Woman's Hour - The Offbeat Sari exhibition, Iran latest, coldwater swimming and is AI pushing the boundaries of art?

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

The Offbeat Sari exhibition will include 90 examples of innovative saris – including the first ever sari worn at the Met Gala and a foil jersey sari worn by Lady Gaga. Krupa Padhy talks to the exhibition's curator Priya Khanchandani.BBC Journalist Faranak Amidi brings us the latest from Iran and we look at LOAB, the internet character created by artificial intelligence. Described as having the 'eerie face of a middle-aged woman with dead eyes, a vacant stare and a disturbing grimace', she's become an online viral phenomenon. Steph Swanson, the artist who created LOAB, explains her work and we hear from Tabitha Goldstaub, who chairs the UK’s Artificial Intelligence Council, and Mhairi Aitken, from the Alan Turing Institute. In February 2003, a woman called Lana Clarkson was found dead at the Hollywood mansion of the iconic music producer Phil Spector. It was a global news sensation, with Spector insisting that the 40-year-old actor – whom he had only met that evening - had killed herself with his gun. A new Sky documentary series called Spector re-examines what happened almost 20 years ago, and speaks to her family and friends for the first time.And are you one of those people who loves jumping into the sea or a river at this time of year to feel the benefit of cold water swimming? Well, if so, the British Medical Journal has said that swimmers should be told more about the risks of a lung condition known as SIPE - swimming-induced pulmonary oedema. Dr Ruth Williamson is a cold water swimmer and Acting Chief Medical Officer at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital. She tells us how to spot SIPE and what to do about it, if you fear you have it. Presenter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Michael MillhamPhoto Credit; : Bikramjit Bose

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Krupa Bharti and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and thank you for joining us. This morning I'm going to introduce you to a viral creation by artificial intelligence that's being called Lobe. Lobe is an unsettling image of a woman with red cheeks and dark hollow eyes generated by the Swedish artist Stef Swanson. And Stef used what are being called negative prompts in an online program to make her. We're going to make sense of it all with the help of two experts in the AI sector, Tabitha Goldstab and Dr. Variatkin.

And we also want to explore whether AI is pushing the boundaries of art. There's a picture of Loeb up on our Twitter feed if you'd like to take a look. I should warn you, you may find it disturbing, but we are keen to get your reaction. You can text the programme. That number is 84844 over on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour. You can, of course, email us via our website and you can send us a WhatsApp or voice note audio message using the number 03700 100 444. And we will turn our attention to cold water swimming

and the rare but associated risk of a lung condition known as SIPE. Dr Ruth Williamson is a winter weather swimmer herself and she will talk us through the details. Maybe you're a cold water swimmer with questions of your own. Do get in touch. Also, in February 2003, a woman called Lana Clarkson was found dead at the Hollywood mansion of the iconic music producer Phil Spector. He was eventually found guilty of Lana's murder six years later.

Now a new Sky documentary series called Spector re-examines what happened almost 20 years ago and hears from her family and close friends for the first time. We're going to hear from Lana's best friend, Nili Hudson. But we begin in Iran, where authorities have continued with their crackdown on the anti-government protests that have impacted the country. You may recall these all began after the death of the student, Masa Amidi, in Amini, in police custody back in September. You may have seen the news this morning that the daughter of the former Iranian president Faiza Hashemi has been jailed for taking part in mass protests. Faiza is a former MP and women's rights activist who has been a prominent critic of the clerical leadership. She is one of the thousands of people arrested for participating in the protests, with the human rights activist

news agency estimating that over 500 protesters have been killed. Stories have emerged about prison conditions facing the protesters, including cases of sexual assault and torture. This is a story we have been following closely here on Woman's Hour. One of those voices is the activist Sepideh Oliyan, who is serving a five-year prison sentence in

Evin Prison, one of the main prisons where protesters have been held. She was arrested back in 2018 for supporting a strike, and she wrote a letter detailing these prison conditions to a small group of journalists, including the BBC's Farinak Amidi. And Farinak joins me now. Good to have you on the programme as always, Farinak. Let's start with who Sepideh Olyan is and how you came to receive this letter. So Sepideh is a very prominent activist. She's very well known in Iran. She's basically known for supporting the labour rights and workers' strikes back in 2018 of the sugar cane factory of Haftap in Khuzestan.

She used to live in south of Iran and studied back then in south of Iran as well in that province. She is Lour herself, an ethnic minority of Lour herself. And she's quite, she's very outspoken and she's chronicled her prison diaries and published them, basically smuggled them out of prison all these years. And those documents are really, really valuable. They have historical value because it gives you a view of what is happening inside prisons. And she's been in different prisons around Iran. So right now she is in Edim prison and she smuggled this letter out. And I received it on a Friday, but it was Sepideh's request not to publish it until today because of the execution and hanging of two prisoners in Iran, Mohamed Hosseini, one of them, and Mohamed Mehdi Karami.

And because two other young prisoners, 19 and 22-year-old Mohamed Qabaldulu and also Mohamed Borougani, are in imminent danger of being hanged. So Sepideh didn't want to overshadow those stories and the protests that are happening at the moment against these hangings. Are you able to share, if possible, how you came to receive the letter? You said that it was smuggled out, but she chose only a handful of journalists. Yes. Well, I got it through a friend, but I cannot really say how she smuggled out, but she chose only a handful of journalists. Yes. Well, I got it through a friend, but I cannot really say how she smuggled it. Of course, of course.

Lots to unpick in what you said, both the executions and Evin Prison itself. Now, first of all, Evin Prison is where lots of the female prisoners are being held. Can you describe the conditions? Because it is notorious. It is notorious. It is a big prison in north of Tehran,

right on the mountains. And basically what Sepideh is explaining is quite terrifying. She says that because Sepideh is studying law at the moment in university to become a lawyer. So she goes to this wing called the cultural wing to take her exams. And she says that they have turned that cultural wing into a portrait interrogation building. It seems that because there are so many, it's too crowded and there are so many people are being interrogated

that they had to turn that building into an interrogation building. And she recalls a day on 28th of December, which she says it was snowing, it's very cold. And although she was wearing warm clothes and she was being taken to that building to take an exam, she was still shivering. And she saw a young man being interrogated in just a t-shirt and he was shaking and crying and begging the interrogator saying i swear to god i did not beat anyone but they were putting pressure on him and they wanted him to confess she says that he did says that she shouted and said please do not confess whatever Whatever you do, do not confess. Because she's had this similar experience herself back in 2018.

But she also says that once when she was going to get, take an exam in that building, she passed through a big room, a big hall, where usually they take exams. And she saw many boys and girls being there, waiting to be interrogated. And she could hear the sounds of what she calls torturers shouting and the sound of torture had filled that building. These are extraordinary details that you are sharing. The cultural wing, now an interrogation

wing. And the other thing you talk about is the executions. We know earlier in the week there were protests outside a prison to try and stop the protests going ahead. These are the executions to stop the executions going ahead, sorry. And these are the executions of people who have been arrested for protesting, to be clear. What impact is this having on the movement? Is this quelling the process in any way? Is it making people more fearful of taking to the streets? Because these are processes that have

been seen as once in a generation. We've seen nothing like this since the 1979 revolution. There were high hopes for this movement. Now there is this fear of execution. What does that mean for the movement? Well, that's a very good question. And it was yesterday that the United Nations also announced that they consider these executions state-sanctioned killings and weaponizing executions who create fear among protesters. So that's definitely what the state wants, what the authority wants to happen, to sow fear inside protesters and stop them from taking to the streets.

But that's not what we've been seeing on the streets. The protests continue and they are evolving and taking different shapes. So now you have more strikes and then the protests are changing in different ways. So before it was just taking to the streets. Now it's people of all different walks of life, celebrities, artists, sports stars joining and condemning. And basically, when this happens, the state loses more legitimacy when everybody, even the people who once supported them,

come out and say, you know, these killings are just unacceptable. But, and as you mentioned, people are going on the streets. They are protesting, especially after these executions, where we saw it was a wave of protests. Because when I talk to a lot of people who are inside Iran and who actually do go on the streets and protest,

they say that now that they've killed these young people, and these are men in their 20s, 19 22 year old uh people being hanged um so they say when they kill these young people how can we just sit back and just give up this cannot happen um their bloods will be in vain you know would be shed in vain. And this is not right. So it is having maybe people will think of doing protests in a different way. So now a lot of people are asking the governments, Western governments to take action. So using other platforms, but possibly a decrease in the number of people we are seeing on the street, which is interesting. But another thing I want to explore are these announcements yesterday by authorities about new hijab rules. And I say new cautiously because I'm wondering how new they are. A reinforcement of the existing rules, but we have had the announcement.

Explain what they announced and really what a difference they may make. Not much of a difference, to be honest. I was actually reading about the new punishments. So basically they say now if a woman takes off her hijab in public, she will be sentenced to anywhere between 10 days to two months in prison. But because in Iran, if it's under two months or under three months, prison sentence, you don't have to serve it.

So they will replace it with some other kind of punishment. It can be a fine or doing some sort of social or community work. And is this new, Farinak, this prison sentence between 10 and two months? Well, women have been arrested for and in prison for taking off their hijab. But another thing that they've added is that they said that if you campaign for getting rid of the mandatory hijab campaign against mandatory hijab, you can get 10 years in prison. That's a clear message to a lot of women's rights activists and feminists.

Great to speak to you as always always to get your expertise and insights. Farinak Amidi, BBC journalist here with me. Thank you so much for your time here on Women's Hour, a story that we will continue to follow closely here on the programme. Now, we on the programme also try and bring you a range of stories that you may not have heard about yet. And one we're about to talk about probably falls into that category. It's about Loeb, and that is spelled L-O-A-B, but it's pronounced Loeb as in earlobe. And Loeb is a female character created by a Swedish artist using artificial intelligence. And just to paint you a picture, one commentator has described her as the eerie face of a middle-aged woman with dead eyes, a vacant stare and a disturbing grimace. In all the images,

she looks sad and is accompanied by gore and violence. Sometimes she's even with children or a toy and she's always in a drab room surrounded by cardboard. The image has gone viral with people speculating if it's a dystopian vision of womanhood by AI or even something supernatural. And the woman who made the images is Steph Swanson online. She's known as Super Composite. And a little earlier, I caught up with her to find out more. I began by asking her to describe the images in her own words. The original Loeb images are kind of a older woman who looks really depressed and she's kind of,

she has long brown hair and she's sitting in the room that's kind of full of junk usually. The images kind of develop from there as I develop the art and become more abstract and bloodier and gorier and more macabre. Yeah, she has been generated by a text-to-image AI software. And basically, what I did to get her is I was playing around with negative weights. Usually you enter text that says input, and it will try to make something as close to that as possible. But when you weight it as input and it will try to make something as close to that as possible. But when you weight it negatively, it will actually try to make something as

dissimilar from it as possible. I tried to do something most dissimilar to Marlon Brando, and then I got this weird logo. And then when I did what was most dissimilar to that logo, I kept getting this older woman over and over and over. It was weirdly consistent. What was your reaction to that? At this point, this was in April, I'd been doing stuff with image generation for like a year at that point. So I was used to how these things behave. And to discover something that was so consistent was really kind of eerie and also really interesting to me as a nerd, basically. Because it was basically like the same person in these images, like the same character, at least like to a human, it's recognizable as the same person.

And that was really unusual to me. It was definitely exciting and a bit eerie. How have people reacted to Loeb, though? I mean, you describe her as creepy, eerie. Did they agree with you? Did they see this as art, as an online creation? I'm keen to understand what the reaction has been from those engaging with you. The reaction has been really, really positive

and it's been really, really positive. And it's been really cool to have something go viral as a story and also because people like the art and find it emotionally evocative. So it's been super awesome. It's been really positive. Yeah. And that was Steph Swanson. I'm also joined now by Tabitha Goldstorff from the UK Artificial Intelligence Council and Dr. Variat Kinn from the Alan Turing Institute. Good to have you both with us. There is lots for me to learn here. It is a very steep learning curve. I have to be honest with you. Tabitha, let me start with you because I've read that lobe, this image, is associated with two words, which I want you to explain to me. One is creepypasta and another is cryptid. What do those words mean and what do they mean in the context of lobe? So firstly, it's not that steep a learning curve, I promise.

Thank you. That's reassuring. A cryptid is a little bit like a Loch Ness monster. So it's a creature that isn't scientifically proven, but many believe is real. And when I was at school, it was sort of called an urban legend, like a Bloody Mary. And then a Creepypasta is an Internet version of this. And so Love is a sort of an internet version of uh the Loch Ness Monster if you if you close that loop up back around again okay it certainly does but it's not a creepy pasta is it not it's science here we're using artificial intelligence

I think it's it's art um but in the same way that artists have often used technology in the past um yes the technology is scientific but this is art this is a cultural meme and it's it's a fun way of as Steph said sort of emotionally evocative work um it's that magical thinking that we all need and and I know that um Murray will will tell us more about how it's put together. But in my mind, it's really like a smart collage. Yes, it's an AI piece of technology that uses 400 million images and all these scientific words. But ultimately, this is just another tool to make awesome, scary, beautiful art. You call it fun, a smart collage, a vivace.

Well, she says it's certainly disturbing. Why would you design something to look like a toasted corpse? And we'll get into that debate in a moment, but let me bring in Vari. Vari, let's talk about how this was created because Steph there used the word negative prompts. What are negative prompts and help us understand how they led to the creation of Lobe in simple terms. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, in these texts to image generators, they're trained on large

data sets of images, images which have labels attached to them. So some kind of association of what that image represents. And the AI is trained to to detect patterns in that to recognize when it's given a prompt what that text might be associated with in terms of images so normally you would give it a prompt of something that you wanted it to produce in the image and it could be you know the most random of things it could be anything you see examples of if you want an image of a cow drinking a milkshake on the moon you could probably do that um and it will it will give you images that represent what you put in in the prompt a negative prompt is then asking it to produce an image of kind of the furthest away thing from what was in that prompt so um the opposite of what that prompt was um and as Steph said uh she originally

asked for the opposite of Brando um and you know expecting that's originally asked for the opposite of Brando and you know expecting that's going to be the opposite of Marlon Brando which is for a human mind it's kind of hard to conceptualize what is the opposite of you know something like that but the AI is thinking about what is what are the the kinds of things that are associated with that prompt so Brando what is associated with that and what is the opposite of all of those associations? And that could be quite different from what a human mind might come up with as being the opposite. I think one example is, there's been another example where somebody asked for the opposite of blue water. Now, a human mind might think that that would be red water, but AI

is thinking of something in a different way of like, what is conceptually something very, very different from water, andually something very very different from water and also very very different from from blue and it's not red water it's something completely different and so that's how negative prompts work it's thinking of something which is the furthest away thing from what was was in that prompt um and ultimately that's that's how lobe was created it was uh the negative the opposite of brando but then the opposite of what was produced from brando which interestingly doesn't bring you back to brando brings you to something entirely new i'm fascinated i'm fascinated and just so i'm clear this is then this negative prompt is put into some kind of

software an image generator yeah and what's important to know in this case is we don't know exactly which model was used so there are there are several, there's numerous different AI image generator models. The most well-known ones are DALI, Mid-Journey and Stable Diffusion. Steph Swanson has never said which model was used to create AI, sorry, to create Lobe. And I think that, you know, that's important.

There are, and it goes back to what Tava was saying about the art in this is about creating the intrigue and creating a discussion around it and part of that is that we have enough information for it to be intriguing, for it to be compelling, for it to create a kind of mystery or to evoke this response, but not all the information. We don't know exactly what model was used, we don't know exactly what text was given, exactly what prompts beyond the initial creation of Loeb. We don't know what exactly has been inputted to create subsequent images of Loeb.

And I think that's important. We can't be too definitive in saying exactly how this was produced, because that is the artistic process in doing this. Tabitha, I'm interested in what Vary said there about how the AI generator thinks in a different way. And I want to pick that up because what does such material like Loeb suggest really about the prejudices surrounding the images of women? I think that's a really important question for answer that, as Varya was talking, I suddenly realized that we haven't told the listeners that they can also go and do this themselves. So as we're talking, they could, you know, use, use search engine and find Dali, for example, D-A-L-L-E, and type in

a cat eating a, you know, eating a hamburger on women's hour, and they could actually start to see some of these creations. And the reason I say that is because I don't want this to feel like something that is scary or something that people can't access themselves quickly, but also because the more people that use these systems and the more women that use these tools, the better, I believe, the outputs will be for women. We have this challenge and Vara can explain a little bit better than I can, I know, about technically why, but these models are trained on the questions that they're asked, but also trained on existing data sets and the existing world. And if these models are trained on the existing world, we already know it's very biased. It's very racist, sexist, misogynistic. And so we live in a world where if you searched CEO on Google, you only got white men. Obviously, OpenAI, who created Dally and ChatGPT3, which is the other, you know, popular

chatbot at the moment in this space, they've solved for that. But what haven't they solved for? We won't know until we keep using and keep asking. And as women get out there and try these products and make sure they do work for us. So essentially, getting more women to use such programs would counter the prejudices that seem to be emerging from such systems. It's not the only solution. We need regulation. We need standards. We need a better process and protocol and we need companies to be accountable and responsible for this. But I also think women should be out there using these systems. And it's, you know, people often ask me, is an AI going to take my job? And I always say no, but somebody using AI better than you might do.

Yeah. And this has got to be about using all the tools in your arsenal to make sure that you are the most capable, whether it's artist, lawyer, cab driver, whatever those things are that you're doing, using the technology is key. This idea of it being a creepypasta, I'm going back to where we started in many ways,

and this is to both of you really. Why do humans do that? So we know there's a scientific explanation for what we are seeing and you've just explained it very clearly to me but but why does our mind lead us there to think of this as some kind of myth almost maybe very you want to pick up and tell the follow yeah i mean i think yeah it's very compelling and we always yeah in all genres and all technologies there's always a tendency to bring out the creepy, the mysterious stories. And I think that's something about maybe human psychology that we like to be scared of.

We like to have things that are mysterious and we like to create these stories and create these myths. And with AI, the other side of it is that we also have lots of misconceptions about what AI is. I mean, AI stands for artificial intelligence. So understandably, you think maybe it's something intelligent. And there's often claims that are made that AI is capable of consciousness or that AI is somehow magical and mysterious and is creating things itself. It's not. You know, AI are computer programs. They do what they're programmed to do. Sometimes it may appear that there's more going on, but actually they're just doing what they're programmed to do.

So in this sense, it's recognizing patterns in the data that is being fed. It's recognizing patterns and associations between images and what they're related to. And it's creating responses which match up with those patterns. And as Tabitha said, it is often producing images or outputs which reflect the biases, the prejudices, the values of the individual organisations who have programmed these systems. And in many cases, the ways that women are represented in images that come out often are sexualised images because there's a predominance of sexualized images of women within an image on the internet, which these are trained on, but also different kind of associations or

representations of groups, of individuals, of groups within the data that comes through. Yeah. And this message from Elaine leads me to my next question. Where are the positive AI depictions of older women? It's frightening that AI are picking up on such images of women. Tabitha, looking forward, looking ahead, where does this lead us? Because whilst it presents potential for creative industries, is it not also concerning, especially when it comes to matters like child abuse images and other harmful content? I think there are some serious concerns like that. There are also serious privacy concerns, plagiarism issues,

the proliferation of more fake news. I mean, this definitely could spell more, more, more, more, more bad. Luckily, there's nothing new about this technology specifically. It's something that the AI Council which I chair and the government are working on in the UK also Europe and the US and China's regulations to figure out how do we make this technology safe it is a step change it does mean that we need to go quicker it means that there's an increased need for regulation. I think that it's, but it is not fundamentally something that we don't know how to tackle. It's just something that we're not yet on top of. I think that in terms of depictions of older

people, I think it's exactly the same problem is is as as Vara said these systems depict what um them their creators have created and we need that hence why we need more women more old women more um more black women more people getting involved that are not currently involved today um I your your question about like why we're excited about this stems me back to when I was you know 15 staring in the mirror saying, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, you know, what's my future hold for me? It's exactly that same sense. You know, I actually have goosebumps right now. I can see you're excited. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's the same thing. It's just, it's just a modern version.

Tabitha and Vary, great to speak to you. Thank you for holding my hand through that. And you've made it a lot clearer. So thank you for your time here on Woman's Hour. Now, are you one of those people who loves jumping into the sea or a river at this time of the year and feels the benefits of cold water swimming? Well, if so, the British Medical Journal has said that swimmers should be told more about the risks of a lung condition known as SIPE, swimming-induced pulmonary oedema. They reported that although this is incredibly rare, a healthy, regular open-water swimmer in her 50s suffered from it during a night swim in a quarry. She has since recovered, but we thought it would be good to find out a little more about the condition

and how to spot it and help others. Dr Ruth Williamson is Chief Medical Officer at the University Hospitals Dorset. She is a channel relay and winter swimmer with research interests in the health benefits and risk management of cold water swimming. Good to have your expertise here on the programme, Ruth. First of all, tell us what SIPE is and what happens to your body. Good morning and thank you very much for inviting me. SIPE, Swimming Induced Pulmonary Oedema, is if you like drowning from the inside, what happens

is that fluid from inside your own body accumulates in the lungs, in the air spaces in the lungs and that therefore means that your lungs don't do their normal function which is putting oxygen into your blood. It can come on quite rapidly and it can be quite harmful. That's very clear, thank you. People don't know much about it so the next question is symptoms, how do you know if you have it? Well so the symptoms can come on slowly or they can come on quite rapidly. And if you think what's happening is that fluid is coming into the lungs. Some people have described feelings of heaviness within the lungs. Some people have a lot of swimmers describe the fact that they seem to be putting more and more effort in and not going as fast as they were going before so the swimming becoming more effortless effortful people who've experienced

asthma before will say it feels like asthma and some some swimmers have tried taking their asthma medication and not got relief so that sense of breathlessness of hunger for air and not being able to generate the same energy as you can before. I imagine it would be quite an extreme feeling, though, because many people might say, well, I go for a swim, especially in cold water. I feel out of breath. I feel like this is a really tough effort that I'm having to put in. I mean, is there almost a bar at which you have to kind of reach to kind of recognise that this is what's happening to me. I imagine those symptoms can be mistaken for other things. So I think cold water swimming is definitely an acquired taste and it's something that needs to be undertaken with caution and people should

acclimatise slowly to open water swimming by gradually increasing the time they spend in the water and learning to understand how their body feels. So when any of us have a cold shower or get into cold water, we will feel that cold shock response, that gasp for air, that sense of feeling a little bit breathless. The breathlessness of SIPE is different from that in that it doesn't settle down. If you think about the RNLI float to survive, you know, they talk about cold shock and what you should do is lie on your back and just let your breathing regulate.

What happens in SIPE is no amount of lying on your back will help your breathing to regulate. You need to get out of the water. So that's the main thing to do. If you experience it whilst you're swimming, get yourself out of the water as quickly as you can. Absolutely. And that's why you should never swim alone. Because even if you're a really good swimmer, if you suddenly experience SIPE, then you will have what we call

swim failure and find yourself unable to swim. Does it impact women more than men I wonder? So that's a really interesting question. Immersion pulmonary edema known as IPE has been recognised in the diving community for a long time. SIIPA is recognised in the triathlete community. And we've seen case reports like this recent case report. I'm not sure that women are overrepresented in this group. I know from other research I've done that women are overrepresented in experiencing hypothermia in cold water swimming. But I've not seen sufficient evidence to really put a gender bias on this at this stage. In terms of recovery and whether or not it can be resolved, what are your thoughts on that? So the good news is that most cases recover spontaneously and many people who suffer from it

by the time they reach medical assistance have effectively recovered and there are some simple things that you can do to recover so if you think of your lungs as being like a sponge if they're full of water if you sit the person up who's got SIPE then the water will all go to the bottom of the sponge, leaving you more of the air exchanging part of the lungs available for doing exactly that. So a SIPE casualty needs to be set up, needs to be wrapped up warm, because the art of warming the body will actually help relieve the pressure of the blood within the lungs as the rest of the body warms up. And they need to get to medical assistance as quickly as possible.

Really good guidance there from you. I've also had this message from Samantha on a different but related subject with regards to cold water swimming. And she said that she started cold water swimming in the summer or showering rather. She increased in the shower by small increments each week by 30 seconds to three minutes. And she wants to know how important it is to warm up after cold water exposure. Since increasing the time in cold water, she's noticed it's harder to warm up and feels like the cold is going into her bones.

Her questions are, is it possible that I could be doing myself some harm by not warming up after? Could this stress my body and possibly weaken the immune system rather than strengthen it in some way? Or am I worrying over nothing? So any advice from your cold water swimmer would be appreciated. And that is from a cold water showerer. That's a great question. And thank you for that. So what we know is that if you think of our bodies, our bodies are made up of lots of different tissues and they cool from the outside in. So our fat and our muscles cool up, cool down.

When we come out of cold water, all of those cold tissues remain cold. And as the blood recirculates, that cold blood will come back into the centre of the body. So we identify what's known as after drop. So you will continue cooling after you get out of the water. With cold water swimming, that's one of the reasons why it's vital to get out before you get too cold, because you will get colder after you get out. So you should warm up. You should warm up by doing exercise, by putting on layers and layers of clothing. A warm drink is helpful. And if you've been out for a prolonged

period of time, some carbohydrate is good. So open water swimmers are great coffee, cake, hot tea and cake drinkers, because a little bit of carbohydrate after a swim will help you to warm up quickly. Dr. Ruth Williamson, we appreciate you coming onto the program and giving us your guidance there on site. Thank you. In February 2003, a woman called Lana Clarkson was found dead at the Hollywood mansion of the iconic music producer Phil Spector. It was a global news sensation, with Spector insisting that the 40-year-old actor, whom he had only met that evening, had killed herself with his gum.

The man responsible for mega hits such as Be My Baby and You've Lost That Loving Feeling and Do It Transpired had a history of violent and erratic behaviour towards women, was eventually found guilty of Lana's murder six years later. Media coverage at the time portrayed Lana as a washed-up B-movie actress. A new Sky documentary series called Spectre re-examines what happened almost 20 years ago and hears from her family and close friends for the very first time.

Lana's best friend, Neely Hudson Hudson spoke to Nuala from her home in Los Angeles and explained why she decided to take part in the documentary. Well the media as a result of what the defense was putting out into the public was painting a portrait of a very different woman from the woman that I knew. This documentary has done a beautiful, very sensitive and a delicate and a precious way of humanizing her and bringing forward the Lana that we knew, which was just an incredibly talented, beautiful, giving, generous, creative woman. Because I think what came across looking back at some of the footage of the trial, you know, the word B-movie actress was used in a derogatory way, which would be, I suppose, a low budget film. But she was a working actress. She had done commercials. She was getting into stand up. That didn't come across from the defence. How difficult or frustrating was it not to go public with who she was when the public were being fed a completely different image by the defence? Well, it was really difficult because what we knew to be the

truth was what I can tell you was the truth. She was a working actress for 20 years. She wasn't a A-list movie star, but she was a working actress. And she had an accident a year before this, the murder. She literally broke, crushed both her wrists because she was dancing with some children at a Christmas party and on hardwood floors and the carpet slipped out from under her. She put her arms back to brace her fall and she crushed her wrists. But up until that moment, she was a working actress. Does that mean that she didn't struggle financially

occasionally from time to time? Anybody that's an entrepreneur that is in a field where it's job to job understands that, but she was a working actress. And so because of this incident, she was unable to work for a year. And at the end of that year, when her recovery was finally there, she got her first non-acting job in 20 years because she had to. And she was actually very excited about the job because it was one that was going to have her interface with the community that she loved and worked in.

And, and, and the rest is history at this point, but she cut her teeth. I mean, I was so impressed. She used to get on a bus at six in the morning to go downtown, to be an extra on Hill street blues when she was 19 years old. And then she got her SAG Blues when she was 19 years old. And then she got her SAG card and she was on every, every major television show that was a hit for those following years. And then she did all these fabulous sword and sorcery, Roger Corman movies, and then she was doing getting national commercials. So she was So she was a working actress.

And yet it was really hard when the defense was portraying her as this out-of-work, desperate, depressed actress over the hill at 40 and would even contemplate suicide. It was absurd. It was despicable. And of course, how much she was working or she wasn't working should not come into a person who has been killed. But that was it. It was about the fact that the defense was saying that she was suicidal. Was that something that you had ever witnessed, her being depressed, for example, or any of the images that they put forward about her? Not at all. I mean, we're human beings, right? And we go through ups and downs in our lives. And especially when you work job to job, I'm a realtor. I've worked job to job for 35 years. You never know where your next paycheck's coming from.

She, like any human being, has ups and downs in their lives. And there were probably certainly times when she might have been a little depressed over lack of job. Or how about the fact that she hasn't worked in a year because she also hasn't been able to use her hands, you know, for six months at a time. So people go through periodic ups and downs. Again, it's human nature. But to be suicidal is absurd.

She had everything to look forward to. Let us talk about that night. Phil Spector came to the House of Blues, a place where she was working. She refused him at first at the door, but then he got in. I suppose he was offended by that. But the night ended with him

wanting her to go for a drink. It didn't appear that Lana knew Phil Spector before that night. You can tell me how you understand that. But also, I'd be really curious why you think Lana did get in the car with Phil Spector that night. He had been drinking heavily, according to all reports. It is so incredibly clear to me why she did what she did, because I knew her nature. I knew Lana almost as well as I knew myself. Lana lived in a world that most people will never understand. She was a part of the Hollywood scene for over 20 years. She played with the big boys. She dated major, major motion picture movie stars. She was invited to premieres and to award shows.

She was such a joy to have around that she was always on invitation lists. She loved brilliance. She loved the artistry of her industry. She loved the creative of her industry, and she was constantly yearning for learning. She was always open to experiences. So no, she never met Phil Spector. She didn't even she thought Phil Spector was a woman at first. Yes, that's why I think she didn't recognize him or know who he was, which very much got us back up, if my understanding is correct, from the documentary. Yeah. So it's been established that she didn't know him. And Kim Gregory, who was the manager at the House of Blues Foundation Room where she worked, also testified to the fact that he observed she didn't know him. So my take on it, and obviously this is conjecture, but I can

absolutely see it happening, is it's two or three o'clock in the morning. She's amped up. She's been working all night. Yes, she's exhausted. Yes, she's ready to go home. But she meets this fascinating, albeit, you know, crazy, but very well-known music producer who, even if you're not in the industry, come have breakfast. Lana would not shy away from an opportunity to sit and have breakfast with this fascinating human being. And at first she didn't want to, she wanted to go home. We know this from what witnesses have testified, but with a little bit of encouragement and, you know, urging, she would agree. Yeah, okay, fine. I'll come have a cup of coffee or breakfast or a glass of wine. I can absolutely see this happening. There were three different women who Phil Spector had threatened with a gun. I think it was unusual as well that in fact, those stories were admitted into the trial. When you saw that, what were you thinking? Did it give you hope at that

point that he would be convicted? It was everything. I mean, it was everything. It was such a remarkable evidence of the historical behavior of this psychopath, or for lack of a better term, it was everything. And I know what I learned at the time is that a lot of times judges don't allow prior bad acts witnesses, which is what they're called, prior bad acts witnesses. They don't allow them to testify. But in this case, the judge deemed it appropriate because I believe, and these are just my words, they're not legal definitions, but I believe that they were so indicative and so precisely and closely identical to what he was being accused of and what the evidence, the preponderance of evidence had shown to be the case that the judge allowed it in. And it was just remarkable. It was as if they gave us a smoking gun.

But it was a mistrial that Phil Spector first went through. What was that like? Because the jury could not agree and a mistrial was declared. That was in the first trial when there was this huge public appetite following this case. So that was devastating. It was absolutely, absolutely on every level, emotionally devastating for everybody. And all I can say is Alan Jackson is a hero for all of us. And that was the lawyer who was prosecuting, which, of course, Lana's family and you were very close to because he went back to trial. the baton to somebody else to do it. But he was so absolutely determined to see justice be served in this case that he was willing to go through it again himself. And he gave us confidence. And when you listen to the interviews and everything that transpired after the first trial. And the court of public opinion, the court of public opinion also supported it. And Phil Spector was eventually convicted of Lana's murder in 2009.

He did die in prison in 2021. When you heard that he died, what went through your mind? You know, it was just another day, whether he died or not, was not going to impact my life or impact. It wasn't going to bring Lana back. He got the justice that he deserved. He was locked up. He, for all intents and purposes, must have had just a miserable life from that point on, even though it was also seemingly miserable prior to that for a lot of reasons. I wasn't happy it happened, but it was okay. And Lana now, I know you're still close with her family. I know you celebrate

her life every year. Perhaps tell our listeners a little bit about how you celebrate her life every year. Perhaps tell our listeners a little bit about how you celebrate her life and how you remember her now. Well, I remember her daily. I think about her often. I celebrate our friendship. I have moments where I feel her presence and I see us laughing and I see us dancing and singing and just giggling. She was such a joy and such a generous spirit. She was such a pleasure to be around. And so I feel her in my life constantly. The family and our close circle of friends every year on her birthday. Most years we try to get together and we have dinners, just however we can be together and just, again, celebrate the love that we have for each other

and the love that we have for Lana. Nuala there was talking to Neely Hudson, the best friend of Lana Clarkson. And Spectre is available to watch on Sky Documentaries and streaming service now. It's New Year and many of you may be going through your home, your wardrobe, having a good old declutter. That includes me.

I am currently going through my heap of saris, in fact, around seven yards of silk, chiffon, cotton, wondering whether to keep, donate or reversion. Well, a first of its kind show at the Design Museum in London entitled The Offbeat Sari has got me thinking twice about letting go of these garments. It brings together more than 90 items that have been loaned by designers and studios across India to tell the story of what has been called a fashion revolution. The garment whose history dates back over 5,000 years is evolving into a modern expression of identity

with the rise of sari wearing influences and even the hashtag sari not sorry. My next guest Priya Kanchan Dhani is curating the exhibition. Good to have you with us, Priya. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Talk us through your exhibition. How can an item that is 5,000 years old be trailblazing? That is a very good question, but it is. The way in which the sari is being experimented with today is absolutely astonishing. It's probably going through its biggest reinvention

in its 5,000 year history, if it's possible to track that. It's, I guess, the sheer diversity of its textures that we're going to be showing, the shapes, the materialities, the architectures, and the way in which designers are playing with new materials. We're seeing saris woven from steel, stitched from hands distressed to denim, knotted, pleated, belted, saris that are worn in protests, in celebrations or even on a daily commute. But essentially the sari is being radically reimagined and that's taking place by the work of designers, by wearers and also by makers. And I think they're really adapting it for what is a diverse and contemporary world. Steel and denim. I'm not sure I'd be able to put one of those on, but it's important

to say, isn't it, that sari is well experimented with to an extent already. Each part of India has its own way of putting on a sari, but there are stereotypes associated with wearing a sari. Talk us through them and how they have changed. Well, I think the stereotypes are quite different perhaps here in Britain compared to in India, where this reimagining of the sari is really taking hold. Having grown up in the UK among the South Asian diaspora like you the stereotypes I was exposed to were of the sari being something associated with my grandmother with my mother something that was and subconsciously I probably didn't realize it but associated with the passive female body in the domestic space or the objectified female body in Bollywood.

You know, in India, the Sari in the sort of 80s and 90s was going through a period of not being quite as relevant as it had been in a previous generation. In fact, in 1990, India Today reported that the Sari was considered a staid standard and almost sacred, which is quite astonishing given how exciting it is today, within India at least. You see, I've always thought of it like, you know, fashions change but the sari stays the same and it's timeless and it comes, you know, if one fashion's gone out, it will come again around in a few months' time or a few years' time. But one thing that is clear is that they are very tough to wear.

So why are the younger generation choosing to reinvent it? Well, I think India's gone through quite an intense period of cultural, socioeconomic change. You know, it was made independent in 1947. In 1991, the economy liberalised and it opened India up to so many new influences and that's sort of you know when the fashion industry also sort of mushroomed and we started to have the first design fashion weeks in India and fashion houses started to grow so I think

all of that is sort of coming to a head in a sense for a number of different reasons. I think there's also a reckoning about the role of women in Indian society. And I think the way women are experimenting with the sari is an expression of their own identity. And they're really turning it into a symbol of female empowerment, which I think defies those stereotypes of an earlier generation. But it also in many ways connects us to an earlier generation as well, doesn't it? Yeah, I think there's certainly a great deal of nostalgia. There are designers who are looking to female icons of earlier generations for inspiration, you know, figures like Gayatri Devi from the Tagore family and Indra Gandhi the first female prime minister of India you know

these are powerful women who wore the sari boldly and designers now are looking back to them and women looking back to them as a sort of muses so yeah there's certainly that nostalgia factor but I think the kind of materiality of the sari now, the way it's being draped, the way the individualness of it is giving rise to quite a different form of expression than what we've seen before. I did say earlier that they are hard to wear. I should say that they are hard to wear for me, who doesn't wear them on a daily basis, but for those who do, they can spring them on very, very quickly. There was this moment, Pri just just uh last year at the met gala where the first sari was worn there was that a significant moment for the garment

yeah and this was a sari worn by um businesswoman natasha prunawala um she wore a gold sabiasachi sari sabiasachi is one of the most famous couture designers in India and it was styled with this quite bold gold Schiaparelli bodice so really unique ensemble had this kind of renaissance sculptural quality about it. It was very ornate but it was also quite kind of whimsical and this reference to kind of corsetry bustets combined with the sari was really interesting and really amazing and I think what it did was really put the sari on a global stage and the attention that it attracted I think showed the potential for the sari to be relevant globally but also its capacity to express I think culture in new ways and new visual

give rise to new visual forms which that ensemble did it was it was incredible and and i feel really proud that we're going to be exhibiting it for the first time in the uk at the exhibition yeah really interesting stuff i look forward to visiting it myself. That exhibition, the Offbeat Sari, opens at the Design Museum in May 2023. So you do have a little bit of a wait if you do want to take a look, but well worth it, no doubt. And interesting that idea of the sari not just being worn by those from the Asian subcontinent, but being worn by people all around the world. I look forward to seeing what evolves from that. Thank you for joining us, Priya Kanchanadani, the curator of that exhibition. I should say that on tomorrow's programme, we'll be talking about the

self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who is still being held in Romania over allegations of trafficking and rape. We'll be looking at that story in more detail. Thanks for listening. There's plenty more from Woman's Hour over at BBC Sounds. Documentary adventures that invite a closer listen. We were willing to put not only our bodies on the line, but our whole being. A documentary podcast from BBC Radio 4. So do you mind... Testing? Yes.

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