he never got caught. And he's just a small part of a wider ecosystem of disinformation, of bots and trolls that kind of all come together. So, yeah, we should be asking ourselves why we think what we think. But what was also interesting, just coming back to the misogyny side of this, is you said that the bots and whomever put those bots together or commissioned this work were reflecting some of the misogyny that was already there. What comes first? You know, who creates that? I know it's within society. And as we were just hearing you know from Gina online is part of offline it's part of our real world you can't ignore it but but would what were they looking to amplify the messages that were already there or did they

create some of the misogyny what came first? It's it's genuinely hard to tell because it's all kind of mixed in together so like for instance there was was a hashtag in this case that was a hashtag abuse has no gender, which basically argued that like a man is just as likely to get abused as a woman, which obviously is factually untrue. quite, you know, quite strongly by a number of real life debt supporters. But that hashtag was also magnified by sources, including inauthentic sources. I think that's the thing to pick up on, right, that we have the capacity for these messages to operate at speed, scope and scale that is unprecedented. And so taking a kernel of something, abuse is something that is bad, matching it with something that is held by a minority, men can be abused too. And then amplifying that message over millions of accounts, that leads to the sense that we're, you know, we have a cone of silence that, well, maybe my long held belief or my,

what I know to be true isn't true anymore. That's the challenge that we face with mis and disinformation. What do you think? What do you think, Gina, will be the impact and has been the impact on women where there is this coordinated attack? Well, we we've already seen from journalists that the Filipino journalist Maria Reza has suffered horrible attacks from online trolls in this country. Carol Kumput-Waller has also talked about the trolling that she has experienced. We have women in politics from Nicholas Sturgeon was cited trolls in deciding to leave the role in politics. We know that it has a chilling effect. UNESCO released a report last year that said that women's participation in public life

and women in journalism are already self-policing what they say so they won't face that kind of harm and abuse. The challenge is that we have these tools for platform companies when we're experiencing acute attacks of harassment that you can, you know, put your accounts on private or close your DMs for a while. But if you're a woman in political life, those acute tools don't work if you want to be visible and you want to continue to have a voice. So we need to work better on better technical tools put in people's hands. I think we need to work on better regulatory

legal tools that show the real harms that people are facing online to their offline livelihoods and well-being. And in this case, Amber Heard was branded a liar. And if the bots amplified this messaging, what can we say or what do you think we can say at this point about the potential long-term impact on all women and perceptions of women saying what has happened to them in domestic abuse cases? That's the other side of this, I suppose. Well, I called it a new dark age in a piece that I wrote in Wired, that we really are at risk of running women offline. And we already see that in marginalized people and people who have high levels of fear about what is said about them online might impact. Already in the Middle East, we see women, young women choosing not to engage in social media because they're worried about the implications for deeply held fears of honor and safety and shame. That somebody can create a campaign that can ruin your life, that's a pretty

big risk. But to have that in a space where we're all depending on being able to connect with our employers, our friends, our family, and create that kind of voice that makes us able to be heard in democracies, that's, I think, raising the stakes to an unprecedented level. And we must do something about it. A new dark age. Are you listening to this, who's joining us right now, and you're thinking, we've already got a message here. Society doesn't need bots to hate and target women, says Christina. Thank you for that message. What are you thinking when you hear this? Do you think we are in a new dark age? Do you self-censor? Let me know on 84844. That's the number you need

to text the programme. Things may not be, of course, at the same level that you're hearing about some of the high profile people affected, but you may be able to relate to this. And also, what is your view, especially as we in this country and, you know, millions of people around the world head to elections in the next few months, as we expect, we don't have a date for the general election here. When you think about how information is being weaponized like this increasingly, and you hear some of the information around this particular case, what is your view of this and especially how women come into this?

You were just listening to Professor Gina Neff there. Thank you, Gina, to you. Alexei, just a final quick word on what Gina was saying there about women being pushed out of the space. As a man reporting in this space and bringing this information together, have you seen differences firsthand with how women, when they've interacted with your findings, are experiencing a response versus yourself? Yeah, definitely. 120 percent. Definitely. So both in terms of the sources that I spoke to and the female journalists that have. Oh, Alexi, your your line has just frozen on us. I'm hoping we can get you back. Alexi Monstrous there talking to me. One minute.

Alexi, I'm so sorry to cut across you. We lost you. You froze. You said 110 or 120%. I can't remember the exact number. Carry on. Say again. Sorry.

I was going to say, yeah, anyone that commented on my findings or anyone I spoke to on the record as a source who was a woman got a lot more hassle online than any man. Really? Yeah. Really a big difference between how you've been treated versus some of the women who've been involved? I think I've got a lot because I'm the focus of it. But like if I compare the male sources who I've named versus the female sources, and the female people who've commented on my story versus

the male people who've commented on the story, there's a big difference. Fascinating. Well, there you go. You can always have your voice heard here on Woman's Hour. If you're listening, please do get in touch when you've just heard some more detail about how some of the reaction to the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard court case seems to have been coordinated, according to this investigation on Torsus.

As I said, we haven't had a response from anyone in the Saudi Arabian embassy or any of Johnny Depp's team this morning, certainly not to Woman's Hour. But with this new podcast out from Tortoise Media, we're just hearing about some of the potential findings there and what they potentially might mean. Who trolled Amber? What is your takeaway? And how are you reading the world around you? And you certainly engage online. Do you have a sceptical view of things? Do you look at things and think, well well is that quite how it seems? Do you

go to things with your own views formed and then see what else you can take? This literacy this level of literacy especially when it comes to even finding women's voices online is incredibly important to tune into and we're interested to, I'm interested very much and we're all interested to hear your views today on

social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour you do not I hope feel you need to hold back here. Or you can email me through the Women's Hour website. Do get in touch. But my next guest has been campaigning for the following change to happen for nine long years. But as of the end of last week, parents across England who lost a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy can now finally apply for a baby loss certificate as part of a new government scheme. Babies who die after 24 weeks are officially registered, but this doesn't happen for babies before that stage. Every year there are thought to be a

quarter of a million miscarriages and more than 11,000 hospital admissions for losses because of ectopic pregnancies. Zoe Clark-Coates runs the baby loss and bereavement charity the Mariposa Trust and has been pushing for this change for nearly a decade. I spoke to her just before coming on air and she began by telling me more about what the certificates look like. They look like a normal birth and death certificate actually and that was really important. When we spoke with thousands of families that's what they said they wanted. They didn't want it to look like a commemorative certificate that was almost patronising. They wanted something that looked and was significant so that's what they look like.

And to apply to have one, what do you have to do? What information do you have to give? You don't have to have a lot of information because you don't need to supply evidence. So you need to live in the UK. When the loss happened, you need to live in the UK now. You need to be over 16. You need to have a GP so you can add that to the application process. But other than that, you don't have to supply evidence. And the reason we did that was because this is backdatable. At the moment, it's slightly restricted just because we didn't want the system to crash. But soon it will open up to everybody, whether your loss was yesterday or 80 years ago. And we were acutely aware that many people don't have evidence of the loss. Most people, these losses happen in their own home and they don't report them to their GP. So if we stipulated evidence was needed, millions of people would be excluded from being able to apply. So you put in the information of yourself, your GP, the time of your loss, the dates if you know it, a name, if you named your baby. All of these sections are optional. If you know the information, you can put it in. If you don't, you don't need to the system you didn't

want it to crash we didn't did it crash it did crash i was hearing from people on the day saying then it crashed but do you know what people didn't complain they said no but i think i'm not alone well i was going to say it speaks to the number of people in this situation and also wanting something to feel like it wasn't just in their mind. Yeah, absolutely. It's about this formal recognition. And I don't think you know how important that is until you're actually offered it. The amount of people who got in touch with me and said, I had no idea I needed this until I was just given it. Because for many bereaved families, they're kind of grieving for

something that the world doesn't recognise. Often the world doesn't even know they've gone through it. So to be given that recognition to say, we recognise as government that you've lost a baby means so much to so many people. There's a new book out that Kat Brown has put together that I was just reading for those who don't get to become a parent of a living child. But there's a phrase of disenfranchised grief, the idea, which you'll be very familiar with your background, that, well, you say maybe a bit more, but the idea that it's not something that is recognised, perhaps what you're going through. Yeah, absolutely. For many people, they don't go on to have a living child. And so they are robbed of even the title parent, mother, father. And that's so hard for people because, as you all know, when you are trying for a baby, when you want to have a baby, your heart's already made room in your career, in your home for a child.

And if that never happens, the agony of that is truly terrible. And so what I hope for those people too, is this almost gives them that recognition. It will say mother, father on those certificates, because they are that. The book I was just talking about is called No One Talks About This Stuff, which is just out now, edited by Kat Brown. And I think, you know, how you feel others are in that place and how you talk about that is very important, which is why these certificates give a physicality to that perhaps as well. And a recognition and an official element to it.

You come at this from a very personal place as well. You've spoken about your own baby loss. Yeah, so I was a grief specialist, actually, going back 20 years, and thought I understood loss. I thought I understood grief. I was trained. I helped people through it. But then I experienced it myself, and I realised all the training in the world

doesn't give you what first-hand experience does. My world completely fell apart when we lost our first, then second, then third child. And we got to a point where we just thought, how can we even continue? It feels almost like self-harm trying to have a baby because of the wounds that it incurs mentally physically and thankfully actually that choice was then taken out of our hands because we decided not to have children and then miraculously found out we were pregnant and that was the first child we got to bring home which felt like such a beautiful miracle and I'm just so glad it was taken out of our hands. And then after we had our daughter, we thought we wouldn't have any more children actually

and then decided to try it again. And then really naively, we thought, because we'd got to bring her home from the hospital, our dealings with loss were finished. Whatever was wrong was miraculously fixed. But then exactly the same happened. We were going for regular scans. We were watching our little boy grow on the screen.

And then on one horrible afternoon, our consultant, who was also a friend, his face just dropped while he was scanning me. And our daughter was in the room with us. And he just said, I don't even know how to tell you this, but his heart stopped beating. And we were back to that horrendous place where the trap door just opens beneath your feet and you just plummet and because our little girl was just sitting there looking at us and I just asked to be excused and I remember going into the restroom and just sliding down the wall screaming and just saying not again not again it was really horrible And then we went on to try again. And we just told our whole family we

were expecting on Christmas Eve. And no joke, minutes later, I went to the bathroom and started to bleed. And we were told quickly that we had lost that baby too. And that Christmas was so horrible. We were trying to make it so magical for our daughter but we were grieving yet again but in the January I just kept getting sicker and sicker and so in the end we decided to go and see a consultant just to find out what was wrong with me and they found out I was still pregnant and they misdiagnosed the miscarriage and I was actually expecting twins so we'd grieved that whole Christmas for this baby we'driage and I was actually expecting twins so we'd grieved that whole Christmas for this baby we'd lost and I was actually still pregnant that whole time and sadly I got sicker

and sicker during that pregnancy and ended up fighting for my life I nearly died and and tragically one of our babies died in that pregnancy But we did get to bring home our last daughter from the hospital. So that's how we've got two earthly children and five children that have run on ahead. That's how you talk about them. Yeah, I don't view them as gone forever. I've got faith. I believe they go on ahead and one day you will rejoin them but at the time of going through that I never thought I'd be able to smile or talk about them without just being broken

but I think that's a testament to grieving well and to walking through it now I can smile when I think about them and I'm just so grateful that they existed their lives were so short but their impact has been so huge what will it mean for you to to be able to get those five certificates you know I've been asked this so much because obviously we were the charity that started this campaign nine years ago but we started the campaign not for us we We started it for the millions of people we've been helping over the years as a charity. We support over 50,000 people a week. So we're hearing hundreds of stories a day where people are saying, I just need recognition. I just want that acknowledgement.

So that's how I knew this campaign needed to start. So that's why I started the campaign. And throughout it, when I've been asked oh why do you feel you need them so much I'd always say I don't actually it wasn't something I felt I needed myself however I knew so many people did and so all along I've said I don't even know if I'll actually apply this is something I'm doing for other people. And on Thursday evening, they went live on Thursday morning. I got thousands of messages over the course of the day. Yeah.

And my daughter actually read one of the messages out to me. And it said, I had no idea I needed this until you've given me that gift. And this is the first time I've ever got to write my children's name on anything and I was like yeah I've never got to do that in a formal capacity and so I will apply but I never thought I would so I guess I'm one of those people I didn't know I needed it that's very powerful I suppose it's it's also you won't know how you feel until they arrive as well. And having them and where you'll put them and what they'll mean in your life. Even if you didn't do it for that, you are someone who greatly deserves that recognition that you talked about.

Yeah. And I think also for my children that are here, they were like, oh, my goodness, we're going to have something in the family file that actually has our siblings names on and so the importance for them apart from us I think is really important they've always been aware they existed obviously because of the work we do and they're involved in that work too so they've they talk about them regularly how old are your children now 15 They are 15 and 12. And it's never been this taboo subject in our household. They're just part of our lives. They just say, oh, yeah, we've got siblings that just aren't here. And it's just something they regularly say.

And they've always been comfortable with because it's always been part of their truth, part of their story too. Zoe Clark-Coates, a big thank you to her for opening up and sharing her personal experience and the energy really behind some of that nine-year-long campaign to get those certificates in England. She runs the baby loss and bereavement charity, the Mariposa Trust. And if you wish to apply for a baby loss certificate, you can find the link on the Woman's Hour website. Many messages coming in, for instance, Zoe saying, or the quote of Zoe rather saying from one of our listeners, children that have run on ahead, wow, and welling up in the car park.

You aren't the only one. Eleanor has written in to say, sat here suddenly sobbing, listening to the lady talking about certificates for baby loss. The sadness is buried deeply, but surfaces unexpectedly. Recognition of the loss is so important. Thank you for that message, Eleanor. And another one, I'm so glad to hear about these death certificates. I had my 20-week scan and my baby had died. I had to give birth to him and my family didn't understand why I wanted a funeral. I bought a teddy for his coffin as no baby should be in heaven without one. And more messages coming in.

It's a very personal thing. And we know that many, many women, many families have applied for these certificates. And it only opened on the government website in England last Thursday, but all details on our website. Also messages coming in like this one from Meg in Brighton talking about online, the space for women, self-censorship, what you put out there, what you feel about it in light of this investigation showing the response to the Johnny Depp Amber Heard court case. I call it public media, not social media, and I don't do it because of the destructive impact I've witnessed it having. Our awful content had a direct and terrible influence on my daughter's mental health when she was a teenager. It is not social in any positive way, in my opinion.

Well, it has at the same time, Meg, helped a lot of people, I suppose, find people, connect. But you have got a very clear view there. The curse of social media is that it's anonymous. If all accounts had to be identified, people would think twice about what they're saying, says Caroline. I don't interact with social media, reads this other message on text. Real relationships are all that matter to me. I do not feel with social media, reads this other message on text. Real relationships are all that matter to me. I do not feel I'm missing out on anything. I think we're being controlled more and more. And another one here. I'm an autistic mixed race woman. I've finally decided

that I don't think the online space is worth expressing myself in any longer. I'd love to connect with people, but seeing people's comments is the biggest thing that stops me from posting. I would love a safer space that provides troll-free spaces. Keep your messages coming in. I hope you always feel Woman's Hour is a space where you do not need to self-censor and you can get in touch. But let me tell you about who's just walked into the studio. Vivian Opera, who you may know as the female lead and brilliant she was in it in the British hit film Rye Lane, for which she was BAFTA nominated. She's now starring in a new TV comedy thriller called

Dead Hot, playing the sister of a man who's mysteriously disappeared. Jess's loyalties are divided because her best friend Elliot used to go out with her now presumed murdered brother. Do keep up with this. But she's excited for Elliot when he meets someone new. Let's hear a bit. My guess, that

Vivian Opera as Jess and Bilal Hasna as Elliot in Dead Hot. Good morning. Good morning. We're going to get that same enthusiasm I feel here in that moment. But it's lovely to have you here. Thank you for coming in.

Lovely to be here. They are described, these two characters, as platonic soulmates. They are. What does that mean to you? I think every now and then in your life you meet someone and your friendship feels romantic because you love each other so much and you show up for each other like in the way that a romantic partner would but it's entirely platonic and it's just

I guess a love that is so deep that people can only sort of identify it from romance but yeah have you got any platonic soulmates all my best friends all my girlfriends have like held me down are definitely my platonic soulmates okay they're best friends, all my girlfriends that have held me down are definitely my platonic soulmates. Okay, they're there. And any now in Liverpool, which is, I believe, where this was from. Are you an honorary scouser?

You know, I spent a lot of time inside my flat in Liverpool watching, binge-watching films back to back to back to back, watching directors' entire filmographies. So I feel like I have

platonic soulmates, but they're all imaginal. Well, I'm sure it was still a good time when you did get out and about in Liverpool. But it's, you know, finding those relationships. Do you base it on real relationships, your experiences when you're trying to create those, whether it's with your sibling,

your lost sibling in this, or that platonic soulmate? Yeah, definitely. It kind of helps to mine your life for what might be relevant. And I've never had a big grief. Jess loses her twin brother. I can't imagine losing a sibling. So I kind of had to go into the mini griefs I've had,

like the heartbreaks or the friend losses, and see how I felt in those, and then use those as like a springboard to understand where she might be emotionally. Now, I do believe it's one of your siblings, a brother who lent you some money to get into the acting game or for a particular course. Yes. Tell us more.

Emeka, my big brother, my oldest brother, who used to pretend to be Jerry from Totally Spies when I was a kid. I was a really weird and quiet child and I have two siblings between me and him and they always used to play together, but he would always make an effort to like include me and play little games with me and yeah when it came around I got into National Youth Theatre it was like 400 pounds for the two-week course and come from working-class families that was a lot of money I didn't have a job mum couldn't and he was working at the time and he was like I'm gonna lend you this money but you're gonna get me back

someday and I have I have so you've paid that but you're going to get me back someday. And I have. I have. You've paid that back? I've paid it back. But that's an incredible, you know, these moments in your life when you look back on them. Entirely pivotal. Like, if he didn't give me that money and I couldn't have gone, I don't know, like, because the first job I got was through National New Theatre.

Then I got my agent. And, yeah, it's dominoes. And up for a BAFTA, Rye Lane. Let's get there. I do believe we've missed out on a neuroscientist. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's dominoes. And up for a BAFTA, Rye Lane. Let's get there. I do believe we've missed out on a neuroscientist. Oh my God. Yeah, apparently. But you know, I'm still dissecting minds,

but just in a more creative community. That's a lie. You've got that as a lie. It's not on your dating profile. Actually, I don't know if you're attached, but it'd be a great one. I actually, no, like I haven't ever said that before. It just came into my head there very fluently.

It's what we like to bring out of all that. Yeah, you really do. Honestly, I feel like I'm poised in a way that I've never been before. Primed. So not the neuroscience route, the scientist route. Now in the acting. And for those who've seen Rylane, I mean, South London, where I'm actually based now.

So it felt very familiar. And it also felt quite disruptive to the rom-com genre in some ways, didn't it? Yeah, I think Rain has such an idiosyncratic voice when it comes to this is rain alan miller listen back to her conversation with anita she actually yes but sorry carry on that was fab um you guys just have the best people on anyway um yes so rain um has such an idiosyncratic voice. And I think as well, when you see like that you want to put people that kind of aren't conventionally the beauty standard in like two leading romantic roles, immediately I'm like, oh, OK, like they want to have something which is slightly palatable to the audience because people don't want to take a risk. And this film was entirely made up of risks and then like a lot of heart from different people. So, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's been the hit that it's been because it made that connection.

And I imagine for you getting in and getting behind the curtain as well at BAFTA and all of that. How's that been? That was so weird. I literally was like I just particularly remember seeing Ryan Gosling in the flesh I don't know why he keeps coming up a lot of the moment with people saying he's distracting like for obvious reasons but like also I think it's that's a name that I've heard for so long in my life like he's a crush that everyone has had and then just to see someone like that in the flesh, I'm like, wow, I'm really here in this room.

Like Margot Robbie is in this room. Fantasia is in this room. I couldn't work myself up to speaking to Fantasia. I love her, but I just, I was like, you have been like figments of my imagination for so long and now we're sharing a space. It feels so special. I bet there must be a weird kind of pressure.

You know, you're on the breakthrough list here. You just want to run up to everyone going, I'm on the breakthrough. I've broken through. We're in the same switch. And you have to try and maybe find something to say quite quickly sometimes in these scenarios. You know what?

I don't feel the pressure because I kind of feel like it's an experience akin to being like the child and adult party. And I'm like, I haven't quite earned my stripe to talk to everyone yet, but I'm in the room. You don't go around with a bowl of crisps. No, no, no.

Like very like primary school vibes. I'm just here. I'm vibing, but I'm still the room. You don't remember the bowl of crisps? No, no, no. Like very like primary school vibes. I'm just here. I'm vibing. But I'm still in year seven or year one. Well, I think you're out of that now. I mean, but I think it's a great analogy, though, for trying to explain this. The newness of the space. But next time, I think you need to go and talk to Ryan.

I don't have much to say. I'm like, Ken was a brilliant, brilliant character. Some of your best work. The admiration is real. I wanted to ask though as well, I've seen you describe your characters in terms of dog breeds. You've got Jess in Dead Hot as a Labrador. The last was a Rottweiler.

Canine next on the list? I love, love like a canine. I'd love like a Doberman, like a big dog. Or like a pug jess is quite pug like as well okay there's two we're not gonna cross those though but i know are you now also working on any and i've promised our listeners there's some music and they're about to have some but you're also a musician are you doing anything on that front yeah i'm always making music i think especially in the past year with so much shifting in my environment,

it's kept me grounded to just be able to open my laptop and make a song. Are you a singer? I'm a producer. You're a producer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the dream is to maybe write, act and score a film. I've said it so many times, I kind of have to make it happen. I will do that.

I will. The laser light focus that just passed across your face. Yeah um I will do that um I will the laser light focus that just passed across your face yeah I will do it I'm in I'm on I'll do it all right I still think you're going to be a neuroscientist just fitting it I am my mum and dad would love that hello all to play for uh dead hot is available on prime uh from this Friday uh Amazon prime video good luck with it thank you all the best for finding that next step. Thank you for having me. That canine. And with the music as well. Vivian Opera, thank you to you.

More messages coming in. This one's interesting about whether you are expressing yourself or not. Someone's saying here, no name on this, and I should say you don't ever have to put your name on messages, although we've just talked about being anonymous online, but it's so you actually feel that you can share.

I recognise it's quite a weird thing to text into a presenter on a radio programme. I'm always grateful when you do. Someone here is saying, I self-censor. Ten years on from escaping an abusive relationship, I still do not feel I'm able to have a social media presence. I worry about the spreading of rumours and the manipulation of others. That's a very real insight into someone who doesn't feel they can express. But thank you very much for feeling like you can and getting in touch with us this morning.

To the music, because my next guest definitely does know how to express and, you know, her songs, the Mercury Prize nominated singer-songwriter Nadine Shah is here. She's explored a lot of different areas from her own mental health and struggles to the refugee crisis to feminism. The subject matter of her last album, Kitchen Sink, included themes of fertility, tradition, identity, told through the stories of women at different stages of their lives. Now, Nadine's latest work, Filthy Underneath, great name, is a raw collection of songs which chronicle a period of unprecedented turbulence in her life from grief to addiction to PTSD. Let's hear a clip from the new single Greatest Dancer.

Nadine Shah, listening to your own music, always a moment. Very awkward. Very, very awkward. Well, I'm going to be listening and we're all going to be listening to you at the end of our conversation. But Filthy Underneath, title where's that from um it's because of the uh the subject matter of the album um it's quite a lot of like macabre subjects like you were mentioning before um the long list of horrible things that went on like since 2018 Filthy Underneath is just kind of like you know the the muck under your fingernails. You were talking about social media just before as well. And it's the way you present yourself can look one way,

but actually under the surface things are entirely different. So it's basically a comment on mental health, really. Because a lot's happened in the last few years to you, hasn't it? Yeah, hasn't been great. But ever since, things have been pretty Yeah, it hasn't been great. It hasn't been great, but ever since, things have been pretty wonderful since. But it's constant work. My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in 2018.

And so I kind of left London and moved back home to be with her. And life just changed. Where's home? Home is Whitburn, South Townside. It's a beautiful part of the world. And it was actually, it was lovely actually. Looking back on that time, I'm actually really grateful

for the time I was gifted to spend with my mother. There were some beautiful moments. And now because I've done, I've properly grieved. I've been through recovery and things like that. I've let myself grieve. Because we should say, sorry, that you did lose your mum. Yeah, yeah.

And you went through that process. In 2020 as well, we lost my mum. And like so many other people, you're kind of robbed of the, of like the normal, normal, the process of grieving. Normally like you want to, you want to be with people, be surrounded by them, be taken out, and take yourself out of grief or talk about the person.

And I think there were so many of us who were unable to properly do that or to give funerals to the people that we love, proper ones, proper good send-offs to the people we love. So I think from that it caused PTSD. And then my mental health spiraled. And then there was substance abuse and a whole bunch of other awful, awful things. But then, yeah, I went to rehab, did a lot of work on myself, which I still continue to do. It doesn't just end, sadly.

It's constant work. But yeah, and I think, you know i i journal a lot and some of the songs on the new album i didn't necessarily intend for them to be songs at the time it was kind of more of a cathartic process just kind of getting things on a page but then they always end up being songs you know this happens on every album but it's interesting talking you know as we have been a bit about self-censorship and women and what they feel they're able to be publicly or not. And there's a lot of shame around addiction for everybody. It hurts or touches.

But there are some particularities around women and how it impacts on them. I know you've got views on, you know, not least with very high profile people in your industry, the late Amy Winehouse and how she was depicted. There are real specifics when it comes to women. Well, we don't, especially in rock music or in the music industry, a lot of men can kind of be, I might just be generalising here, but I have found that men can kind of be glamorised, that kind of substance abuse can be glamorised with them and it's cool, they're risque.

With women, not so much, from my own experience. But also it's, you know, the reason... I mean, I don't ever want to be considered a role model, ever, ever, ever. That would be a bad idea, a really bad idea. But if there's one thing I can do, with talking about the subject matters on this album, would be to encourage women to seek help if they have got issues with addiction

and that the rooms are there for them. There are women's only groups as well where women may feel safer from predators or whatever else or from shame. You're in a room full of beautiful other women who understand you have a shared experience. There's also rooms for Muslim women as well. You know, there's a whole plethora of these places

that we can find safe spaces. But yeah, I think there still is a real stigma towards women and addiction, unfortunately. You have a mixed heritage there and you're speaking out, I see, as someone who wants to talk about what those spaces are, who goes into them and where they feel they can speak openly. Totally, yeah.

And also, you know, your work doesn't shy away and previous work hasn't shied away from going towards the news, the issues of the news. I read somewhere, someone said one of your albums could sound like BBC News 24 if it was just read out agenda by agenda. I'm such a bore. I promise the next album's just going to be sexy disco songs. We can't say that about BBC News 24 if it was just read out agenda by agenda. Oh man, I'm such a bore. I promise the next album's just

going to be sexy disco songs. We can't say that about BBC News. We're here on Radio 4. Well, I've got to have a bit of allegiance. But the point is, there was an interesting line you said, you know, to an interviewer about if I'd given that album to Adele, if I'd given that to someone else, perhaps with an even bigger following,

it may have had some of the impact you were perhaps trying to have. And I thought that was just a really interesting acknowledgement of sometimes as a writer what you're trying to do and where you can get to as a performer. Yeah, and I think also because I'm very aware that I kind of exist within this little echo chamber and often I'm kind of preaching to the converted.

You know, a lot of people, if I'm singing about Islamophobia, my fans, you know, I have a very common Muslim surname. There's going to be no Islamophobia within my audience if you're a fan, you know, I believe. But yeah, I just felt quite limited in what I could do with that album, Holiday Destination, the most political one. And also financially, we just weren't able to take it around the world and tour it. And so that felt like a problem in itself.

Like these issues need to be spoken about here, here and here. And we were just super limited with it. Yeah. And I think, you know, you've spoken before and you've spoken to music writers as well about what's not being written because the funds aren't there and the limits to that and the ability to share. Yeah, well, there's a lot of... I'm a huge, like, it would be... I'm a huge music journalist, a fan of music journalism,

always have been, like, I've followed Miranda Sawyer since I was wee. And I think we're losing a lot of our great music journalists as well because blogging and stuff like that, people started doing it for free and lots of the great music journalists you know were unable to continue doing that job so I think we're losing loads of those yeah the sort of ecosystem around the industry as the journalism model um you know continues to struggle tell us what you have written and what you're going to perform today okie dokes this is a happy one. It's called Hyper Realism. It's off the new album. It's a slow number. One of the things we didn't mention was my lovely divorce, which actually wasn't that bad. It was quite lovely. I'm still pals with my ex. Are you?

Yeah, we had to be. We share a house still. And yeah, it's about my time in ramsgate i had a few very like chaotic years especially in that seaside town um so it's kind of chronicling a little bit of that time including the divorce let's get it let's go i'm gonna let you make your way over nadine shah good to talk to you uh we are gonna hear the song as was just described, Hyper Realism, and Nadine being accompanied by Dan Crook and Callum Easter on keyboards, Dan Crook on guitar. Thank you to all of you. I'll let you take it away. Nadine Shah, thank you very much to you and to Dan Crook on guitar and Callum Easter on keyboards. Listening to Hyper Realism, that's from Filthy Underneath the Album.

It's out now. And thank you so much for your company today. Many messages also have come in. A lot of you sharing some very heartfelt things. Not least, Nadine Shah, too good for this world. I'll leave you on that message. How about that? A bit of positivity to end our programme. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's

Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hello, it's Amol Rajan here. And it's Nick Robinson. And we want to tell you about the Today podcast from BBC Radio 4. Yes, this is where we go deeper into the sort of journalism that you hear on today, exploring one big story with more space for insight and context. We hear from a key voice each week, a leader in their field, be they a spy chief, a historian, a judge, a politician, all with something unique to say, and we make sure they've got the time and space to say it.

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That is the Today podcast. Listen now on BBC Sounds and subscribe. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. 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.