Woman's Hour - Singer/songwriter Kate Nash, Sarah Brown, Author Rachel Seiffert, Cardiac surgeon Professor Indu Deglurkar

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Rising to fame at the age of 20, Kate Nash soon became a staple of the British music scene in the late 2000s. Her first album, Made of Bricks, reached number one in the UK and stayed in the UK charts for more than forty consecutive weeks and she’s won a Brit Award. But she’s spoken openly about not being able to afford to tour and choosing to subsidise her income by selling images of her body on OnlyFans. Kate’s currently in the middle of a UK tour for her latest album, 9 Sad Symphonies, and is playing the O2 Kentish Town Forum on 9 April. She joins Nuala McGovern to discuss her career and the music industry.Sarah Brown and her husband Gordon, the former prime minister set up the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory in 2004, following the death of their daughter Jennifer who was born seven weeks early. For the past decade, the laboratory has been leading vital research into premature birth – including a world-first study following 400 babies, both premature and full-term, from birth to adulthood. Sarah tells Nuala about the research and what they've found about preterm birth. Once the Deed is Done is the fifth novel from the German-British author Rachel Seiffert. It covers the immediate aftermath of the end of WW2 and the fall of Nazi Germany. The book focuses on a group of displaced people – it’s estimated that globally there were between 40-60 million people displaced by the war. Rachel describes why she wanted to write about this often forgotten time in history, reflecting on the cruelty inflicted from above and the choices her characters make. BBC2’s Saving Lives in Cardiff is back on our screens from tonight. Based in the largest hospital in Wales, University Hospital in Cardiff, the series highlights the weight of difficult, sometimes life and death decisions surgeons make about who to prioritise next. The first episode follows Dr Indu Deglurkar, a cardiac surgeon, one of only 19 women in this role in the UK. She joins Nuala to discuss the pressures and joys of her job.Presented by Nuala McGovern Producer: Louise Corley

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Reena Nainan and in this season of the hidden economics of remarkable women, we're following the US foreign aid news. There are lawsuits challenging these decisions, but one thing is certain. These cuts are having major repercussions throughout the world. Join us as we hear from those directly impacted on the ground and from experts about where to go from here. Follow the hidden economics of remarkable women wherever you get your podcasts. BBC sounds, music, radio podcasts.

Hello, this is Newla McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, in a moment, Sarah Brown on what the research lab she set up with her husband, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, following the death of their daughter, Jennifer, and what it has found about preterm birth that coming up. Also today, the singer-songwriter Kate Nash. Kate is currently on tour with her album Nine Side Symphonies and will be

performing tonight in London. You may have seen that Kate is funding her tours via her OnlyFans account, where we've lots to talk about that and her music. We also have the woman called the Queen of Hearts by her patients. It's Dr. Indu Diglerka. She's a cardiac surgeon performing what her patients would call miracles every day. She'll be on your TV screens tonight as part of Saving Lives in Cardiff. Also Rachel Seifert. Everyone had their loss. That is one of the lines from her new novel Once the Deed is Done. Rachel recounts the stories of ordinary Germans at the end of World War II

that had to make difficult decisions as the consequences of the conflict reaches small towns and villages across the country. Plus, according to columnist Polly Hudson, the best possible wedding gift? Leaving the reception without saying goodbye. Polly will be with us making the case that couples should be allowed to enjoy the most expensive party they will ever throw rather than being persistently interrupted and pulled off the dance floor as guests leave. Rude or the right move? You can get in touch. The number to text is 84844 on social media we're at BBC womans hour or you can email us through our website for a WhatsApp message or a voice note the number is 03700 100 444. But let me begin. Sarah Brown and her

husband Gordon, the former Prime Minister, set up the Jennifer Brown research laboratory in 2004 that followed the death of their daughter Jennifer, as I mentioned, who was born seven weeks early. Jennifer died just 10 days after her birth. So for the past decade, the lab has been leading vital research into premature birth, including a world first study following 400 babies, both premature and full term, from birth to adulthood. I spoke to Sarah just before we came on air and I asked her about how setting up the research lab to understand more about the causes and consequences of pre-term birth. We lost Jennifer 10 days after she was born. We had a very precious time with her

and you know couldn't fault the care that we had from the NHS but what I emerged with was no real understanding of what had happened or why it had happened and then over the course of the weeks that followed, I received thousands of letters from people sending their condolences for us, but many of them were sharing that they too had experienced a loss, that they too didn't have answers. So that led me to start asking the question about why it was there was so little understanding and realizing just how common late-term pregnancy loss is and you know, premature births as

well, you know, one in twelve babies are born prematurely. So that was what set us off onto the setting up the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory, which is based in Edinburgh, that has done a number of studies over the last 20 years looking at different causes of premature birth and what you might do to alleviate that. But what we've also become interested in is what those consequences are, because with so many babies being born prematurely and needing that extra care, it raises lots of questions about what those babies need in those early years and throughout the course of their life. So what are you finding out now?

So that's what's been interesting now. Professor James Boardman, who heads up the Jennifer Brown Research Lab, came to us maybe eight, nine years ago and said, look, I really want to set up a long-term cohort study. You know, a place like Edinburgh, you can get a, you know, a group of babies together where you can track them through their childhood into early adulthood. But it would mean signing up for 25 years for a project. And Gordon and I talked about it, talked to the team at their world. We decided we would put the support behind that study. And so you have 400 babies who are all born in a similar area, 300 of them are born prematurely, 100 of them are full term, and they're being studied all the way through. And the oldest in that group now about seven years old.

So we're starting to see them their first few years at school, what those outcomes are. So your question is about what we're finding out. And what's been startling is, you know, we found some things out where we're looking at, you know, brain development, we're able to use amazing scanners to actually physically see that brain development, even scanned before the baby is born, which is what's so remarkable to me, but able to track through. Families are really committed, there's all kinds of psychological tests and health tests and continued scans scans so you can see that physical development as well. And there's been, you know, we've discovered things around

pregnancy stress and how being able to give better support to maternal care makes a difference around breastfeeding and the difference that makes. But what's coming to the fore now is the difference that social inequality is making. There was a shocking statistic that I saw this morning in relation to your findings, again from Professor James Boardman that you mentioned there, and he said it would be fair to say that a baby born at full term to a more deprived couple has a similar sort of risk of developing some developmental difficulties as a baby born at 25 weeks into a well-to-do family?

Yeah, the difference between family circumstances is what's so startling and I think, you know, parents, communities, people who work in those communities, teachers are probably all could say well that's something we could have said too and they will have noticed that but I think now you're getting it, the science of it. I mean I've sat and looked at Professor Bormann's graphs and charts and it's so shocking to me to think that these neonatologists, these experts have always assumed that the big thing for a premature baby is the fact of their prematurity. But it turns out that social deprivation has, you know, as

greater factor on that brain development which will affect all kinds of cognitive learning, behavioral, language development, you know, just for the circumstances of your birth. And that is something we can absolutely do something about. Like what? Well, I think politicians can step up and recognize that that investment in early years is absolutely critical and to know that that investment where there's social deprivation has a higher cost later on and you know whatever the discussions are for politicians about what their budgets are and where they allocate it, I think scientifically what we're showing

is that the issues around child poverty are right at the forefront of where investment is needed and particularly for those most vulnerable little ones, you know, for the early years. And I mean you will have seen of course probably more than any other person about how challenged the government keeps saying they are when it comes to funding for whatever faction it may be whether it's to do with early years or indeed something else. Have you spoken to anybody? Are you able to get any commitments? So I would immediately come back and say you know not as challenged as any

family is when they're caught right at the sharp end of poverty and one of the things we did, James Boardman and I did, was we invited all the political parties in the Scottish Parliament, because the Scottish Parliament is right on the doorstep in Edinburgh, and asked them to come and see this work and to have a look at this. And every single political party who's there in the Scottish Parliament sent their most senior health and social care person to come in. So we've had five different members of the Scottish Parliament all come in in recent weeks, all looking at this and taking this on board. And it's interesting for Scotland because they've got a Scottish Parliament election coming up next year. But it really

encourages me to think that whatever political background, any politician who's got an interest in health and social care is getting this straight away and understanding that there may be different interventions that they can make at that level when they start to look at their manifestos for next year and I'm more than happy to take and share that work in Westminster and to governments around the world. And so that is very much child poverty, what people are being born into. But going back some of the steps, I suppose really where you started out and I was, I saw it was in 2004 when the Jennifer Brown research laboratory was set up at their world,

Edinburgh birth cohort. That's looking at some of these aspects over the past 10 years or so. But do we have any better understanding of why preterm labour happens? Yeah, so the, I mean, there are lots of studies around the world. I mean Edinburgh is a fantastic centre and a world-leading place for this but you know there are other there's other amazing work happening in London and other parts of the world. I think there is increasingly a better understanding of what the causes are for premature birth. I think that healthy pregnancy and better maternal care and the contribution of stress through pregnancy is definitely a factor That's coming to the fore, but there's also been a work around, you know infection around

you know other kind of Physiological responses through pregnancy that I think increasingly they're having a better understanding of but it's still the case that one in 12 Babies are born early in the UK. Okay, and 15's still the case that one in 12 babies are born early in the UK. And 15 million around the world every year. It's quite the statistic. Before I let you go, who are the families who are taking part, who are signing up for 25 years? So families whose babies have been born in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and who have learnt about it and who, you know, they go and talk to them about it and it's signed up for the study. So these

are just ordinary families living in and around Edinburgh whose children are now aged between about four and seven. So it's 400 families have signed up into the study and talking to the parents, they're quite keen to be part of it, partly because it gives them information along the way, everyone wants to be doing the best for their child, but also recognizing that just being able to have the privilege of having your information be shared into a study that might contribute

to the greater good, I also think is a motivator. And of course, the little ones themselves, as they take part in it through school, are also now contributing into the study with their own opinions and views of how they're getting on at school. So they're all little scientists in the study. Thanks very much to Sarah Brown and if there's anything that you've been hearing in our interview that you find difficult you can go to the BBC's Action Line where you will find links to support. 84844 if you'd like to get in touch

with Woman's Hour today by text. But I will want to move on to the fifth novel by the German-British author Rachel Seifert. It is Once the Deed is Done and it covers the immediate aftermath of the end of the Second World War, also the collapse of Nazi Germany. There were six years of fighting and 12 years of Nazi rule that already displaced millions of civilians, among them forced labourers from places like Ukraine and Poland that were brought to Germany from lands it occupied to work in its war industries. Well Rachel takes us to a small town in northern Germany to explore what happens when a group of displaced people find themselves in a refugee camp living alongside townspeople who are under occupation?

Rachel, you're very welcome to the Woman's Hour studio. Thank you, lovely to be here. Maybe I'll start actually with the title, Once the Deed is Done. Why that? Well, there are lots of deeds in the book. So there is the deed of the war. And then there are all the deeds that were done by all the individuals in Germany during those 12 years of Nazi rule and there are decisions made but on high to bring millions and millions of workers from individual people from the occupied territories but then there were also

decisions inside the town that were made. The mayor of this town made the decision that his people can live alongside those workers for years at a time. The policeman would have patrolled the streets, would have been working with the guards at the factory and individuals are also making decisions about what they teach the teachers, what they teach the children. Which is something, I suppose, that united people in a way that these deeds that were done and then your novel really is about a period of time that many might not have thought about, so the months leading up to and also after the end of the Second World War of Germany and

perhaps about the people that are often not talked about. Why did you decide that time? Well, I think it's, I mean, it's a fascinating time and I think you're right that we don't think about the immediate aftermath of war. We have this idea that a treaty is signed or a capitulation is made and then everything's fine again. And actually physically battlefields have to be cleared up, it takes months. And then after the Second World War there were these millions of displaced people. So there were, you know, depending on whose numbers you look at, there were 40 to 60 million people displaced.

Who were they? So in the people that I'm looking at are the forced laborers that were brought from Ukraine and from Poland so the book starts right at the end of the war in the winter of 1945 and There is this town in Northern Germany and all the way through the war years there's been a factory on the outskirts and there have been Poles and Ukrainians laboring and working and there's been a factory on the outskirts and there have been poles and Ukrainians laboring and working and living also behind the walls of this factory. All the while, the town next to them, in the town next to them teachers have taught, children have sat at their school

desks, bakers have baked, police men have patrolled the streets, and laborers have labored and they've all been within spitting distance of each other. And then right at the end of the war and right at the start of my novel, a new set of laborers is brought to the factory and there are women among them this time and they're brought on foot. Usually they were brought in on truck backs but they're brought on foot because everything is collapsing and it's a cold night and a snow night and in the confusion before they're put behind the walls of the factory, some of the women escape, they flee. And very importantly, there are witnesses. And the

first witness is a boy called Benno, and he's the policeman's son. And he hears his father called out at night. And he knows he's been called to the factory. He knows something wrong has happened. And then the other witnesses are an old couple who live out on the heath. So this town is on the Lüneburger Heide, which is a very beautiful part of Germany, just south of the river Elbe, south of Hamburg. And there's an old couple who have a small holding on the heath. And at least one of the women who escapes makes it out to the heath. She finds the house, she finds their wood store and hides herself there and they find her. And the old couple Hannah and Gustav, they're appalled. It's frightening, terrifying to find this

worker. They know exactly who she is. They see the patch on her on her clothing. They see what a terrible state she's in. They can't hide her. It's too dangerous. But it's freezing. She's thin and in thin clothing. They can't send her out into the cold. So they panic. They turn off all the lights, shut all the doors. And in the morning, thank God, she is gone. There's only her footprints in the snow. But the thing is, she brought a child with her and she left the child with them. And then the action cuts to the British arriving. And among the British is Ruth Novak, a Red Cross worker, a welfare officer.

So she is tasked with running a refugee camp just outside Hamburg. How usual was it for a woman to run a camp like that? I mean, she doesn't, you know, it's the soldiers who are running the camp. So soldiers, British soldiers and American soldiers and so on, they turned into peacekeeping forces, I guess we would call them now, and also administrators of the occupation. And so there are supply boys and a sergeant and a major, but Ruth is the welfare officer. And there were many, many women like her. And they were fascinating. I found accounts that they'd written, memoirs, often self-published. Where did you find them?

So in the British Library, in the Wiener Library, the Wiener Holocaust Library was incredibly important to my research and the archivists there. And would you get a full picture of such women? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there are key women in the archives, or women of note, who also did this. So there's a woman called Charlotte Babinski, a woman called Eileen Waring, Geeta Sareni did this work. But there are also women who didn't go on to have stellar careers like Gita Sareni, but for whom this time was the most important time of their lives.

You talk about people who are the most expendable during the war, the old, the weak, the women, the children. We talk about that in modern-day conflicts as well. What do you want to convey about their experiences with the novel? I think I want to say people like Ruth, my character, they were charged with the welfare of these people. They also very quickly realized that there were many people who had got lost. So if you have that sort of volume of people, millions of people that were displaced, then inevitably there are going to be people who go missing. So the two children in

the camp, who I described Sasha and Eva, their mother is missing. They've been separated from her and their mother is missing. There were thousands upon thousands of children like that, thousands upon thousands of mothers whose children were removed from them. And these are, I found accounts of these people with the help of the Wiener Library in the International Tracing Service archives. And this is an archive in Germany in Arolsen, Bad Arolsen, and it has 30 million pages of documents, some written by Nazi administrators, many, many, many written

by women like Ruth Novak, like Gita Sarenie. And some of the decisions, I think, is what your novel comes down to as well, of what people were having to make at the end of the war. Because I think when we think of the end of the war, we think of cities, we think of liberation, we think of soldiers coming in, not of these small towns and villages where it takes a while for that news to filter through that the end of the war has come, maybe going out with a whimper more than a bang. But with people making very difficult decisions, particularly you talk about Ukrainians, people from Poland,

for example, do they go back east? Do they go back home? Do they live under Soviet rule? Yes, absolutely. So I think I was examining two kinds of displacement in my book. So there's the physical displacement of the people like the Poles and the Ukrainians. And they, as you say, when the war was then over and they were free, many of them did not want to return. And the camps like the one I described in the book existed into the 1950s because people refused to return. And they, you know, they would be returning to rule by Stalin and Ukrainians had already experienced that and they didn't want that again. They also knew that their homes had been destroyed, partly some of them had seen their homes being destroyed by the Nazis. So they don't have home anymore and when you're

you don't have home anymore then you wonder who you are and maybe you know they started to look to the new world, they started to look to America, to Canada, to Australia and that's why we have Polish-Glaswegians, that's why we have Ukrainians in their hundreds of thousands in the Midwest of America and in Melbourne. So that's one group of displaced, you say? That's one group of displaced. But the same sort of who am I questions also apply to the Germans. So there's a kind of moral displacement that's gone on under the years of dictatorship

in Germany. And of course, the first people to be arrested are people like the policemen, like the mayor. And there's a lot of schadenfreude that I describe in the town that, you know, they're laughing because these people who they felt oppressed by are arrested. And that's great. But everybody is under occupation. Everybody is under scrutiny. And they have to all the men in the town have to fill out these questionnaires which every German man had to, who did you serve, were you in the party, did you serve in the war, were you in the SS. So that sort of level of scrutiny means that everybody starts getting anxious and they ask themselves well what did I do during the time and am I now guilty too? Everyone had their lost was a line that struck me from your novel. Your family, you've written

about this extensively as well, that your grandfather was a mayor within... My grandfather was in the Waffen SS, but his brother, so my great uncle, he was also in the Nazi hierarchy. He worked for the chief medical officer. He lived down at the Starnberger See by Munich. The chief medical officer signed off on experiments in Dachau. My great uncle is absolutely culpable.

And the thing is everybody knew this, okay? And then he went back to live in a place like the small town that I described. So he lived in a place called Masham, which is south of Hamburg on the Lüneburger Heide and he ran for mayor After the war and he was voted in and everybody in the town knew he obviously didn't run as a Nazi Because the Nazi Party had been banned But everybody knew his background and he was still voted in. That was something you grew up knowing.

Yes. Yeah. Do you have memories of how that came? Because obviously you've become this prolific writer and looking into history, although at times creating historical fiction. I'm just wondering how that thought process or or how crystallized or informed your writing? I think it's always made me curious and the thing I really appreciate about my family, about my mother in particular, is that my curiosity was always encouraged and it was never hidden from me.

Why was that? Because I mean so many times on this program we speak to people and things have been hidden up. There has been shame, there has been stigma, there has been things not spoken about, even when somebody was not at fault, but it was something that was taboo. Why do you think your mother was so open? I think it's part of my mother's personality, but I think it's also a post-war German thing of her generation. So she was a Nazi, talks about herself as being a Nazi child. She was 11 when the war ended.

She had been in the Bund Deutsche Mittel. She then as an adult became very invested in the peace movement. And for her, she's a little bit older than the 68 generation, but she was very much sort of in that spirit, wanted to make sure never again really meant never again. And so there is shame. Of course, it's terribly embarrassing, shameful, painful that my grandfather was in the Vaphanesses. But it's so important to be honest about that.

It's so important to interrogate that history. It feels very close to the bone, but that also makes it feel even more important. When I was reading your article from 2017, you said we live in interesting times. May they be less interesting? They've got more interesting, haven't they? It's awful. Yes. And it feels that during the writing... I'm just thinking with Ukraine that, of course, you've delved into so deeply. So I wrote about Ukraine in my last book, but then during the research and the writing

of this book, Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainians were displaced again in the hundreds of thousands. And Ukrainian children have been taken. So it- You're talking about back to Russia. Back to Russia. Yeah, which is a story that we will be following on this as well. It's a complicated, a complex story, but interesting.

What are you gonna work on next? You have a lot of material to delve into. I do. And I am possibly going to write a family memoir. I would really like to look into the connections between my Nazi family and the generation before, who were colonialists and I think that is they had a shipping line, the Wörmannlinie, which ran boats between what is now Namibia and Europe. And there I do see a huge overlap between colonialist thinking and Nazi thinking. Rachel Seifert, her latest novel, although get ready for the memoir, once the deed is done, her fifth novel. Thank you so much for coming into us on the Woman's Hour studio. Thank you. Now somebody who's got in touch, let me see,

I'm a massive fan of leaving any party without saying goodbye, backdooring it. In fact I'm quite famous for it. I'll send a message to the hosts if need be. As a host, I find it annoying saying goodbye to multiple people. It does interrupt my evening. Usually at that point of an event, when all the formal stuff is done, it's time the hosts can actually fully relaxed. What do you think? Hit a nerve there? The reason I'm reading that comment and why I threw out the question

is because we're coming up to wedding season, the time of year where you might be attending multiple weddings if you're so lucky to be invited. And you might be wondering what is the best present to get the couple? Well, the journalist Polly Hudson believes that a new wedding rule should be introduced. Stipulating the guests must not say goodbye to the happy couple, interrupting them. Just leave and have a quiet exit as the best gift of all. Polly, welcome. Hello. I loved when I read this. You know, you were calling it taking French leave. I would have called it Irish leave but I guess

the concept is the same. You leave without saying goodbye. What has the reaction been to you suggesting this? Well, it's mixed because I think people's first instinct is, this is rude. I've been a guest of theirs all day at the wedding, they fed me, they've watered me, I've danced on the dance floor, I've had a brilliant time. I must tell them that before I go.

And it feels quite counterintuitive to just slink out. But I'm arguing, please slink out because I actually did the maths on this and if the average wedding has 150 guests, and most people leave sort of in the last hour and a half, two hours of the night, so that means the couple are saying goodbye to someone every 1.6 minutes. I love that you've got mathematical on it. But I'm going to throw it out again, 84844. Where did this idea come from? I mean, is this something that you do? This is, well, I've latched onto it because it is a personal policy of mine, because I also think

at that point of the night, no one remembers if you say goodbye or not anyway. But I think in the case of weddings, this is the most expensive party these people will ever throw. Let them enjoy it. You know, they're going to be dragged off the dance floor over and over again to have really the same conversation over and over again. You know, oh, you look lovely. It's been such a wonderful day. We're so happy to you all lovely sentiments But bit boring after the sort of 25th time. Here's a message. I call it the backdoor boogie Says what? You can use that if you want

now do you restrict it to weddings I Don't I really argue that we should roll this out, you know globally for everything And I think also if you send a message the next day saying I had such a wonderful time Thank you so much for having me that means more because they can't remember who said goodbye or not I mean some some of the commenters on the Guardian where I wrote this piece We're saying maybe it should start to be a new tradition that everyone makes a little video at the end of the night.

Now we're getting more complicated. It could be quicker just to say goodbye. But that's a lovely piece of it. But maybe the video for the wedding. Yeah. I mean. That's the one thing at least they'll have something to remember by rather than just being annoyed, which frankly they are. They're going to be polite, but they just want to dance and let their hair down. It's their wedding. Hang on Polly, we have somebody else that begs to differ. No one should leave the wedding party until the couple themselves leave the party.

Then everyone should form an arch and see them off, says Sharon and Rob. I mean okay but baby sisters are expensive so that might not always be possible. Depends kind of what kind of party animals the couple. Yeah, I mean, traditionally that used to happen, though, Holly, didn't it? Like the the bride would change into a going away outfit and the party goers would, you know, in a car with all the cans hanging off the back of it and just married in some shaving foam perhaps, and a way to go. I don't think that happens anymore though, unfortunately, or fortunately.

So I think you do, you have to make a call and I'm arguing this will be the best present you can give them. They really will appreciate it. I can't imagine anyone... Okay, Polly, I'm throwing it out. I'm sure we've lots of people that I've got married, getting married, thinking of getting married, our guests etc. 84844 if you want to get in touch on text of course through our email or indeed at BBC womans hour. Here's Emma from Kent. My husband and I left before all our

guests who were having such a good time they didn't want to leave. We were gutted to leave but why did you leave Emma? Emma, why did you leave? Polly, I don't even know if you're married, if you've had a wedding, if you left, if you didn't leave. No, I didn't. We stayed till the end. What was the end? I would have loved to have left, I've got to say. I would love it by then. But in fact, you know, maybe if I get married again, I'll do everything differently. But yeah, people did say goodbye to us. And it didn't occur to me that there could be another way. This was, you know, 15 years ago. So now, let's change things. You know, all these traditions are going by the wayside, the couple leaving with the cans on the car and everything. None of that really happens anymore, I don't think.

So let's change this. Or it might come back. Polly Hudson, thank you very much for speaking to us. Her column is in the Gartian and it's all about is it the best wedding gift ever just to leave without saying goodbye. French exodus, she calls it Irish goodbye as I do. Get in touch. Now BBC2's popular series Saving Lives in Cardiff is back on our screens tonight.

It's filmed in the largest hospital in Wales, University Hospital Cardiff. I'm Reena Nainan and in this season of the hidden economics of remarkable women, we're following the US foreign aid news. There are lawsuits challenging these decisions. But one thing is certain these cuts are having major repercussions throughout the world. Join us as we hear from those directly impacted on the ground and from experts about where to go from here. Follow the hidden economics of

remarkable women wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the hidden economics of remarkable women wherever you get your podcasts. And the series highlights the weight of difficult, sometimes life and death decisions that surgeons have to make about who to prioritize. All of the stories are real. They are human ones, very emotional at times, that follow patients who have chosen to let cameras in and show a very difficult period of their lives and of course the surgeons that are operating on them. In the first episode Dr. Indu Deglerca, a cardiac surgeon, performs a four and a half

hour surgery on the very diseased heart of a 51 year old father of five. There are one of only 19 female cardiac surgeons out of 500 in the UK. Dr. Indu joins me now. Hello, welcome. Hi, Nula. Good morning and thank you for having me. Oh, so good to have you on. I was watching the filming of you operating on your patient Tyrone, as I mentioned, 51 year old father of five. And it was such a tough watch. I mean, I could feel tears really welling up as you interacted with them and also the work that you did. But what I was so struck by in the moment as you operate is the weight on your shoulders, the pressure, which must be huge. And I just wonder how you deal with that on a day to day basis in such a calm and controlled manner. Nula, you know, we face pressure all the time and I actually think I thrive very well under pressure

and it's in a way brings out the best in me. I think real pressure is when you are actually in really uncharted territories, and probably happens twice in a decade, where you know you're trying to fight for the life of a patient, but it may not succeed. And that sort of pressure is a completely different ball game.

And at that point in time, there is no time to think about yourself. You are the team leader, you are bearing up the emotions and looking at the well-being of the entire team and then dealing with the family and how I thrive under pressure at that time. No, I don't know if I thrive at all. I just retract into a shell after that and very quiet and reflective and really mull over every stitch that we've put in. And less than a handful of people are really privy to my intensely vulnerable state at that stage. Yeah, I was watching you closely when you finished and you thanked everybody in this large team that were operating on Tyrone. And then you took one step back and I could tell by your body language, even though we're just watching you from behind.

I was like, OK, now she's going to retract and process, I think, what this intense four and a half hour operation that you had just been through. But my other question was, why did you want to take part in a TV series? It's such intense work. The thought of a camera over your shoulder watching your every move in this very delicate operation, what was the thought process there? Gosh, the cameras didn't bother me at all. You know, I'm so used to having a lot of people in my theatre,

but there are really good reasons, I think, why we should allow this to happen. As you yourself said, Nula, this is real life and there is no better way of educating the public about what gets done within the four walls of the hospital in a setting like ours and the intense pressures. I think three things come out of a serial like this when BBC comes and films. hours and the intense pressures. I think three things come out of a serial like this when BBC comes and films.

One is the intense pressures that we frontline clinicians face in constantly making life and death decisions, deciding who's urgent than the other. Not that they're all not urgent, but just one needs to be prioritized and you make the right decision. But the second thing is it also shows and depicts how a serious diagnosis impacts on the patient and their families, you know,

and all the raw emotions that go with it. And I think the third thing that this series does and all other medical series do is it brings out the professionalism of the multidisciplinary team that works their skill sets and their empathy and literally the 100 miles beyond that everybody goes to to make the patient better. Yeah, yeah.

That's why I thought it was a perfect way of disseminating some information. Yeah, I mean, you have to be as a viewer in awe of what is happening, you know, at points you stop the heart to obviously work on it and then get the heart starting again. It's mind blowing in so many ways. I know and I love the idea that some of your patients call you the queen of hearts. You always wanted to be a surgeon. Yes. Tell me a little bit about Little Indu and how she went about thinking about that and making it happen.

It is a bit weird. We had this magazine called Illustrated Weekly of India, which is a large magazine that gets delivered to your doorstep. And there were these huge machines which were called, you know, the heartling machines and evolution. I was just fascinated by it and the people and scrubs around it. And I literally poke my dad and asked, you know, what are they doing? And he said, they're doing heart surgery, open heart surgery. And I said, that's exactly what I want to be doing. Right. And then I said, how do I go about and he said, you need to be a doctor. And, you know, I think my fate was sealed then.

What age? What age are we talking? I was seven. It is really weird when all my friends had posters of cricket, you know, cricketeers, Sunil Gavaskar and Clive Lloyds. There I was looking at Michael DeBakey and literally had a crush on him, I think, throughout my teenage. So it was the surgeon that was the one for you. But you know, I mentioned some of the figures there. Funny enough, this week on Woman's Hour, we've had two female surgeons. We also had Isabel Kiroga, who performed the womb transplant, which we were speaking about earlier

yesterday on Woman's Hour. And great to have you here today. But you are outnumbered by the men and I'm wondering what that's been like. Well, I always say, you know, people say it's a male dominated profession, but I begged before I say it's a profession that predominantly consists of males. I'm not going to really be letting people dominate over me. But the truth is I really get on so well with all my colleagues and, you know, I don't think the gender comes into it at all. That's so interesting to hear. You feel throughout your career that you haven't had to face sexism or misogyny within the industry? Oh no, I wouldn't say that at all.

You know, the cultural battles that I've had to face have been enormous, you know, throughout, not in terms of the ability to do and things, because I was way ahead in terms of my surgical skills for my level of training. But the mindset, the archaic mindset that surrounds surgical careers and surgical training, and worse, I think it's a double jeopardy if you're ethnic as well. And it's a triple jeopardy if you're an ethnic pregnant women and specialty like cardiac surgery. So I think things are getting better. You know, we're all fighting.

If you look at it, you know, we were five of us until 2014 who were consultant cardiac surgeons, and now we are 19. That's still about eight to nine percent of the workforce, but it's heading in the right direction. And I mean, what got you through that? Being the pregnant young woman in an ethnic minority in a super skilled, filled with males, I'll use your word, of cardiac thoracic surgery. The truth is, Nuala, ethnic or not, I was pretty much the lone woman in surgery wherever I went to in the department because you know when I got my national training number in 2000, I was the first female national trainee in Wales and there were less than a handful of us even at that time. But in a

way, you know, adapting to the circumstances, never actually giving in, but being the ability to forge good relations with people around. And once people get to know you, they just respect you for what you do and you hold your own. It wasn't easy many times, especially during pregnancy. But, you know, friends and family and near and dear ones also give you the support that you need when you're feeling really lower back certain things and that really helps you get by, I think. You know, I was struck as well by obviously your professional life as we've spoken about, but your personal life. You said in Saving Lives, at one point you were working 80 to 120 hours a week.

You also mentioned regretting having one child you would have liked to have had more and I suppose that puts it into sharp relief some of the sacrifices you've had to make to get to the point where you are leading those teams, where not so many women have gone before? Yes, I think sacrifices are not just mine, my families, I would say. I don't know many families where the husband is an orthopedic surgeon and the wife is a cardiothoracic surgeon. It's probably the worst combination for a family. But there have been intense sacrifices, Nula.

I really haven't had the pleasure of being able to go and pick up my son, you know, less than a dozen times in his entire schooling. And when I got to the school, I wouldn't know which building they were going to emerge from and the mums used to rescue me. So these are the pleasures of life that I really never have had very much and you do miss it sorely and you know embarking on a profession

that is very demanding should somehow not be with such a work-life balance that is distorted and I think that is what we all are trying to address, even as a specialty, I would say. Do you think there's another way? No, no way is perfect. But, you know, for a woman, you know, we used to have very short maternity leave periods, etc. I think really policy changes at the legislative level are required for getting a better work-life balance. And that is the hard sort of hurdle to climb. Yes and of course the years that you'll be having babies is that a very important part no doubt of your career as a surgeon when you're really building your reputation and getting those skills as well

so I can understand that. I did love speaking of your son, that you wear his socks on important surgery days, you know, and you've got a really difficult, intense surgery ahead of you. Yes, I do. And, you know, it just impacted. My son has such utter confidence in my skills that, you know, when I wear his socks, it intensifies my positive mental attitude, especially, you know, the I wear his socks, it intensifies my positive mental attitude, especially, you know, the can do will do in uncharted territories. You know, like every other mom, my son is my heartbeat. Okay, most people wear their hearts on their sleeve. I think I might be wearing them on my feet, but it helps and it brings results. So I'm fine with

it. I have a hunch I'm going to be in trouble after this at home. He has to love that. And I love that you call him your heartbeat. With hearts, of course, being the centre, the queen of hearts, as you've been called by your patients. But I am also so struck by your positive attitude, as I was with many of your colleagues that are profiled within Saving Lives in Cardiff. Positive attitude, you say,

really helps with people going through surgery, but you must have seen such changes when it comes to heart surgery throughout your career, like where we are now in 2025 compared to when you began. Yes, I do operations that I've never seen during my training. It's constantly, constantly evolving. And I think there is more to come with things like artificial intelligence, which is literally, you know, it's been there in our specialty for some time, whether it's in patient outcomes and that's a form of artificial intelligence, but there is a lot more that is gonna come

and will change the face of surgery, not just robotics or minimally invasive, but we will be going several miles, I think, with AI. The only thing I would say is man made a computer, a computer has never made a man yet. So surgeons will always remain at the helm when it comes to vital decisions being made. So interesting. Thank you so much for spending some time with us.

And you can catch Dr. Indu Diglarga in all her glory and all her professionalism all her glory and all her professionalism in Saving Lives in Cardiff on BBC Two and BBC Wales 9pm tonight and then on the BBC iPlayer. Let me turn to Kate Nash. Rising to fame at the age of 20, she soon became a staple of the British music scene in the late 2000s. Her first album, Made of Bricks, reached number one in the UK and stayed in the UK charts for more than 40 consecutive weeks. She won a Brit Award and has over a million monthly listeners on Spotify.

But still, she's spoken openly about not being able to afford to tour and choosing to subsidise her income by selling images of her body on OnlyFans. Kate is currently in the middle of her UK tour for her fifth studio album, Nine Sad Symphonies. But before she prepares to play the O2 form in Kentish Town tonight, we have Kate on the show for a little bit. Welcome, Kate. Hi, thanks for having me. You know, I was playing you yesterday in my flat and everybody who walked in said, Oh, I love Kate Nash. And even when we say you're on the program, Oh, I love Kate Nash. So you must be feeling the love.

But let's talk about millions of heartbeats we heard from your latest album, 9 Sad Symphonies. What's the idea behind this album that you are performing tonight? Yeah, so this album was heavily inspired by musical theatre because I was working on a musical in New York for quite a while. And we went to the stage in 2022. And so doing that sort of storytelling through song for a musical, I really enjoyed it.

And I just thought, you know, let me let that bleed into a record for myself. And I was working with my producer, Frederick, and he's an incredible, does these incredible string arrangements. And so we just kind of had fun and let ourselves sort of go down that route. And in a weird way, I feel like it's a little reflective of Made of Bricks in that sense,

with the instrumentation and the piano. And, you know, I wrote Made of Bricks coming straight out of the Bricks school. So that was also quite inspired by theatre. So it's kind of a nice little circle back moment. How do you feel about people categorising music into genres? categorizing music into genres? Um, I don't know, really, I feel like I struggle to categorize myself because people always ask, you know, if you if you've met somebody and they you tell them you're a musician, they say, what, what should like music do you can you're like, uh, pop is not really a genre to me pop is, is ever changing, because it's just kind of depending on the scene

and what's popular right now. But I do think I am a pop artist as well, but I've been so heavily inspired by punk music and punk performance and theater. So, I don't know, genres are complicated, but it doesn't matter really. I know Manny would call you a lyricist, however. How do you do that? Do you start with the lyrics and the music or the music and the lyrics?

I am always writing. And I think a big part of me, the lyrical process is thinking and just constantly kind of carving out like how you feel and what you think about things. So you're sort of working on lyrics, like even just sitting in a coffee shop or on the tube like it's like the thinking process is a big part of the building process because it's, you know, you're in there all the time sort of trying to figure things out. And then I do some journaling and I also use the notes app on my phone

or like constantly I'll be like, oh, that's like something or if I'm feeling a certain way about something or, you know, emotional about something, I always just like splurge it into my phone because I know that I'll probably want to shape that into a song later. And it kind of like it all fills it in later, if that makes sense. Yeah, so that is your initial catalyst. And then the words come first and then it moves into the song. I think the feeling comes first. The feeling comes first.

Can I explore that a little bit more? So is it, say you're in the coffee shop, I don't know, you're feeling sad or you're feeling happy. Do you feel like a little bit more emotion when you know a song is about to come on or some lyrics? Yeah, you can. I think there's a difference between trying to create practice as an artist, which I do think you have to do when you're older. When I was 17, like and you have all the time in the world and sort of less pressure in life

and life goes a bit slower, you can kind of just like fall, I don't know, there just seems to be so much more time when you're a teenager and a young person to like write songs. You have to become more disciplined when you're older because you have to say like, I'm gonna put this time into my day and into my week to like do my practice as an artist,

whether that's play my instrument or just write, you know what I mean? And then every now and then you get the itch and you're like, oh, I feel like I feel like I have songs to write in me and they kind of feel like they're bubbling up, which is a good feeling because you're like, yes, they're there. That's what I'm thinking. It sounds the complete opposite of writer's block. And I do think the artist, as he or she ages, is really fertile territory.

You know, when you take a look at who is still producing and their 80s or 90s, we're talking about Edna O'Brien, for example, or David Hockney or whoever it might be. And for others, when it's kind of exploding out of them at a young age. But let's talk about you, because you rose to fame when you were 20. You have spoken about not feeling supported by those around you, particularly men in your team or the industry when you were starting out. You're now 19 years into your career, which is hard to believe, probably.

But how do you feel towards your younger self in that context? Is there anything you wish she had known? Yeah, it actually does feel like 19 years. It feels like that. It's really hard to go back and think what advice would I give myself because I feel like all of my experiences have shaped me into the woman I am today. And I'm even the really difficult ones. I'm glad I went through them the way that I did. I don't wish that on other people because I've been through some really hard and turbulent stuff. So that's why I advocate for change in my industry so much

because I want things to be better. But I would say to my younger self, like I feel about my younger self a lot of empathy. I did my 10 year made of bricks anniversary tour in 2017 and that was really healing for me because I think I had all these sort of feelings of like, you just feel like weirdly embarrassed because the media have made fun of you and especially as a woman, I was treated like, oh, you know, it like my peers that were male were kind of legends

and I was like, oh, just a silly little girl writing in her diary. How stupid. My fans never treated me that way. And I really connected with my younger self and my fans when I did that tour. Because I'd been through all this stuff, I got my money stolen from me by a manager and I felt like, oh, you're so weak and you're so naive and you're just not tough enough for this. And I was trying to like shape myself into this tough person, but I just like, I'm not really, I'm very open-hearted.

And when I was doing those shows, I looked at my audience and they were kind of giving me back that big open heart as well and like singing all my lyrics. And I was like, do you know what? I get this because of the way I am. And like, without that, I wouldn't have this. So it's okay that I'm not this like busy, business savvy, like boss lady.

Like that's not my identity. I'm an artist and I'm soft and like, I am tough. But when it comes to like having navigated a business world, that was really hard for me. Yeah. So yeah, I really came to terms with it on that tour and it was like so healing to do. It was awesome. It was kind of like being with my 16 year old self and being like, Oh, go on. You did pretty well. Yes. In defense of vulnerability. And I know touring is your passion. I've heard you say, speaking about punk, which you did at the beginning, that you feel it's a bit of a

punk act to reclaim the power of the body because you've spoken openly about using your OnlyFans account to fund your touring because you don't make profits from it. It's pictures of your bum, if I'm correct, on OnlyFans. Not explicit is the way that it has been described. Sorry, I didn't hear what you said, Kate. I said if you're interested listeners. Well, with that, I think people might be shocked to find that you need that income. Tell us a little bit more about it. I mean, I'm shocked. I'm shocked too.

Foundations has over like 100 million plays on Spotify. I'm kind of shocked I'm not a millionaire when I hear that. And I am shocked at the state of the music industry and how the industry has allowed this to happen and what they're saying to like artists from non-rich privileged backgrounds, which is you're not welcome here, you can't do this, we don't wanna hear from you. Because it's not possible to even imagine having a career if you don't have a privileged background or a privileged situation right now,

because touring makes losses, not profits. And I'd actually heard from other people, oh, we had to cancel this tour because it was gonna lose like 100 grand. And I remember being like, oh God, surely it can't be that bad. Like how are you touring? And then when I started doing budgets for my own tours,

I was like, oh no, it really has gotten this bad. We're paid very, very, very poorly, unethically for our recorded music. It's like 0.003 of a penny per stream. I think we should not only be paid fairly, but we should be paid very well. People love music and it's a growing economy and there's plenty of millionaires in the industry because of us and our music.

And I wouldn't even enter a program. It's like it's ridiculous. But forgive me for stepping on you Kate for a moment, but I do just want to read a little from Spotify as you mentioned them. They said you're huge. They say they're huge fans of you for streams of your track foundations, which is released before Spotify existed. Spotify paid about a half a million pounds in revenue to Kate Nash's rights holders. That they have no visibility over the deals that Kate signed with rights holders. They have no knowledge of the payment terms that were agreed upon between you and your partners. That your most streamed songs were released via Universal Music Group.

But I... I love that name for something. Yes, they did indeed. Kate, I'm going to have to leave it there. I want to wish you well performing tonight. Kentish Town, the 02, have a ball. Love those hearts. Off your fans and we'll chat to you again soon. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Ophelia Byrne and from BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio 4, this is Assume Nothing, Kill or Dust.

The story of how a 1960s headline about a secretive factory opening just outside Belfast led me on a trail into corporate espionage, cover-up and death. From New York to Northern Ireland and countless UK factories in between, few towns are left untouched by the legacy of asbestos. Newly discovered documents reveal who knew what and when, and perhaps explain why workers at that curious factory opening had to sign oaths of secrecy. Assume nothing, kill or dust.

Listen first on BBC Sounds. Assume nothing, kill or dust. Listen first on BBC Sounds. I'm Rena Nainan and in this season of The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, we're following the US foreign aid news. There are lawsuits challenging these decisions, but one thing is certain. These cuts are having major repercussions throughout the world. Join us as we hear from those directly impacted on the ground and from experts about where to go from here. Follow the hidden economics of remarkable women wherever you get your podcasts.