Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: BBC 100, Auntie Beeb with Mel Giedroyc, Incels, Women in Space

Episode Date: November 19, 2022

Monday marked 100 years since the BBC began broadcasting on radio. To celebrate that centenary, we commissioned a poem by Kim Moore and created a soundscape to show how much women’s lives, and the noises that surround them, have changed - using BBC archive from the 1920s right through to the present day. Why did the BBC get its nickname ‘Auntie’? And what kind of aunt would she be? We discuss with television presenter and comedian Mel Giedroyc and historian of the BBC, Professor Jean Seaton.‘The Secret World of Incels’ is a Channel 4 documentary that gives a window into the lives of Incels and explores what makes them engage with these misogynist online forums that have led to some horrific acts of violence. We discuss with its presenter Ben Zand and Dr Kaitlyn Regehr.The Internet Watch Foundation has been tracking the increasing trend of perpetrators grooming children online and coercing them into sexually abusing themselves on camera. The foundation has recognised a lot of what they are seeing as Category A, the most severe kind of sexual abuse, due to it including penetration with an object. A snapshot study out yesterday looks into the objects being used, and how they are everyday domestic items that can be found in the household. We hear from Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the IWF, and Vicki Green, CEO of the Marie Collins Foundation. The story contains content that some listeners may find distressing.What does the Artemis moon mission mean for women? We speak to Llbby Jackson from the UK Space Agency.The Big Swing is the world’s first double female-fronted big band. It is led by jazz musicians Georgina Jackson and Emma Smith who aim to elevate female visibility in the big band world. They join us in the studio for a special performance.

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour, where we bring you the best bits from the past week. Coming up, what is an incel 2.0? We find out how the incel movement has evolved and potentially become more dangerous. If incel 1.0, if we can call it that, was about isolation and loneliness, incel 2.0 is about banding together around the language of Incel and finding empowerment through that language. We enjoy some music from the world's first double female-fronted big band and we ask the head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency when we might see a woman on the moon. But first, we start with a very special audio treat. Monday marked 100 years since the BBC began daily live broadcasts on radio. To mark that centenary, we commissioned a poem by Kim Moore and created a soundscape to show how much women's lives

and the noises that surround them have changed, using BBC Archive from the 1930s right through to present day. To take you back to 1922, it had been four years since the suffragettes had successfully campaigned for women to get the right to vote, provided they were over 30. Composer Ethel Smythe wrote A March for the Women in honour of those suffragettes, And that's where our soundscape begins. Shout, shout, up with the song Cry with the wind, for the door is breaking Do you remember when we still had Ethel Smythe's March of the Women echoing through our lives?

When we worked in factories. Well, I started when I was 12, half-time, you know. I worked until I was married. Then I started when I had two daughters. My room was wounded in the war and it couldn't work anymore. It doesn't get a fence with two daughters to bring up. Well, I had to go back into the middle again. Some of the rooms are dark and hot, some are deafeningly noisy, and some are quiet and light and airy.

One of the lightest and brightest must be the burling and mending room, over 200 girls and women sitting sewing at large desks. The room is so quiet that the girls very often sing at their work. You can probably hear them now. Worked, then slept, then slept to rise and work again. That's all there is for me. Work, eat and sleep. What else is there? If you don't work, you don't eat. I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility. When we heard a king abdicate the throne for the woman he loved. A voluntary vanishing.

A big bane, a lamb bane, leg and shoulder bane, a shoulder's the hill, as cheap as a pound for six today and eight upon them lovely legs now. Do you remember how our men began disappearing too? Oh here's a lovely pair of bloomers. War taking them so far away we could no longer hear their voices. Our songs were air raid sirens and the creak of fallen buildings. If he thinks he can win the war by bombing women and children, he's found a big mistake. I think that the morale of the British people is simply amazing. Four bombs have dropped round them, huge craters there, and they're hounded into bits and they've sung the whole

night through until we told them it was all clear to come out. When they drank tea, pots of tea, gallons of it. Gallons! Gallons! Gallons! Do you remember the endless cups of tea? She used to do me breakfast, you know, fried.

She'd drip and put me a little bit of drip on me cake, pop it together. Do you remember dancing? Do you remember Nancy Astor, like a rattlesnake, walking into Parliament? To walk up the House of Commons between Arthur Balfour and Lloyd George, both of them who had said they believed in women but who would rather have had a rattlesnake in the house than me at that time, they all felt that way, it was really very alarming.

And you know sometimes I would sit five hours in that house rather than get out of my seat and walk down. But I knew what really kept me going. I was an ardent feminist. And those days of being on our hands and knees, doing the step with donkey stones. The cry, ragbone, donkey stone. It's a cry that's echoed down the cobbled back alleys of the North Terrace cottages for as long as anyone can remember.

The point is that the traditional stone front doorstep is disappearing by the thousand. I used to do mine every morning. I used to do it sometimes at seven o'clock and sometimes at nine. But always every morning. And I used to stone everything like they were. And if I had to do my time all again, I'd do the same again. Now there's one other controversial point. Why don't you have women read the news? Frankly, no. There's no doubt that a great many people would like it, but

a great many would not. This is a BBC Home Enforcers programme. Or when we heard a woman read the news and thought our time had come. Yes, I once had a chap. He started getting out of me arm, you know. I thought, now then, starting.

Do you remember getting caught and then the freedom of the pill? Of course, it was quite the usual thing. It was almost a convention that as soon as you were caught, you jumped down eight stairs to bring on an abortion. And if the husband was a good husband, oh, he's a good husband, he doesn't often trouble me. Yes Yes they used to say that. I remember once a woman saying to me she daren't even be civil to her husband because it meant another kid. Yeah. They had to repulse them. Do you remember Dagenham? We are on strike until the 27th

of June. All of you? All of us. All the machinists, anyway. So no car seat covers for Fords? No, not from us, anyway. Well, just what are you striking about? And that interviewer, his voice made entirely of air and querulous and strange, asking... How far are you prepared to go? And the women replying...

As far as it takes. How long are you prepared to stay out on strike? A year. As far as a year. When I heard you prepared to stay out on strike? A year. As far as a year. When I heard it on the radio this morning, I said, Hoorah, hoorah, hoorah for the girls. They are magnificent. The thing that most of us on estates are very grateful for, I think,

is the hot and cold water. The next thing is the good drying space in our garden for the washing. The sheets get the full sun and go on the bed smelling much sweeter than those dried in a yard and don't get dirty through blowing against yard walls. Do you remember the arrival of the tumble dryer and the microwave? Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher. Do you remember Margaret Thatcher and her I don't like strident women? Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.

Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope. I mean, before we used to be at home, kitchen sink, whatever, tea on the table when they're coming from work, one thing and other like, you know. Now, we're getting ready to go on picket lines. I can't even tell you the last time I made a bed. I know.

It's true, that. What's happened to Blair's babes and their political hopes and dreams? Do you remember the Spice Girls asking us what we want, what we really, really want, and then telling us and how we almost believed them. Do you remember the towers falling even as people said they would never fall? We heard a big bang and then we saw smoke coming out

and everybody started running out and we saw the plane on the other side of the building and there was smoke everywhere and people were jumping out the windows. Do you remember what he said? I like to grab women by the pussy. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologise. Do you remember marching, our homemade banners, our pink pussy hats, the singing?

Do you remember that bright spring, the blue skies and the death toll rising and the sound of clapping? How hollow it became. How some of us worked from home with children on our knees. How some of us had no work at all. Do you remember longing? Do you remember yearning? I just want to have a coffee with my mates because I know that being on my own has driven me slightly mad. Do you remember smiling at a stranger? And they look to you and they ask you, do you think I'm going to get through this?

And you can't reassure them really because you just don't know. How some of us were lonely and some of us were trapped. How some of us were empty. That some of us were full of light and maybe all of us were changed. Beautiful. And those were the words of the poet Kim Moore. Now, have you ever wondered how Woman's Hour is made? Well, to mark the BBC centenary, we've recorded a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how we make the programme, showing you everything

from the Woman's Hour studio and our office, tidied up of course, to the team who make the programme happen. They were tidied up too. Head to our social media accounts on Instagram or Twitter to watch. Our handle is at BBC Woman's Hour. Now here's a question. Is the BBC a she? As you know, Monday marked 100 years since the BBC started daily broadcasts and in that time she's been referred to as Auntie or Auntie Beeb. But where did this nickname come from? And what kind of auntie is she? To find out, Emma was joined in the studio by comedian and television presenter Mel Gedroydge and Professor Jean Seaton, historian and author of Pinkos and Traitors, the BBC and The Nation. She began by asking Jean about the origins of that nickname. It started in the 1950s when, I mean, it came from, where it came from is a slightly, but it started in the 1950s around a man called Henry Fairley.

He wrote a book called The Establishment, one chapter of which was an attack on the BBC because the BBC, you have to remember, he was in way part of the campaign to get ITV, commercial television, launched. So he was saying that the BBC was old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy, prurient, not up-to-date, not swinging. So that name for the BBC came from then. But I think the idea that the BBC had aunts and uncles on Children's Hour.

So I think there's a really interesting thing to be said about the title aunt and uncle, particularly in the 30s to the 50s. But it's interesting that that first was an attack and it was a pejorative. And that a title auntie, and Mel, I know you've got a take on this, is something that would be negative and would be used as an insult.

And the stories about people's aunties that are coming in are lovely. So good. For me, it's always been the BBC. Always. I'm going to just put that right out there. I was walking along to this interview this morning and I just thought 1922. And I thought immediately of my two aunts auntie doily yes folks that was her name excellent doily and zizi two sisters unmarried living in

living in london went through the war in london both artists and i just thought how magnificent those aunts were to me they were great aunts and I absolutely adored them. And they were sort of, they had that kind of whiff, a whiff of tweed about them. There was a whiff of starch, which I think we all love. We like our boundaries. And I think the BBC has always kind of had that, you know, it gives us our little boundaries

and is a little bit starchy at times. And that's good. But yet there's the kind of, there's the fun underneath the tweed. Well, I think that's what we want. The nonsense. Under the doily. Under the doily. Just going to keep going with that.

Love that. But I think that's interesting about it being an insult and then how you reinterpret that. Because, of course, there are a lot of pioneering women at the beginning of the BBC. The BBC was set up with women in mind because they were the last tranche of the vote to come online, as it were, in 27. Women audiences were absolutely central to thinking about the BBC.

Not that anybody knew what a programme was in 1922. They were still inventing it. But by the third week, they're beginning to think of women audiences. So I think they start to employ, after the first tranche of young men, mostly out the trenches, the three or four, this is a tiny little thing when it starts, the next tranche are really formidable women. And women, of course, always, most of whom didn't marry, except for Mary Hamilton, who was married. But women are very good in new spaces before men get to squat in them, rather like frogs.

So the next generation of BBC employees in the sort of middle 20s are formidable women. And so women think of women. And then you get things like um the week in parliament which comes out in 25 absolutely for women and that was run by a woman wasn't it run by a woman incredible hilda matheson does this right does their talks gets the great and the good on but underneath her there are a couple of women so i think women start to work in the bbc very early and they have women in mind the other thing I'd say about Aunty which I think is quite important

is that in the 1930s 40s 50s um I don't want to say it was more hierarchical because I actually think we live in a very hierarchical age it's just that we don't see it so much now but titles were very important so you it was very rude you didn't use first names if you listen to bbc broadcast wilfred pickles always said it is mrs hilda i mean i'd love that to return quite frankly no but i mean you don't you and auntie and uncle was what basically you in a family yes either called your direct blood relation who wasn't uncle but you also called people who were friends of your family your listener from birmingham yes absolutely they were friends and so bbc's aunt and uncle on children's hour were saying we're friends we're close to you we're not mr this and Mrs. That. So it's a way of being familiar and having that link. It's a way of getting you

into a warmer closed group. Uncle Beeb sounds wrong though. For me, it's got to be Uncle Beeb. Uncle Beeb can't multitask. Auntie Beeb has to do very, very many things. There's a rebrand happening of this, what was meant to be a pejorative

label. I mean, aunts are cool. come on. Are you an aunt? I'm an aunt times 18. I've got 18 nieces and nephews. Oh my gosh, and what kind of auntie are you? Well, do you know what? I like to think I'm a little bit radical, a little bit cool.

You know, the one that gives them the naughty treats as to a... That sounds wrong, I don't mean that but um I think in reality I'm probably a little bit old school but I think that's good and that's why we love Auntie B because she is a little bit old school but she's also new school she's everything it's about values one of the things that these aunts do is hold values you you know, please and thank you, but they also give you treats. I think there's something, I think there is something that's,

which is neither nice nor nasty. I think that the BBC has been, right since 1922, radically brilliant at technological innovation. You know, right the way through the Second World War, right the way through to the iPlayer, right the way through to the moon landings. Well, and it's incredible to think about the first broadcasts and how odd they must

have sounded a hundred years ago at six o'clock this evening, which I know we're marking on the wireless, on the radio, whatever you like to call it. Just to your point about being married or not being married, I remember sitting down at the Pleasure last year, you can look this up online if you missed it, on BBC Sounds, which we now have, with Diana Gayford, as she was 104 last year

for our 75th anniversary of Woman's Hour. So Woman's Hour wasn't there right from the beginning. But she couldn't keep her job once she was married. That was something to remember as well. Of course, the first editions of Woman's Hour were presented by a man, but we'll move on from that strange decision. But it was wonderful to sit with her

and see how she felt about it. And she describes very well that atmosphere that you're talking about. It was terribly exciting for women. Of liberation in so many ways. And somebody says to you, somebody like Hilda Matheson, you know, make fantastic programmes,

phone Goddard and see if he's available to discuss the economy tomorrow. And women very early on the BBC really make that broad, intelligent voice. And also, if you look at the history of women's voices on air as well, I mean, there was some concern about needing a different microphone because our voices for some were so hideous. They were too ladylike. And changing that smell. We've had some of these issues.

It's not known for certain who the first woman on BBC Radio was, but I should just say this. On the second day of broadcasting, a woman called Miss A. Benny read a story from a studio in Manchester. Very happy to hear that. It's my hometown.

She was known as the Lady of the Magic Carpet. She read children's stories and the first story was The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. So I wanted to put that into people's minds this morning. I love those old BBC voices from times gone by. They're just

extraordinary, aren't they? It was real sort of, you know, here we are today at the BBC. I love them. I apologise. Mine is the opposite. No, yours is gorgeous. And so are both of yours. Thank you very much for coming on on this important day and to all of our listeners getting in touch with their stories of aunties. All the aunties.

And big it up to all the aunties. Yep, we've got to appreciate our aunties, even the nosy ones. That was Emma speaking to Mel Gedroyd and Professor Jean Seaton. Now, you may have heard of the incel or involuntary celibate movement. Well, a new Channel 4 documentary estimates there are around 18,000 users on one of the biggest incel websites and many more globally. The majority of these individuals are men. Since has been growing in certain places online, a message of rage, envy, hatred, entitlement and violence towards women that has led to some horrific incidents. The world of the incel is one in which people's entire social circles are anonymous users on the other side of the planet. And users see themselves as too ugly to ever be loved and too strange to ever be cared for.

Emma was joined in the studio by Ben Zand, the presenter of the Channel 4 documentary, The Secret World of Incels, and Dr Caitlin Rigger, an associate professor of digital humanities at UCL. She began by asking Ben about the incels' beliefs. There's an ideology called the kind of black pill. It's a kind of, I'd classify it as a conspiracy theory, really, and the idea that the most important thing in the world is looks. Women are kind of uncontrollably attracted to good-looking men,

and the rest of the male world of men who aren't above, say, seven or eight in the kind of attractive stakes are just kind of utterly pointless. And they're not going to have a kind of hope of getting any success. And it's a kind of load of men who have, you know, lost hope. The kind of community just teaches real despair. And quite often they'll then place all that blame on women. Is that what they're talking about when they're communicating? I mean, yes.

I mean, they're talking about, they just, I mean, it is a conspiracy theory. You know, the kind of ideas of the world are just difficult to understand. You know, they quite often talk about the only kind of, you know, the main thing for a man is to have the right jaw shape, you know. So, you know, there's this kind of idea of the ultimate man which is a chad you know it's like a really good looking male who gets everything he wants and can just walk up to a woman and take care if he wants um so it's all very problematic and i think they hate themselves primarily uh and they're looking for someone to blame and quite often that lands up on

on women because they're the people who are rejecting them. Caitlin, let me bring you into this. There might be those who are listening thinking, well, maybe I don't need to concern myself with this. But do we need to be concerned by it? Yeah. So I think what the documentary exemplifies very well is how through high dosages of Internet usage, these type of ideologies become normalized for young people. One thing that I'm seeing at the moment is that we're almost entering a second act of incel. And that is that these ideologies are moving off of forums such as Reddit or 4chan and moving into popular youth culture more generally. They are becoming saturated. So they're now on TikTok and they're now in schoolyards. And this is what I'm calling

incel 2.0. And I think this new movement is even more concerning. In what way? What does that mean? Well, it means that we have a more generalized misogyny moving through youth cultures. So if incel 1.0, if we can call it that, was about isolation and loneliness, incel 2.0 is about banding together around the language of incel and finding empowerment through that language. And are there particular role models in this or leaders in this space? Or how are younger people perhaps getting the ideology of it? So there are absolutely in celebrities, I suppose, and influencers in this community.

But ultimately, what these languages are helping young people, I think, articulate is a fear of loss of control in what is a bleak time for many young people at the moment. And I think it's really about they're latching on to this language in this culture to find an answer and a point of blame for this fear of loss of control. What was it like for you to look at this as a man, Ben, try and like relate to some of these men and how they're viewing the world? It's probably, I think it's the most depressing documentary I've ever made. It was a combination of shock, you know, at some of the things they believed.

You know, there's a kind of bit where I'm talking to a guy and he thinks if he walks up to a woman, she's going to start literally beating herself and then accuse him of domestic violence. You know, that's the kind of ideas that the community's propagating. But I think it was also one of just kind of sadness uh in that sense i mean i think a lot of the guys i was speaking to weren't evil you know they were vulnerable extremely vulnerable

people who uh were extremely isolated you know don't have normal interactions or kind of you know people kind of moderating them in real life, saying to them, hey, you know, that thing you've just said there's a little bit problematic. So I think it was just, it was just depressing. It made me feel extremely sad. One of the guys said he spoke to us just because he wanted to talk to someone. What about taking them seriously in terms of being a physical or violent threat in the real world? You know, authorities looking at these individuals, Caitlin. Yeah, so that's right. This type of movement hasn't been looked on in the same way that we have seen with other forms of extremism.

That's for sure. We still hear the lone wolf narrative related to incel violence. And I think that that's probably because misogyny is not that other in our society. It's hard to otherize it. And what could be the solution to this to try and bring about different ways of thinking? And if people have gone into this world of men, I know that you also do talk to some women, it's very few, I should say, in that space, but mainly for the men, what do you see as some of the ways out? So there are some grassroots organizations. I'm involved with Mentors in Violence Prevention in Scotland, which uses peer-to-peer learning, older boys mentoring

younger boys around these issues, as we kind of see Ben do in the documentary that kind of comes through and that's successful. But I think more broadly, we need to be teaching critical digital literacy to young people. So we need to teach them to think critically about the digital space, help them understand the implications of the online world on their mental and physical health. And then we need to get them all involved

in co-creating new codes of conduct for the online world in which they live. At the moment, that's not happening. And we're letting them down. They have to navigate this very difficult terrain alone. That was Dr. Caitlin Rigger and Ben Zand talking to Emma there. And if you miss the documentary, you can catch it on all four. It's called The Secret World of Incels. Still to come, what does the Artemis moon mission mean for women? We speak to the head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency. And remember that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at 10am during the week.

All you need to do is subscribe to our daily podcast. It's free on BBC Sounds. Now to a very difficult but important subject. We're going to be talking about a new study into the sexual abuse of children online. It's been carried out by the Internet Watch Foundation, the UK body responsible for finding and removing child sexual abuse from the internet.

What you're about to hear will be detailed and in places graphic. Their findings are also shocking and you may find it a distressing listen. We'll spend around 15 minutes discussing this so if you do want to go away please do and come back after. The Internet Watch Foundation have been tracking the increasing trend of perpetrators grooming children online and coercing them into sexually abusing themselves on camera. The Foundation has recognised a lot of what they are seeing as Category A, the most severe kind of sexual abuse, due to it including penetration with an object.

Some of the child victims of this online sexual abuse are as young as seven years old. For the first time, a snapshot study out yesterday looks into the objects being used and how they are everyday domestic items that can be found in the household. To discuss this, I was joined by Susie Hargreaves, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation, and Vicky Green, Chief Executive of the Marie Collins Foundation, which supports child victims of online abuse. I began by asking Susie why it is important for us to discuss this issue publicly in detail. It's very important for us to discuss this, particularly in the light of the recently reported independent inquiry into child sexual abuse

and the online safety bill, which is in danger of not going through at the moment as these are two things that will really help to make children safer online. The IWF is the UK hotline for reporting and removing online child sexual abuse. Last year we removed 252,000 web pages child sexual abuse and 70% of what we removed is now accounted for by internet abuse over the internet where the perpetrator is not in the room and the child is being tricked or coerced into engaging in these sexual acts and as you said we decided to do a snapshot of this because we think it's absolutely essential now and it ties in with the recommendations of professor alexis j at the independent inquiry to actually speak and say exactly what we see that's not to sense

and sensationalize it but to actually do the victims justice because this is not uh mild abuse so category a sexual abuse of children as you say say, is penetration, it's bestiality, it's sadism. And we saw in a five day period, 900 cases of this type of abuse where children were penetrating themselves in the anus, their vagina. And 75 percent of those children were aged 11 to 13 and 20 percent, that's 184 of them, were aged 7 to 10, and 99% of them are girls. And the reason we need to say it as it is, is this could happen to any child from any background, whether in a bedroom, domestic setting, with a camera-enabled device and an internet connection, and we have to get the message across to parents and carers to help them learn to keep their children safe online.

And this study, it's important to say, isn't just the UK, it's global. No, I mean, internet abuse is global. But bear in mind that actually, sadly, it's a supply and demand situation. So at the last count, the UK National Crime Agency estimated there were 850,000 people in the UK alone who represented a threat to children. So if we can cut down people's demand for this hideous abuse, and this abuse follows these children throughout their lives, if we can actually stop it happening in the first place. And the online safety bill will do a lot to do that because it will require internet companies to keep their platforms safe. But we also need to educate people.

Indeed. And we're going to bring in Vicky in a moment just to talk about how it does impact children and follow them through their lives and the parents as well. But it is, and I was reading the study myself and at times I found it incredibly difficult. In fact, there were parts of it I couldn't bring myself to read. I had to put it down. But like you mentioned, Professor Alexis Jay, who's the chairwoman of the Independent Inquiry, what she has to say about why we need to be this explicit is really interesting because she says when we're talking about the sexual abuse of children it does no good to victims to sanitize what's being done or to shy away from talking about the reality of what we see because without being gratuitous as you say are overly sensational we need to show the true scale and the nature of the problem

so Susie how new is this form of online sexual abuse and are you are you shocked as an organization as to what you've discovered well it's we started seeing this type of abuse in 2012 and it's just grown year on year and it's increased year on year so you know i'm i'm sad to say to some extent we're not shocked because our analysts are trained to deal with this but the reason we actually decided to do this particular snapshot was there was a video that one of our analysts saw which I'm not actually going to describe today because it's very nasty and violent and we thought actually we need to get the message out to tell people exactly what we're talking about this is not children just dressed in inappropriate clothing and it's not a situation where children are not re-victimized when people look at this type of horrible nasty abuse it's the most heinous type of abuse and I

would say that every single child is vulnerable whatever their background because a seven-year-old is vulnerable so we need to do whatever we can to keep children safe online and that means we need to help parents and carers understand you know we've ways of helping them to keep children safe online and that means we need to help parents and carers understand you know we've ways of helping them to keep those children safe online to make sure they're not put in these vulnerable positions because they can never be blamed for this they are the victims how how are they even communicating with the children well you know children are online all the time and one of the things we can't say is where the original video emanated from because the perpetrators will capture that video, they'll wipe it clean of any identifying indicators of the original platform it was on, and then it makes its way onto a child sexual abuse website, which is where our analysts find it. And then it's shared amongst perpetrators.

Now, children will be online. They'll be on all sorts of networks, platforms, many, many who are underage and should not be on social media platforms. You shouldn't be on them if you're under 13. And I'm sure a lot of parents don't know that. So and they're easy pickings. They talk to strangers, not because it's their fault they literally are flattered encouraged coerced how are they what kind of language is used well you know they're told they're beautiful they should be a model they you know you know they're you know and you just look at these images and these these videos of children and they're 11 years old and you think they're not physically or emotionally mature enough to understand what is happening to them

at this moment in time and they certainly have no idea that this is going to follow them around i'm going to bring vicky in here because i'm sure there are lots of people listening carers parents who are feeling very shocked incredibly concerned concerned by hearing what you've had to say Susie. Vicky what are the behaviours to look out for for a child who might be being abused online? That's actually a very interesting and difficult question to answer because responsibility always rests with the groomer, with the person who is doing the abuse. And they are very skilled at ensuring that there are no indicators. So they will create a secrecy. They'll be encouraging the in-person to not say anything to anybody.

So the reality is there may not be any indicators. But what is very important is that parents,ers all of us around a child create the environment where we can have the conversation conversations are key show an interest in what your child is doing online and use the normal things that we see in life like oh, oh, I heard on Women's Hour yesterday that this sort of thing happens. If it ever happens to you or anybody is asking you to do something you feel uncomfortable about, you can talk to me. I mean, I'm Vicky.

We need to take this seriously, but we don't want to terrify everyone listening. So how concerned should parents of children who are online be? Parents should be concerned. and I think this is the whole point of bringing this into the public domain. There is a tendency to minimise online child sexual abuse, to be using language like selfies, to be using language like self-generated as a way as if the child is the one who is doing it. It's their choice. The power is with the perpetrator.

So we don't want parents running around removing tech from children, but we want them to be aware that there is a real danger out there. So they need to be talking to their children about how to stay safe online. Vicky, some people may be listening to this and questioning how this is able to happen in a domestic setting. Does this show just how easy it is for a child to be manipulated online? Yes, and it also shows the skill of the perpetrator. And it also shows the importance of conversation to be supervising your child. And I'm not saying following them around, I'm not saying tracking them. And if not saying tracking them and if you were to take

them to the park you keep an eye on them particularly a seven-year-old so if they're suddenly disappearing up to their room for long times or they're spending a long time in the bathroom do ask the question what are you doing are you okay is everything okay and be mindful that there could be there may not be but there could be something going on that you're not aware of and vicky you support children who have been through abuse is it difficult to get children to come forward when they've experienced something like this and how do you get the language right oh you use a non-victim blaming language, but yes, it is very difficult. If you, and Mary Collins herself talks about the moment of your greatest humiliation is captured for all to see. And that whole bit about it being recorded, distributed, you don't know how many people have seen it.

It's too big a thing to be thinking about. So we don't want to think about it so for young people it can be they do and can recover with the right help and that's the hope message we want people to get out we want to get out there don't run away from this if you are worried about your child reach out reach out to, reach out to other organisations and we will help you have those conversations. So let's help some of the parents listening now and giving them some advice about how you can approach talking to your children about the internet to prevent them being targeted in the first place. I would say don't let the internet, don't let technology be a barrier to being interested in what your children are doing on a day-to-day basis. Actually ask them what they're doing, sit alongside them when they're playing games, understand with them the world that they're entering into. And one of the things in this report that really struck me was that case study of the young person who was performing for likes.

Of course she was performing for likes. We all like to be validated. So have the conversation about what it is your child likes to do, what it is that makes them feel good. And caution them that not everybody out there has their best interests at heart, but you as a parent do, and you understand them. Susie, what about the tech firms and the websites who are hosting this content? Are they doing enough to stop child abuse being published on their sites? Well, they do a lot already.

So, for instance, we have what's called a hash list so it's a list of digital fingerprints of known child sexual abuse images we have currently one and a half million of those on our list and the internet companies deploy that across their platforms TikTok, Instagram do to ensure that known images are not uploaded so they do have things they do but they don't do enough because we'd none of us do enough and that's one of the reasons why we have to bring in the online safety bill so that this will put a legal requirement on internet companies to screen and to ensure that their platforms are kept as clean as possible of child sexual abuse and to do

everything in their power to ensure that this content is not shared freely on the internet. So yes they've got an enormous role to play but that's why the government have to because they've got to bring this bill forward. But I would also say that to back up what Vicky said, we have a checklist for parents and carers called and you can find it at talk.iwf.org.uk. And it's got a list of really simple things to do for parents and carers to have those conversations and keep children safe online. And the thing we found out in our research is that one meaningful conversation can make all the difference. That was Susie Hargreaves and Vicky Green. And if you want to see the report, you can find it at iwf.org.uk. And there are support links on our website for anyone concerned with what they've heard today. against the most vulnerable in our society. We are leaving no stone unturned to pursue offenders and keep children safe online and in our communities.

The Online Safety Bill is a key measure in this regard as it will ensure companies take proactive action to keep children safe from child sexual abuse and exploitation on their platforms. And if you'd like to get in touch with us about anything you hear on the programme or indeed anything you would like us to discuss in future programmes, then please feel free to send us an email by going to our website.

Now, on Wednesday, the American space agency NASA launched the most powerful rocket ever built on its debut flight to send an unmanned capsule to the Moon. Artemis I is named after the Greek goddess of the moon and will be testing technologies to send astronauts back to the lunar surface later this decade after a gap of 50 years. 12 men have landed on the moon so far, but no women. The next we'll see a woman step onto the surface along with the first person of colour. Libby Jackson is the head of space exploration at the UK Space Agency. Emma spoke to her earlier this week and asked her what it was like seeing the most powerful rocket ever built on its debut flight.

It was quite a moment to see and bringing it home for me, the new chapter that this mission marks. I grew up being inspired by the stories of the Apollo missions. Now, I wasn't alive, but they were what, you know, captured my attention, brought me to the space sector, has led me to have a wonderful career in it. And we're about to go and do that again with Artemis. And I say we this time, it's not just America, they're going with their international partners with the European Space Agency, the UK is a part of this programme. And seeing this rocket start its journey finally after quite a little bit

of waiting and three attempts, it brought it home, the science that we're going to discover, the technology that we are delivering and developing here in the UK. But the inspiration, the images, what it's going to mean for our young people and people around the world today to see that. You know, people might not know, but the idea of actually getting a woman on the moon, it hasn't happened yet. I think we've just got to state that. And how does that fit into this? So NASA had been very clear that Artemis will land the first woman on the moon. We saw 12 people walk on the moon back in the 60s and 70s, and they were all white American men. At the time, you know, women weren't able or weren't seen to have these senior roles.

It wasn't the done thing. Times have changed. They're still changing. We've still got a lot more to do to help women feel welcome in the space sector, be equal in the space sector. But that role model, that visual of women on the moon, people on the moon, the first person of colour on the moon, respecting the world that we all live in,

will be an incredibly powerful image and important step. When is it going to happen, Libby? The next mission, Artemis 2, will be in at least two years' time. That will be the first mission with people on board and they will fly around the moon. The landing is due to be Artemis 3. NASA are talking about 2025. So sometime in the second half of this decade, we will see people walk on the moon again.

And any chance of it being a female British astronaut? Well, next week, we are looking forward to the next set of European Space Agency astronauts. Now, the UK is a proud member of the European Space Agency, a founding member. We'll see who gets selected. You don't know who's going to make it but do you know if any British women are putting themselves forward or in training for it? Oh, we absolutely

know that the UK had a very strong set of candidates to it with a really good representation from women in that. All eyes are on next week to see who gets unveiled. I think that's what we should be tuning into, perhaps, instead of, you know, I'm a celebrity, get me out of it. Oh, yeah.

Figure out who's going to potentially represent, who hasn't represented on the moon before. So that's an interesting one to look out for. I think also just sticking with what happened yesterday, it was, I understand, the first woman launch director of NASA, Charlie Blackwell Thompson, at the head of it yesterday. How significant was that, especially for you, as you say, inspired by the 60s and coming into this space? It is a fabulous reflection that the representation across the sector is getting better. It was marvellous for me as someone who's worked in mission control to see that.

To me, it should be unremarkable. It's just the right person for the right job. And I hope that we continue to just see the right people from all different backgrounds in all these roles. The role models are important and the space sector needs people. The UK space sector needs people from every single different background to come join us. We're growing. We need people to join us. She did congratulate her team on being part of a first.

It's not by chance, she said, you're here today. You've earned your place in the room. You've earned this moment. You've earned your place in history. And going on to say it doesn't come along very often, once in a career maybe, but we're all part of something incredibly special. The first launch of Artemis. For you, there's also the understanding, the aim, the final aim was also to send a woman to Mars. I mean, how's that looking? I do think I will see that in my lifetime. You do? Yeah, this Horizon goal has been there since the moon missions of the 60s and 70s

and we've always talked about going to Mars. this Artemis program will enable us to learn how to live and work outside the protection of the Earth's magnetic field away from the International Space Station out in deep space and so we are taking steps to learn how to do this and so that goal is coming a little bit closer and I think in a few decades time we will see that humanavour is still trying to take us there. How do you, just thinking about the political context we're talking in, is it difficult to justify this exploration, you know, no matter of the huge inspiration it gives with the costs involved, especially in the economic climate? It is absolutely a fair question. From the UK perspective, the UK government would not be joining

these international endeavours if there wasn't a strong economic business case there, which I have to write. For every pound that we invest in this programme, we see £10 returned to the UK economy. And the sector is growing. In what way do we see it returned? Through commercialisation, through inward investment. The government invests, we enable companies to then sell their wares overseas and so on.

We are seeing in the development of the lunar missions, commercial instruments, things like LIDARs, laser range finders, are being sold to American companies. So it's this kind of growth that we see. And it's a growing sector, which is very important. Space underpins all of our everyday lives. That was Libby Jackson of the UK Space Agency. Now, I promised you some music and this next act definitely doesn't disappoint. The Big Swing is the world's first double female fronted big band led by the jazz musicians Georgina Jackson and Emma Smith. Their mission is to elevate female visibility in the big band world, presenting their own unique interpretations of the old school big band jazz tradition. They joined Emma in the studio earlier this week for a chat and a performance

and Emma began by asking Georgina why they decided to set up The Big Swing. We decided to do it because we're both absolutely nutty about big band music really and even though it's probably not the coolest thing to be nutty about we think it's incredibly cool. And we've been playing this music

for a very, very long time now and there really isn't a lot of female representation. I've been in big bands for a good couple of decades, really, and always been the only female or one or two females in there. And there's been certainly no kind of big band leaders or female big band conductors. And so we just want to inject a new energy and a new freshness into the into the big band world because it's such great music the big swing georgina and that's a really interesting thing to hit to hear from your take emma how about you i actually decided to become a singer because of

how little success my saxophonist mother had being a woman in the big band world my mum's name is simone and she used to take the e of her name when sending in audition tapes in the late 70s and early 80s. She would instantly get the gig because she is a phenomenal saxophonist for this genre specifically. And then she'd turn up and be asked to either leave or put on a very sexy outfit. And I know that's happened to you as well, George. Yeah, definitely. People phone up and say, would you mind wearing the skirt on this? Because there sexy outfit so and I know that's that's happened to you as well George yeah definitely people phone up and saying would you mind wearing the skirt on this because there was no point in having girls in the band if they weren't overtly girls if you know what one of these stories is from the 70s and your story is from probably the 90s right yeah absolutely and I was just saying before um

turning up playing trumpet which was an unusual thing to do, and starting to play and having the band leader, the conductor, say to me, would you mind opening your legs to see where your male parts are hidden? Wow. Yes. What do you respond to that? Well, I mean, I just laughed along because I didn't really know what the alternative was because you have to keep working. But it's changed now. now I mean things are a lot

different now but that was kind of how it was and so we want to um we kind of want to claim the music for ourselves and and have a different atmosphere and our band's got a totally different atmosphere how is it different tell us a bit more about that well there's a ton of really um boisterous and energized women leading it who can wear what they want we can all wear what we want and the repertoire we've chosen is truly from our um what sparks joy songbook so you've got a lot of bassy um some sort of sinatra classics that have been redone for female voice keys um we're also featuring like a couple of forced be reckoned with soloists such as Vula Malinga, one of my really good friends who is a really famous singer here in the UK, actually in

the world. And she's doing a totally fantastic reclamation of Natural Woman. The repertoire itself is just so fun. And we think it's going to be really infectious for the audience. There was a report out today, we're listening to more music not necessarily live but more music than ever before just it's around us yeah it's such a different way and perhaps people needing it it takes your mind somewhere else i think the the genre that we're presenting is so unique because it's jazz and it's swing and obviously it's very joy inducing but the improvisational nature of the music we're playing means that these people that we have brought together this band we've curated they all get to express their personalities

they all get to express their joy their heartbreak that whatever they're going through through those moments of soloistic expression and even just just being on stage around that it's really really powerful we've chosen a whole band of improvisers as well as fantastic section players. So it's not just like an orchestra where they're playing the notes. They're really bringing their soul. And it's different every time. I bet. I know you're going to perform for us live in the studio.

What are you going to play? We're going to do a medley, aren't we? We're just to show the different kind of aspects of what we do, the different moods that you're going to expect. So we'll imagine, I'll let you get to where you're going to get into position. We'll imagine some more people around you, but we're very happy to have both of you here doing this.

And that's, of course, Emma Smith and Georgina Jackson. Get out my life, darling, you don't love me no more. No, no, no. I feel like I need to go, woo, at the end of that. All right, what an absolutely stunning performance. That was Georgina Jackson and Emma Smith from The Big Swing performing It Had To Be You and Get Out Of My Life, accompanied by the pianist Rob Barron. That's all from me today.

Do join Emma on Woman's Hour Monday, where we'll be looking at stalking 10 years on from it becoming a specific crime in England and Wales. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 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's 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.