Woman's Hour - Trudie Styler, Broadcasting to Afghan women, Author Kate Fagan

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Trudie Styler has had a career spanning decades, from starting out as an actress for the Royal Shakespeare Company to the last 20 years as a film-maker. Trudie’s newest film Posso Entrare: An Ode to Naples sees her exploring the streets of the Sanita district of the city, meeting residents and finding out more about Naple's history of conflict and violence – and how people are working to heal those wounds. She joins Datshiane Navanayagam to tell us about what she discovered and her career in film.Begum TV is a satellite television channel that broadcasts from Paris into Afghanistan. Its hosts are all women, and they are bringing education and entertainment to those women and girls having their rights stripped away in Afghanistan. Founder Hamida Aman joins Datshiane to tell us more. Kate Fagan has been a US basketball player, an ESPN journalist and has written three non-fiction books. Now she is publishing her first novel, The Three Lives of Cate Kay. Presenter: Datshiane Navanayagam Producer: Laura Northedge

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

Hello, I'm Dashiani Navanayagam and welcome to Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. Good morning and a very warm welcome to Woman's Hour. This morning the Prime Minister said that terrorism had changed and that his government will ask and answer difficult questions. Well, this follows the announcement of a public inquiry into the Southport attack that killed three young girls last July. We'll be talking about that in just a moment. Also today, a TV station broadcasting straight into the homes of women and girls in Afghanistan. Now barred from schools and universities,

this station is offering them educational lessons, entertainment shows and even programmes on their rights. So you might be wondering how they are doing this under the Taliban. We'll be finding out about that. Also, Trudy Styler, actor and director, will be dropping by the Women's Hour studio. I'll be chatting to her about her new documentary on Naples and the women she met working to combat its gun and gang culture. And women leading multiple lives. Now, you might feel like you're one of them. Well, I'll be speaking to the Emmy award-winning journalist and author Kate Fagan on her first fiction book, The Three Lives of Kate Kay,

and the web of intense female relationships she weaves. So it's got me thinking, how many lives have you had? And how did you transition between them? Maybe there was a significant event like a job change or having kids relocating to a new town or country or possibly just even a chance encounter. You know, that sliding doors moment that sets your life on a different path. It can be anything from the seemingly banal to the very dramatic i'd love to know please do get in touch

all the usual ways that text number 84844 or you can email us through our website or you can send a whatsapp or voice note on 03700 100444 just watch those data charges. Or if you'd rather let us know on social media, it's at BBC Women's Hour. Now, Britain now faces a new threat, acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms. Those were the words of the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer this morning as he acknowledged that the families of the three girls killed in the Southport stabbings, Bibi King, Elsie Dot Stankum and Alistair Silver Agua, were failed by the state. Here's part of what he said. I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure. Failure which in ddim yn gallu gwneud i unrhyw gyfranogol y dde, ddifflech o'u llwyddiant, llwyddiant sydd, yn y achos hwn, yn amlwg, yn llwyddo'r llaw. Er enghraifft, roedd y perthynaswr wedi'i ymwneud

â'r rhaglen prefent ar tri cyd-destun arall. Yn 2019, unwaith, And in 2021, twice. Yet on each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for intervention. A judgment that was clearly wrong and which failed those families. And I acknowledge that here today. Well, that was Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking just earlier this morning. In a moment we'll hear from the Labour MP for Southport Patrick Hurley

and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside Emily Spurrell but first I'm joined by Sarah McKenty a mother in Southport who runs the local Royal British Legion community hub. So welcome to the programme. Thank you. What has been the reaction to the guilty plea yesterday from the mums and families in your community? Shock. I'm not sure that's a strong enough word. I mean, I think that everybody had been preparing themselves for several weeks of trial and, you

know, kind of weeks and months of, for want of a better phrase, psyching yourself up for that. And then yesterday, you know, I remember sitting here at my desk at work and my friend messaging me and just absolute shock. And you kind of feel that you wanted it to be a sense of relief or or for another reaction but I think shock kind of sums it up because like I say we've been preparing ourselves um and and and then this happened so um yeah shock and anger and some sense of relief but I think that's going to be a little bit bit of time down the line. And you have a particularly close connection to the families involved? Yeah absolutely so the sort of epicenter of everything was around my daughter's school and and her wonderful yoga group and my nine-year-old was was due to go that day but didn't in the end.

You know, she's lost friends and had friends that were injured. And I think we've spent the last few months trying to support those families as best we can, whether or not that's just listening or making food or doing school runs or just being there for them, really. And as part of that process, I think we've all been learning how to deal with these kind of scenarios. And yesterday was just not something that we factored into the situation. And now we try to move on from that. Well, we heard Keir Starmer say earlier today that, you know, families have been failed. He admitted that. Do you think that is helpful for people to hear? Gosh, that's a really interesting question. Maybe at some point down the line, I think we all

perhaps suspected that somewhere, you know, he was known. I don't think that's necessarily a surprise. I think it will only be helpful if we move on and the system changes. I mean, for me, it's about addressing the challenges that young people have as soon as we possibly can. You know, I was reflecting whilst listening to his speech, the fact that, you know, this Christmas, I got a VR headset, and I can go into the virtual world, and I can play games. The majority of those games that are accessible by young people are some kind of game that features some level of violence. You know, how do we address that? How do we address the access to the resources that they have on social media, you know, without stopping children from understanding about the world and communicating with people? So I think it will only be helpful, not just for our town and for our families, but it will only be helpful if change is made and change is made quickly and it's lasting.

I want to bring in Patrick Hurley the Labour MP for Southport here and Emily Spurrell the Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside. Patrick and Emily welcome as well to Women's Hour. Patrick in a statement you released yesterday after the guilty plea you said that we are one step closer to justice. How are we one step closer? Well, the families have been spared what we were all gearing up to be a harrowing ordeal of four weeks of trial. The whole town and the community and the families involved were expecting a lot of disturbing detail

about the attack to be heard in court. I'm really pleased that those families have been spared that harrowing ordeal i'm really pleased to see that at the very last minute having spent six months apparently not really engaging with the criminal justice system and with the defense team that the murderer has now pleaded guilty and that we can finally get some moving on to the sentencing later on in this week. It's not by any stretch of the imagination a cause for celebration or jubilation. This is, you know, the girls are not coming home, that this is not going to be anything other than build comfort for the families involved. But I do think that having acknowledged that he is a murderer, that he's pleaded guilty on all 16 counts there,

I do think that offers at least a modicum of comfort to the families as they seek to move on to the next stage of their grief. Some comfort, but so many people will have questions. And we heard the Prime Minister say today, you know, they will ask far reaching questions and they will get answers. In your opinion, what are the questions that need to be asked here? What are your constituents saying to you they want to know? Okay, so from my perspective, it's evident that there was government failure over a number of years and state failure here. From the first point of contact between crime prevention and law enforcement, the PREVENT programme, back in 2019, over the course of a number of years, there were several occasions at which Rudi

Kobano could have been stopped, could have been treated in a different way, whether that's through Prevent or through social services or through adolescent mental health services, through the local authority. At every point, he was allowed to slip through the gaps. And we need to find out precisely why, precisely what went wrong and make sure that doesn't happen again. The Prime Minister was clear this morning that people blame immigration or they blame funding cuts to services over many years and that none of these things on their own are full explanations and I think that that's what the inquiry that is announced this morning will be looking to set out and find out. The nature of the extremist threat to the UK has

indeed changed. Maybe 20-25 years ago we would have heard on the one hand you'd have people joining far-right groups, National Front etc and be very organisational and formal in their affiliations. Or, on the other hand, we have a lot of people who were being bribed maybe 20 years ago to go to al-Qaeda training camps overseas and then coming back and being radicalised in that way. I think in 2025 what we're seeing is that people are self-radicalizing

in their bedrooms. People are finding things online. People are going onto the smaller social networks, social media networks, and finding like-minded people. This isn't just the case with Ruda Cabana. It was also the case with people

who were instigating the riots in the summer over the course of 12 to 18 months, maybe longer. Some of those people have found each other and are legging each other on. Let me bring in Emily Spurl here because you've mentioned, you know, the failings. The prime minister talked about failings that need addressing this morning. We know that, you know, this was a boy at the time, a young man involved with a range of different state agencies from the police, social services, mental health services. Emily, what should have happened to have caught this violent teenager

before this attack took place? Well, firstly, can I just say, you you know my heart is very much with with the families of Bibi Alice and Elsie today and I think it's important that we keep saying their names because we want their names to be the ones that are remembered and not those of this vile individual who's committed such a heinous act so very much my heart is with the families and actually the whole community as Sarah has spoken about we know there was a whole community that's reading from this and so I'm very much thinking of them today and what they are processing. The Prime Minister has announced an inquiry I welcome that clearly you know people

have got questions as Patrick said there are there are questions there are answers that people want to understand how such an event can happen how the state and how the different agencies that were involved you know what more could they have done and I think this is what the inquiry hopefully will give us, some of those answers, and hopefully give us some of the learning that will come out of that. But how would you like to see various state agencies work together in the future to keep people safe? Well, again, I think this is some of the conversation

we'll have as part of the inquiry. I think this is this is some of the conversation we'll have as part of the inquiry I think there are some you know our public sector agencies working you know work incredibly hard to support in the roles that they do and you know there's a whole range of challenges that they're they're facing at the minute and I think hopefully the inquiry will start to get to the detail as to you know if things were missed how they were missed and why and what we need to do do differently and you know, I think as the Prime Minister said, as others have said, you know, things are changing. The way that young people are interacting online much more.

The risk is changing. The way that, you know, the way that we view terrorism is changing. I think we need to really get to the bottom of actually what are the challenges that are posed now and how do we need to adapt? How do our agencies need to adapt to work better together to identify those vulnerable young people who maybe are at risk of being radicalised online? And actually, it's not just our public sector agencies. I think we have to look to our social media companies. Again, the Prime Minister mentioned that this morning. You know, we've got to see more responsible action

taken by these agencies to get this material off, you know, off the internet, off the pages, so young people cannot access it anymore. This is a changing and rapidly evolving world, and we need to be, I think, much more alive to that. And I really hope that the inquiry will pull out some of those actions that we will hopefully take to move forward. And we heard the Prime Minister talk today about how ideology is changing,

and now you have lone perpetrators fixated on extreme violence. But can I ask you is this about communication between various agencies or is this also about levels of resourcing is that also a key factor in the overall effectiveness of how this is working well listen I have said many times in interviews that we have seen huge cuts to our public services and that has absolutely taken its toll we can't ignore that we know that our you know all of our our state agencies all of our public sector services are absolutely struggling with the demand with the challenges because they don't have the resources they should have after 13 you know huge long years austerity and that is not a secret i think what we need though is to make sure that we don't use

resources as an as an excuse and actually hopefully the inquiry will look to see, well, actually, you know, yes, resources will be a challenge and let's consider that. But let's make sure we don't use that as the excuse to say, well, actually, was there more that could be done? And I think those are some of the questions that hopefully the inquiry will give us some answers to. And Emily, you know, there will be parents, people across the country reeling by what happened last July. As you said, it's really important to keep those three girls at the forefront of this. But there will also be a cohort of parents who are deeply worried about what their young boys, their sons are doing, you know, in their rooms at night, all alone, and who have reached out for support, who want help, but feel they are being overlooked.

What position are they in? What should they be doing? Well, I think this, again, these are some of the questions that I think we want to try and understand what support is actually out there for parents. I know there is support out there and we need to make sure that parents are aware of what that support is and how they access it um and if they're struggling then you know making sure that we have those avenues where people can can raise concerns and say actually I'm not getting the support I need I think we need to have a very honest conversation about what support we need to be putting around particularly our young people we know that the covid you know pandemic had a huge impact on people's on young people's

mental health being much more isolated then we're going to start to see the fallout from that. And I think these are one of the areas that we need to be considering around how do we invest in those services and make sure that parents have access to the right support when they need it. Patrick, I want to come back to you now and, you know, the impact on Southport, because you said Southport will never be the same again and there are scars in the community. What do you think the long-term impact is and how can the community move forward? The community's response to the attack in the immediate aftermath back in July, the genuine community's response was fantastic.

There was a peaceful vigil on the Tuesday night. There were a lot of people, not just laying flowers and wreaths, and there were teddy bears out in the street, but people were taking care of the memorial. People were bringing the teddy bears in overnight to make sure that the rain didn't destroy them. And that just exemplifies the people of Southport and the people of the town, because it's a very small, closely knit community. We saw Sarah earlier mentioning about her daughter's school and everybody has been impacted because everybody knows somebody who's been impacted. How we move forward from that, you know, that's up to the people of southport ourselves we need to make sure that the positive nature of the community spirit and the the sense of solidarity that was seen back in the summer

continues i know that everybody in the town was you know on on tenterhooks almost at the trial this this this week and over the coming weeks but as well as that that's going to be difficult moving through the the process of the public's going to be difficult moving through the process of the public inquiry going to be difficult when we find that it's not just people from out of town who were they were rioting the day after there were people from southport as well who have been who've been sentenced there and we need to acknowledge and come to terms with the fact that the murderer himself was only from two miles out of town in the next village along and that these people this is a you know we talk about an epidemic of mental

ill health and in many ways this sort of thing is helping these things that manifest themselves we need to make sure that we are on the front foot in dealing with these extremist threats. We need to make sure that the town recovers and also that we remember the girls who were murdered, but in a positive, forward-looking fashion so that we don't become synonymous as a town with the attack. We've become synonymous again with being the the bright seaside resort that we always have been so let let me come back to you what what do you think the community needs to move forward and and and to feel safe um so i i think it's i'd like to say i think it's simple um and i think the what people need to now do is people need to start coming back to the town

um you know the summer understandably has has been really challenging we're a beautiful resort you know I've only lived here for seven years it's the longest I've ever lived anywhere I grew up in a military family all over the world and um you know I've absolutely fallen in love with Southport and and the community um you know it's it's a beautiful place to come and visit and I think Patrick touched on this, this is now about creating a legacy for our girls because they would have grown up in this town, perhaps gone away and then perhaps come back again and similarly with the girls that were injured, this is their hometown And the last thing we want for them, or for anybody, is to see this town vanish and, as Patrick says, you know, become just remembered

for what happened in the summer. So I think, you know, if people are listening and they want to do one thing is come and visit us. You know, it is safe here. It's always been safe here. It's no different to the rest of the world or the rest of the United Kingdom, because we've just acknowledged that, you know, there might be somebody sitting at home planning something similar. And that's for the government to start to look at. But it is very, very basic level.

This is about people deciding to come and visit our town. And then for the rest of the town, people like Patrick and some of the leaders within the town to start to get together. And it needs to be joined up thinking and communication. There's lots of amazing ideas out there that people want to do. And we have to come together to make this this happen. You know, there's still lots of angst. There's still people upset and there's still people angry. But for for for Bibi, Alice and Elsie, you know, there's a legacy upset and there's still people angry um but for for

for bb alice and elsie you know there's a legacy here that we must keep alive for them um and i think it's as simple as asking people to come and see us again come and see us again sarah thank you very much that was sarah mckenty and patrick hurley labour mp for southport and Emily Spole, Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside. Thanks again. Now, my next guest, Trudy Styler, has had a career spanning decades, from starting out as an actress for the Royal Shakespeare Company to the last 20 years as a filmmaker. You might also spot her accompanying her musician husband, Stinging to some of his gigs. While Trudy's latest film, Posso Entrare, An Ode to Naples, sees Trudy exploring the streets of the Sunita district in the city and uncovering its history of violence and occupation,

but also how the people, and I have to say this because I watched it yesterday and it's so true, the women in particular are working to heal those wounds. Trudy, a very, very warm welcome to the Women's Hour studio. It's great to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be back on Women's Hour. Well, it's great to have you here in person. And firstly, I guess I wanted to ask, why Naples?

Why Naples? That's a very good question because I didn't know Naples at all. I'm one of those people that passed through it to go to the beautiful island of Ischia where there's a film festival. On this occasion, I was asked,

would you like to make a documentary about Naples? Some producers were there and Rai Cinema, the state television and film branch of Rai, were making a documentary and they needed a director and asked, would I like to do it? So straight away, I said yes, because I, like many people, have passed through it and passed by it. And then I asked myself the question, why don't I know Naples then? And there are two sort of tropes that I call them tropes because people use the word, well, it's dirty.

It's dangerous. It has a mob. You know, you could get like stray bullets and all of that. Of course, that turned out not to be true. In fact, the opposite was true. Naples embraced me, put their arms around me and I made this film. And I don't think my life will ever be quite the same. They did embrace you. I didn't realise that you spoke Italian. Well, I've had a presence in Italy for 35 years. Sting and I have a very beautiful winery and vineyard and a home there. I gave birth to our child in Pisa. And I had a film career. I had an acting career for quite a lot of years when I was in my 20s and early 30s in

Cinecittà in Rome. And so I got to know it pretty well. Well, when watching the documentary, you know, I really got a sense of this dark underbelly of violence and criminality that that's affected communities there. But what really struck me was how women and groups of women in particular were working to confront that, but also how matriarchal a lot of the families were. Did that surprise you? And explain to us why that is,

because it comes out in the film. Well, the area that I explore in Naples is a town called Sanità. um as we hear in the dark uh there are many men who are imprisoned uh or who've um just run off leaving the women to take care of the home and bring up the and bring up the kids um and they're championed by the local priest called Don Antonio Lofredo, who has five parishes and he opens his five churches

to many young people who might be tempted to have a life of crime by the Camorra. And so he provides for them anything that they want to do within his church doors. They have two thriving orchestras. They put on plays. They even, if they want to, they can study boxing. So he had a boxing ring in his sacristy.

Now that's moved out into the gym of the local police. But he's their champion. And they, in turn, have grown because of his belief in them and what he provides for them. But there is and has been a lot of femicide in Naples. And so the women have become stronger as a force. And they've created this organization, Forte Guerrere. And they use Don Antonio's churches as places for meeting with women who are under threat from their partners. You also meet a really strong woman, a 90-year-old woman, or in the documentary, she's 90-year-old, Nora Liello, who swims an hour every day in the med. Nora is quite remarkable. She's actually 94 now. And I had the pleasure of celebrating her birthday a few months ago with her so I'm still very much in touch with her and yeah she of course is a piece of

great history and very important to the documentary and an important citizen to Naples because she carries the history of the second world War when she was a teenager, really knowing, you know, what hunger felt like. And she describes the parasites in the body and then having to be sprayed with this terrible chemical to get rid of, if typhoid was coming, the cruelty that the children underwent. But she's a remarkable woman, also witness to the very last time that Vesuvius erupted. I shouldn't say last time, most recent time that it erupted in 1944. And we have wonderful footage from Luce, which is an archival film that you see throughout the film of that time. And also she witnessed Hitler and Mussolini driving through the streets of Naples together. And I should say that you meet a lot of these people in the film simply by knocking on

their doors. Yes. And approaching them. What was that like? Well, you know, the knocking on doors, it was easy to see life being lived in Naples. It is because they have these houses called bassi, which are sort of like just on street level and some of the houses don't have windows at all they only have shutters and once the shutters are open in the uh to the day you see lives being lived inside the rooms and of course you can just peek in and and see the women at work and the children there and i would just tap on the shutter and say, Posso entrare, signora? And I would be received with,

Certo, me vieni, voglio un caffè, you know, come in. And would you like a coffee? And before you knew it, there'd be children sitting on your knee. And we'd be actually engaging in conversation. And they weren't at all put off by the presence of a camera there either. And in fact, they were very charmed and said, oh, well, now I'll be a VIP. I wonder if some of this is influenced by your earlier life, though, because your earlier life was so different. You grew up in the 50s on a council estate in Worcestershire. How do you think that shaped you?

Yeah, well, you know, there's a word in Italian for street kids, kids who are always out and about and on the streets. Scugnizzi, they're called. And I lived on a council estate. And, of course, all the kids in the street all knew each other. And we were all in and out of our neighbors' houses. And the women were like in Naples, always terribly busy with the chores of the day. And my mom often was helping the local midwife. And I remember going over to Auntie Jo and everyone was auntie and uncle.

And Auntie Josie wasn't my aunt. Auntie was giving birth that day. And I just walked in because I was hungry. And I said to my mom, you know, I'm hungry. And I saw this baby emerge all bloodied. And suddenly my appetite was dulled. Yes. What a way to dull it.

I mean, many people as well, I guess they'll know you from your work in front of the camera, behind the camera, but they won't know that when you were very little, you also had quite a serious accident with a van. And that also shaped, I guess, how you are now in terms of empathy. Just tell us a bit about what happened and how formative that was. Yeah. So my mum was bathing my younger sister, Heather, and I was enticed by a five-year-old to go over to the street to get a sweetie. And I went with her against my mother's wishes and rules. And I got my candy, came back and fell down in the street. At the same time, a 15-year-old was sort of playing in a big delivery wagon.

He jumped into the driver's seat and the engine was on. He just knocked it into gear and this truck rolled towards me. Fortunately, the wheels missed me, but the exhaust pipe caught me in the head and ripped open my head. And I have had for a long time these very livid scars on my face, which at school gave me the nickname Scarface. So it was a sort of like a tough, a tough realisation that you look very different from most people to be told that, you know, a lot of times a day. And so my mum...

You were told that by other children? Yeah, just kids being kids, you know, call you Scarface. And my mum got herself a job at the school as the school dinner's lady and paid for all that nonsense. maybe has given me this sort of sense of empathy for people who look different, who feel they're different, who are different. And I think that when you look at Posso Entrare, I see the humanity that exists in Naples and I'm very touched and warmed by the kindness there. And you've been in this business now for five decades.

Have I? Goodness. Well, that's what I believe. But it doesn't sound like you're thinking of slowing down any time soon. And I guess the fact that it's just flown by, it can only be a good thing. It really does just fly by, doesn't it? Yes, I mean, I'm enjoying it more than ever. I think I've reached an age. I'm past 70 now and I've got eight grandchildren. And I just feel that I just know myself much more,

maybe like myself more than I ever did. Oh, that's interesting. Knowing yourself more and liking yourself more how do you get is that just a time an issue of time passing or is there something deeper going on I well you know you don't notice time passing until you realize you know that you've just said I've've been in the business for 50 years, because you're too busy living the life and charting your course and wishing and dreaming and hoping. And now I have the great pleasure in the simple things in life as well as working, but I'm really very present.

And when I go to Naples, you know, this sort of celebration of the ritualization of food, for instance, sitting across a table with somebody and having a glass of wine and a good laugh and really enjoying that as one of life's greatest rituals. Oh, one of life's greatest rituals. What a note to end on. Trudy Styler, thank you so much for coming by the Women's Hour studio. And Posso and Traoré, An Ode to Naples, is out on Disney Plus this Friday, the 24th of January. Thank you. Now, lots of you texting in. As always, you can text Women's Hour on 084844. Remember, text charged at your standard message rate. And on social media, it's at BBC Women's Hour. So what have you been saying? One of you has said, in response to your comments about changing lives,

I was married with small children at 20-ish, university at 30, cancer and career at 40, started a business at 50, divorced my husband at 60. Life has been a constant growth and change. That is a lot. And another one of you said, I got sober when I was 24 and tomorrow marks nine years without drugs and alcohol. I feel very reflective about what life would be like

if I hadn't stopped drinking. I think I'd probably be dead to be fair. Now I'm in a relationship. I have a job, a house and a baby on the way. Getting sober changed my life and made it worth living. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

Available now. Do keep texting. And on social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour. Now, it's been three and a half years since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan. And as we've covered on the programme, this time has seen women's rights steadily stripped away. 1.4 million girls have been deliberately deprived of schooling in what the UN has labelled a gender apartheid situation. But there are attempts to break through these restrictions. Hamida Aman is the founder of Begum TV, a TV channel that broadcasts via satellite from Paris to Afghanistan. Hamida, hello and welcome to the programme.

Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me. Before we talk about Begum TV, I wanted to ask you about Begum Radio. Now, this was a women's only station set up in Afghanistan that you were involved with. Tell us about it and when did you set that up? Sure. I set up this radio station six months before the takeover and the takeover by the Taliban regime. So I launched it in March 2021, you know, in response of what was about to arrive, to happen, because as an Afghan, I felt that the situation will change and a woman will suffer and woman will be the big loser of this game. Because during 2021, it was these talks between American government and Taliban in Doha, and they were talking about

everything except human rights and especially And especially women, right? And the basic rights. And we, as women, we felt the danger. And I decided to set up this radio station. And when, in August 2021, Taliban took over, we didn't stop the radio station. And the radio is an educational radio station providing school classes, classes six hours per day we allocate for on-air classes. So we base this educational content on the national curriculum

and we broadcast every day six hours of program in two languages for and b beside that we have a mental health program to support women in in the in the struggle and also health and other kind of content everything except political except political programs because women needed it was also the only way for us not to be shut down and to be still on the air and able to broadcast. So you don't

broadcast political programs but you do everything else around education mental health and you set up Begum TV to complement Begum Radio. Exactly, exactly. For us, it was the first, first of all, the radio is an Afghan entity

and it's broadcasting from Afghanistan under the Taliban regime laws. And the TV is another entity broadcasting from Paris, as you said, and that belongs to Begum France. And therefore, for us, it was important also, as I said previously, that on the radio we had these classes, but on radio you cannot teach mathematics and science and then for us in order to complete our offer we decided to go for TV because TV is important it's visual it has also a larger impact and for us we could teach all the kind of content educational content through TV and therefore we prepare in advance 8,500 videos each of 15 minutes from 6th grade

to 12th grade, all the program in two languages that we broadcast all day long. Plus, besides that, we have during our prime time, we have entertainment and also other kind of program like mental health support, health support, the same kind of content that we have on the radio. Are the Taliban aware that you're broadcasting? Yes, they are aware of our radio station because, as I said, it's a legal radio station registered under Afghan laws, and we depend on the current regime. But the TV is broadcasting from France, so we are under the French laws here. And so, therefore, with the TV, we have a bigger impact. We want to complete our impact and also we can

talk about topics that we wouldn't be able to do in Afghanistan because, as you may know, all entertainment programs are banned, music are banned and on TV Begum we broadcast TV series

but always with educational sense and also music. But also we talk about topics that we wouldn't be able to raise in Afghanistan. If the Taliban are aware that you are broadcasting educational programmes, what reaction do you get from them? I should admit that from day one we are broadcasting educational content and I'm, when in October, it was in October 2021,

I went back to Afghanistan when as soon as I could go back to Afghanistan, I went there and I went to introduce our radio station to the authorities, legal authorities, and they gave us authorization to keep going our activities. And they gave us a letter saying Radio Begum is an educational TV that should continue broadcasting. And since then, we keep broadcasting and we never had any problem on the educational content. We had phone calls from PVPV, which is the

Ministry of Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, who are very much careful about what media and what women are saying. And sometimes they ask us to stop all the entertainment content or music or whatever. But they never ask us about this educational content. Why do you think they're OK with you broadcasting educational content, but not with women and girls going to schools or universities? That is a paradox that i still cannot understand and since then now more a lot of radios a lot of media are have educational content this is this is a total paradox you you see there are rooms for activity despite these laws we can see that there is some grey options, a grey zone where we evaluate and we try to reach people.

But besides that, I don't understand why they didn't accept. Eventually because they cannot ban everything and because we are not asking girls to get out of their house, they stay at home and they continue the education. I have no idea. This is the paradox of this regime also. Well, tell us, what has the reaction been from women and girls watching and listening? We received so many exciting and positive answers. Women are participating. They are happy to see that we are taking care of them, but also of the girls, of the children,

because there is a real lack of content. And I should admit that our content, our educational video, has been praised as a nice model and we we and it's it's a very good way for them to keep uh to to to to stay in touch with education to keep and to keep going in the education and they can and the woman who is a mother who can help the children, they do it and they work with them in order to bring them to the exams. And we are providing other kind of content like mental health support. And our audience is calling us. Every day we have women, especially on the radio side, women who are calling the radio station to share the experience, to share what's their life and to share their struggle, especially, and sometimes also to share nice stories and to encourage themselves.

So it's a safe space for women. and eventually maybe also the authorities see that we are very carefully monitored but they carefully check the content but obviously the content that we are providing to our audience especially on the radio

side is content that is not harming the rules and it's helping the population and female and women in their daily life. Hamida, thank you very much for talking to us on Women's Hour about the work you're doing on Begum TV and Begum Radio. That was Hamida Aman. Now, my next guest has had many different identities and lives, you could say.

She's played professional college basketball in the United States. She's also a New York Times bestselling author of nonfiction books. And she's also an Emmy award winning journalist and has spent seven years as a sports journalist at the American sports channel ESPN. And now she's written her first fiction novel, The Three Lives of Kate Kay, about a young woman and the three very different identities she creates. Kate Fagan, a very warm welcome to the Women's Hour studio. Thanks for having me. So The Three Lives of Kate Kay. I'm just going to go there. How closely are they linked to The three lives of Kate Fagan? Because you seem to have had a few. Well, they're not really linked at all, except for one part of myself that is in all of them.

And that is like all of the little details of it, like the little candies they love, the shirt the main character, Kate Kay, is wearing in your opening scene, different pieces of dialogue that my friends and I always do whenever we're hanging out. Like I buried myself in all of them. But I wouldn't say that I am any one of those particular lives. So Annie, I should say, for the listeners who don't know the book. Annie is a young girl growing up in a small suburban town, big ambitions, and then she leaves after a significant event. I have to be so careful. I know, it's tough.

Because there's some great spoilers, and I don't want to give them away. But she leaves after a significant event. And she develops a new identity, Cass Ford. And then she becomes a hugely successful writer under the pseudonym Kate Kay now I mean I read your book in one sitting almost from the first page because I mean I wouldn't say it's a thriller but it's definitely a page turn and it's very intense and and I would say I mean and you know feel free to come back at me on this. Annie, the main character, is gay. I didn't see it as a coming out book. Oh, you're looking excited.

No, I'm agreeing. I'm agreeing. For me, this was a book about intense female relationships, friendships. And you looked at every single type of relationship, mother-daughter relationships, that intense best friend connection. I mean, I'm not giving anything away here when I say that Annie has this sublime, almost spiritual connection with her best friend Amanda. We deal with unrequited love, toxic love. You know, just reading it, I thought, gosh, even when the characters aren't always acting in a favourable way, you're kind of rooting for them. Because for me, a lot of us have messy lives, right?

Why did you want to write about so many different types of messy relationships in all that clarity? Yeah. Well, it's funny. Since the book has come out, a lot of people have said that these characters are messy. And I did not intend for them to be messy. I didn't sit down and think, I'm going to write a bunch of like bad decisions. I really thought I was writing very human

characters. But since you're living inside their head, you are getting all of those messy thoughts. And then on top of it, I really wanted to write ambitious women. And if you've got women who are, success is their goal, that kind of like worldly success, I think it does lead to like leaving love behind in pursuit of this other thing. And I really wanted to write about that. So I guess all told, they end up being messy. But I think it's because they're confused about how they will feel fulfilled in life. There's that confusion of like this ambition has like this disease of ambition has come over me and I'm in pursuit of something. And I'm ignoring the beauty of the love that's around me because I think this other thing is going to feel better than the love of this friendship or the love of this partner. There's a great line that Annie says in the book, and she says it a few times when she talks about this all-consuming ambition, you know, this desire to eat the world.

And it comes on to, you know, when she's sort of hitting puberty and it never leaves her. And that internal struggle, like you're saying, between love and ambition and success, and the question that women always ask, can you have it all? Can you have it all? Do you feel you've had it all? Well, I mean, I guess I think you can have it all if you're willing to go through the mess of it all.

I mean, to me, this book was so much a reflection of myself when I look back on it. It's not like I sat down to write a book about ambition. But once I got through about half of the draft, I was like, actually, I think this is a book about the conflict between ambition and relationships. And when I thought about that, I was like, that makes perfect sense because this idea of eating the world or another phrase that one of the characters uses in it, this idea of pursuing cosmic bigness, it's been something that I've been like grappling with my entire life is knowing that I want to pursue this thing and knowing because I've gotten certain things that it isn't going to fill

me and yet it never seems to dim it's it's not like I achieve some milestone and I'm like either I feel better or I realize that's not where I'm going to get my love and validation I think maybe at some point when you hit a certain age you finally accept that truly relationships and love are where you need to put your time but it's's hard to get there in our culture and in this world to really accept the beauty of building beauty around you rather than going chasing something that you're seeing, that other people want. That conflict to me is just so inherent in how my life has gone. And so it's not surprising now when I look back at the three lives of KK that my main character is also grappling with that. Yeah, that sense, it really comes through,

that sense of when is enough enough? And maybe it just never is. My experience so far is it never is enough. But I'm hoping that changes at some point. Maybe as I get a, I mean, I'm 43. I'm like, maybe I'm like, maybe when I hit 50, I'll finally accept the truth of life and that love is where you're going to find your fulfillment. And I'm getting there. I'm much better than I was 10 years ago than I was in my second life.

But I'm certainly not there yet. And I said, you know, the main character is gay, but it wasn't for me a coming out book. But there is a there's a line in the book where there's a lot of characters in your book. But it's not overwhelming because you signpost really well because and I should say for listeners, it's written in the form of a memoir. But Annie gets people in her life to also contribute to her memoir. And then she disputes some of their memories. But she allows their memories to stand. Yes. And that was something I, as someone who has written and published memoir before, one, the reason I framed it as a pseudo fake memoir is because I wanted to give myself a device that I understood how to write. As somebody who has written memoir, I'm like, well, all right, if I'm going to try fiction, let me do it as memoir and see if I can find my voice.

But the one thing that I noticed about having published memoir was that you are telling somebody a very concentrated story, but the reader has no sense of how the memoirist is received within their own world. Like, you don't get that view. It's one of the most frustrating things when you have a very distinct memory of something and you know it happened like that to you and the other person goes, no, it didn't. Yes. I don't remember that. Yes.

And I wanted to, like, thank you for saying that because I wanted to explore that in this book is like a lot of times when people talk about unreliable narrators, they think it's like some huge thing that somebody's lying about. Whereas like, no, we're all just like very fundamentally detailed, unreliable narrators. Honestly, that really resonated with me, because I have I have been told I have quite a good memory. And so I tend to remember things in microscopic detail. And I get so infuriated when other people

through no fault of their own, you know, they, they either blur it or they get it wrong but you know that is also their memory and their experience yep but for sure I mean I always feel like like I have some level of photographic memory because I think I'm picturing like the color of the the item and the way and the place it was and when somebody says to me like it was actually green not blue I'm or red I'm like no that that like you are fundamentally like shattering my worldview here if if I got these details wrong so I love I wanted to explore that in this just the the ways we we might remember details differently and like it's not a nefarious thing that we're remembering them differently but the simple misremembering of them between two people can cause a lot of heartache.

It can indeed. And I took you down a tangent there, but I was really interested. Back to the gay thing. Well, it's just because there is a scene in the book where one of the characters says to Annie, I'm so glad that you created a film which has gay women as a lead. And I wondered if that was something that, you know, if that was a message you wanted to put out there. I definitely wanted somebody who has written a lot and in the women's sports world talked about issues of sexuality and written about it a lot. I have like outwardly written about these issues where it's like that's what I'm writing about is either the angst of it or the struggle of it or the cultural issues at play. And in this book, I didn't want the like the heart of the book or the drama of the book to be people's coming out stories. I just didn't feel like that's the moment we were in. I wanted all of the mess to be about these other topics, whether it's, you know, mainly in this one ambition.

But the backdrop, of course, I still wanted these women who are struggling with these other avenues, like the undercurrent is also that either they're dealing with coming out or they're processing their own sexuality, but it's not like the plot line. No. And I didn't want it to be the context. Yes, yes. I wanted that. I wanted that so badly. So thank you for receiving it that way. I'm very glad. No, honestly, I spent a great few hours just plowing through it was it was really, really easy for me, actually. Why did you want to write a fiction book? Because this was your first fiction book.

Yeah, I had always wanted to write fiction since I was, I played basketball growing up and I didn't really learn how to write. And then when I stopped playing at age 23, I wanted to write a novel. But that's not, you can't, I didn't know how to write and I had bills to pay. So like writing fiction right away was not possible. But it was always what I wanted to do, even when I started in newspapers and magazines, and even nonfiction books, I thought, being able to create a world and try to share your observations and your ideas through fiction was just always I thought, like, just like the cream of the crop writing that I wanted to partake in. Well, Kate Fagan, thank you so much for joining me on Woman's Hour.

That was Kate Fagan and her book, The Three Lives of Kate Kay is out now. And you can join Anita tomorrow when she'll have the actor Felicity Jones in the Woman's Hour studio talking about her new film, The Brutalist, in which she plays the wife of a visionary architect trapped in Hungary

after her husband flees post-war Europe to start again. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, this is Marion Keys. And this is Tara Flynn. We host a podcast you might like for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking. Each week we take real listeners questions about life, Thank you. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year,

I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC

World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.