Woman's Hour - Women and Wonder

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

We're putting our head in the clouds and going in search of wonder. How do we find it and how do we keep hold of it when life gets in the way?We know that women still hold the lion’s share of caring responsibilities and typically carry the mental load for home, often on top of work. How do we make space for the perspective that wonder gives us, when we’re distracted by the perpetual to do list? And can a sense of wonder, with its built-in inspiration and aspiration, help us see beyond the day-to-day? To lead us on this quest we have an eclectic mix of wonder-women: the award-winning children’s author and academic, Katherine Rundell, evolutionary biologist and explorer, Ella Al-Shamahi, the environmentalist-turned-musician Natalie Fée and Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon MBE, computer scientist and former ‘wunder-kind’. We’ll also hear from Dr. Jean Bennett, the research scientist whose medical breakthrough recently restored the sight of a six-year-old girl. And joining us from New York, Jenette Khan, the first ever female boss of the Wonder Woman-publisher, DC Comics.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Kirsty McQuire

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Listen to the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 stations 24-7. Visit BBC.com slash audio or download the BBC app to start listening. Hello, I'm Nula McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Welcome to Woman's Hour, but not as you usually know it. For the spring bank holiday, we're taking a break from business as usual to put our head in the clouds and go in search of wonder. How do we find it? And crucially, how do we hold on to that feeling when life tries to be.

tries to get in the way. Now, we know that women still hold the lion's share of caring responsibilities and typically carry the mental load for home, often on top of work, but how do we make space for the perspective that wonder gives us, particularly when we're distracted by the perpetual to-do list and can a sense of wonder with its built-in inspiration

and aspiration help us see beyond the day to day. Well, to lead us on this wonderful quest, have an eclectic mix of wonder women, poised and at the ready. Joining me in the Woman's Hour Studio are the award-winning children's author and academic Catherine Rundle. We have Ella Al-Shemahi, evolutionary biologist and explorer extraordinaire. Also, the environmentalist turned musician Natalie Fay and Dr. Anne-Marie Emaffodon, MBA, computer scientist and former Wonderkind. We'll also hear from Doctor. Dr. Jean Bennett. She's the research scientist whose medical breakthrough

recently restored the sight of a six-year-old girl. And joining us from New York, the legendary comic book boss who oversaw Wonder Woman and more besides, that's Jeanette Kahn. Welcome to Woman's Hour, all of you. Now, one way we might experience wonder is to get in touch with our inner child. As a multi-million-selling author of children's fiction and fantasy, Catherine Rundell has kept the portal to childlike wonder firmly open. From her adventure story, rooftoppers, following young runaways navigating the rooftops of Paris, to her latest series, Impossible Creatures, pushing at the boundaries of reality itself, and soon to make the leap from book to screen.

Catherine, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. Good to have you with us. Okay, if I say to you, where do you find wonder, where does your head go? I think for me, it will always be a mixture of the natural world and the sense that if we could discover more about it, we would never cease to find in it that which is extraordinary. So a sense that the natural world is an inexhaustible place of wonder.

But also in learning itself, I think one of the things that we think about when we talk about childlike wonder, childlike wonder is childlike only because of the, them so much is a process of new discovery. I have no interest in being childlike, except in the sense that we can continue to learn with the same veracity and hunger and thrill and excitement that children do. It just requires us to be more disciplined and more ironwilled about it. That's so interesting. So I want to hear more about the discipline and the iron will because I suppose what can happen to adults is that they become maybe a bit jaded or feel like they've seen it all already.

Exactly. I think in the necessary compromises of adult life, it could become easy to see wonder as something that is an optional extra, something that we might seek occasionally at a weekend, rather than that's something that needs to be absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the reality of the world. not to see wonder is to be blind to the truth. G.K. Chesterton said, the world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder. And I think in many ways we owe the world. The natural world in particular are furious, hope-filled, active political wonder. Your life, you spent your childhood in Zimbabwe, I understand. You had a freedom to climb trees. There was a lack of teenage culture,

which sounds very interesting to me as well. Tell me about it. I was in Zimbabwe from around 8 till around 14. And the thing that shaped my life there was the access to free play outside. And I think one of the great wonders that we can give children is unsupervised play. I think the idea that when you are without adult intervention,

You come into yourself, you come into a sense of your own wildness. We did do things which, looking back, I am now horrified by. Can you give me an example, Catherine? We used to go polling across a river. Polling. Poling. So we would find a log and then you find another stick and you'd pull yourself down the river on this log. We knew that this river had crocodiles in it, but we assumed that as long as they weren't immediately visible, it was safe to go in the water. that's not how crocodiles work but we were eight years old

and we felt invincible This does feel like a children's book Your dad, the diplomat I'm thinking in kind of a stuffy office Meanwhile his daughter is in freedom getting on a log and polling down the river with crocodiles snapping at her heels but she manages to evade them all

I mean I would be absolutely horrified if my brilliant stepdaughter would be doing the same thing And I think it required from my parents an enormous amount of discipline and courage to allow us to go unsupervised. And later when I started looking after my friends, children, my nephew and niece, I said to my mother, that must have been extraordinarily difficult. Were you afraid? And she said, oh, every single second of every single moment I couldn't see you. Of course I was afraid.

She would have been even more afraid if she'd known about the crocodile. But I bet she would. But I do think that to create a culture, in which the parents who are allowing their children to have access to that particular form of enchantment is so necessary. Because if only a small number of parents are allowing their children to occasionally be unsupervised from, say, the age of eight, then if something goes wrong, they will be held culpable by the culture. Whereas if we can create a culture in which it's much more the norm and we create spaces in which children can be free in nature, then I think we can create a childhood for an entire generation

that has in it a greater seed of magic. You do have a trouser wearing rooftop climbing, cello playing heroin in your children's novel Rooftoppers, who actively resists being a lady. I feel after hearing about your childhood, some of that is plugged from reality. I think with rooftoppers, the thing that I had hoped with that story

is to create a sense of a girl who has done, discovering that the world is larger than she thought it was. I think one of the great things about childhood is exactly that. This uncovering, this discovering, this sense that there might be secrets around every corner. In rooftop as it's made literal in that there are children living wild secret lives on the rooftops of Paris. But the mechanism, the sense that the world is far greater, wilder, stranger, broader, more full of variousness than we thought. When we talk about fantasy writing or children's fiction, it was for a long time a male dominated sphere. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. I think often when we think about fantasy fiction, we think of the great canonical figures. Mostly we think of Tolkien. We think of C.S. Lewis.

There are truly great female writers, Diana Nguyenne Jones, Ursula Le Guin, both of whom should be as famous as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien both had my heart. They taught me a huge amount about the idea of the extraordinary, about courage, about endurance. But so too did someone like Ursula LaGuin. And she took her knowledge of the fantastical and her philosophical knowledge. And she wove together in the Wizard of Earth Sea a sense of a world in which a child can discover huge, ideas around death, power, danger, and still find the glee and delight of a fast-paced adventure. And that was something that she did, I would say, maybe better than almost anyone else. As I was preparing to interview you, I was thinking back on books that had a sense of wonder for me. And one was The Secret Garden, which I just loved. And it's this young girl who kind of brings this garden back to life. and I actually read it not that long ago.

I just was kind of intrigued. How did I feel about it now? I read it and I loved it just as much. But it brought back a lot of those feelings of wonder. So I sometimes think that's a path back into it to remember something that like, you know, you were mesmerized by as a child and to walk on that path again.

Catherine, thank you. I need to let people know your second book in The Impossible Creatures is the Poison King. It's out on paperback. The third installment, The Never Fear, is going to be published in August. so you've been busy. You're going to stay with us, Catherine, though,

as we talk about various aspects of wonder, and I also want to bring in listener messages. We're not live today, but many of you have been getting in touch in the run-up to this programme. Thank you for that. So here's one. Personally, I am compelled by abandoned historical places

because they create a sense of mystery where you imagine the lives and stories that once fill those spaces. My personal favourite is the cross-nest pumping station engineered by Joseph Basilgette as part of 19th century London Sewers Network and it shows how even something as ordinary as a sewage station was designed with beauty and care. I love that. Everybody has a different place perhaps they go to to find wonder.

Let us continue on our path of history and mystery and why I'm back further into deep time with my next guest. That is Ella Al-Shemahi, who is an explorer, a paleo. anthropologist and evolutionary biologist. Great titles. Yeah. I'm well done. I'm not hurting yourself with paleothropologists.

I took my time. You presented the landmark series Human for the BBC and PBS and you brought viewers on this adventure through evolution to discover how we, modern humans, came to be some other places that people might remember you from. Back in 2015, you were named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in recognition of. of expeditions in politically unstable, hostile, disputed territories.

And you also do some stand-up comedy, I hear. You'd have to, I think. To help, I suppose. Maybe to process it and understand what you're going through. Well, you're on tour with your latest one-woman show, becoming human. Welcome. Thank you for fitting us into that busy schedule. Thanks for having me.

So where in the world has wonder taken you? Oh, God. I've been really, really lucky, I have to say, in that I have travelled to a lot of places. And what's really interesting is, I'm sure some of your listeners have heard of the overview effect, which is the term given when astronauts kind of look down on our tiny blue planet

and they talk about how it feels them with wonder, with awe, with perspective. That's what I get when I sit atop a deep time archaeological site. One of the ones that is just filled with hundreds of thousands of years of history and. people. And in that, there are so many things to be moved by, to wonder about. And I mean, you know, I literally, my head is exploding with how many things. I'm like, well, there's cave art. In particular, the handprints of cave art. They fill me with wonder. Of course, yeah. The,

the story of them is so epic. Yeah. The handprint is ubiquitous across the world. And when you look at a handprint, I get goosebumps. I get goosebumps talking about it. Because I get goosebumps. I get goosebumps talking about it. I know that that's not a representation by some artist living today of a prehistoric person. That's that somebody stood in the spot that I was standing in, put their hand out and left their mark on this world. And that is a certain kind of human-like behaviour that is moving. And then you have to ask, well, what were they doing? What was that about?

Did they want to leave a mark? Did they? I mean, that was intentional because these, you had to put your hand in red ochre, which is a kind of pigment. and put it against the wall. And the question is, what was it about? And there are all these interpretations. Some people say it's early art, which, by the way, is moving. Because you think, well, there's a squiggly line from art to the Sistine Chapel.

You know, people feel awe and wonder when they sit under the Sistine Chapel. That's what I get when I look at a handprint. But then there's other people that say maybe it's a kind of rebellion. Maybe it's like Banxie. Maybe it's juvenile delinquents. You know, maybe it's that kind of thing. A little bit of prehistoric graffiti. Yes, exactly.

And let's talk about your hands. for a moment, because I understand you aren't afraid to get them dirty on expeditions. You get out there. Yeah, so, I mean, there are different kinds of expeditions that you go on. Some are tamer than others, I would say.

Some of them get pretty hairy. I unintentionally ended up sleeping in a rat's nest, which just, yeah, that was noisy. There was once where we went on a cement cargo ship, sailed through pirate waters, to get to the island of Sucotra,

which is part of Yemen. The journey itself, I'd unlocked a new fear, which was cockroaches. Because at one point, we went below deck and the floor was black and it was moving. That's the stuff of nightmares, not wonderment. How do I put this? Once I got there, there was a lot of wonder.

But when you aren't in these places, just in the day to day, where do you find wonder then? So I desperately need nature. I love mountains, so when I can, I run off and try and find a mountain. But what's really interesting is the theories behind why or moves us. And one of the things is one of my favorite topics, which is what we would technically call pro-sociality,

which is that it makes us friendlier. It makes us better at bonding with other people. And one of the other theories that is attached to why or, and therefore wonder, kind of moves us and makes us feel better actually, potentially biochemically, is that it makes us smaller, as in we are not just the way. thinking about ourselves. So you get perspective. There we go, perspective. I understand dance can be part of that.

This is a thing. So this is really funny because so many people think of dance. If I was to ask you about dance, you'd think it was culturally relevant, maybe, fun, frivolous. But study upon study shows that dance is a really, really good method to bond. And there are so many experiments on this. But one of my favourite is a silent disco experiment where they put these participants

who don't know each other, they're not really speaking to each other, in a room for 13 minutes, and they're asked to dance in a synchronized fashion. Afterwards, the participants are like, yeah, I like them. You haven't really spoken to them now, but they're my people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just that, they report a higher pain threshold.

That bit blows my mind. And you realize us being community-based, us needing the other, is the secret source that got us here as a species. So, you know, another way, way to wonder. On my thoughts preparing for this program, I'm like, what does give me wonder every day? And it is other people that often sit at this table and I hear their stories and I hear who they are and, you know, that gives me a sense of wonder every day and often in this studio. You're listening to Women's Hour on how to find wonder in the every day. We're not live today, but you can join the conversation on social media.

Well, here's a message from a listener. This is Jacqueline. She's in Belfast. She says, life is never more. full of wonder than when I'm out hiking with my walking group, enjoying the best of friendships. There we got the pro-social and mountaintop views. Most recently, inglorious current tool in Kerry this past weekend. But finding wonder in nature wasn't always an option for women. Was it, Catherine? That's a more recent development that women can kind of immerse themselves in nature and talk about it and use it in the same way as men. Exactly. So in the 18th century, Edmund Burke was setting up the idea of women as part of the realm of the beautiful and men as being able to access the sublime. The sublime is in some way inherently masculine. I think often when we think of the great nature writers in the romantic period, we think of the lone and raptured male, someone standing alone on the top of a mountain. With a wind blowing in his hair as he stands steadfast against whatever it is. Exactly that. And that tradition has been one that, has endured. And I think one of the great things you can see women writers pushing back at that,

Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, and all the way you can trace it all the way down to great Victorian explorers who are setting out, you know, in long skirts and boots to try to travel around the world. And now you have great, great female nature writers, but they tend to write nature writing that is more engaged in community. I think one of the great things that many of the female nature writers I love best point out is that we are ourselves wildlife. It all feels like it's coming together.

I'm feeling these threads going through the passages of time and bringing us back to nature and that we're wildlife as well. I love that. Catherine Rundell, Ella al-Shemahi, thank you very much. I want to also say that Ella's tour becoming human runs until the end of June, dates in Swindon, Cambridge, Bristol and more. That'll be a wonderful night out.

Back to our listeners. Where do you find wonder? What makes you go, wow? Here's another. I've been off most of the academic year with work-related stress. I've recently been using a birdsong app on my walks or when sitting in the garden. It helps me focus on what's happening around me in that small environment in such a gentle way. It's really calming and it reduces my anxiety every time. So nature, we're getting even deeper into it right now. Because wonder, we sometimes talk about the ground. or the majesty about it, that epic scale. But maybe we can't see that in our daily lives. We have life, work, responsibilities, as we mentioned, that women sometimes have on their shoulders and it can get in the way. But my next guest found wonder in the simple act of sitting under a tree.

A ritual, she repeated every day for a year. And it was a fruitful year for Natalie Fay, an award-winning environmental campaigner turned singer-songwriter. She has since released an album, Daughter of Nature, documenting that special time. How lovely,

the track Daughter of Nature by Natalie Fay, who has left the oak tree to come and join us here in the studio. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Anne the Oak. I brought a sprig with me from the tree this morning.

So the tree is with us. Okay, describe this particular tree, how you found it, how it was the chosen one. Well, yeah, it's not what you might imagine when you think of an oak tree as a majestic oak or a mighty oak, but actually it's quite small and petite, quite low to the ground. And I moved to Clevedon just outside of Bristol about three years ago and lo and behold, there was this solitary, beautiful oak tree looking out over

a local cricket pitch and off into the mendip, facing the east and so facing the rising sun. And I just knew instantly that was my new oak friend. So how has it been to go under the oak tree And how long take me through the process of it, what you do? So I decided to just make it a regular commitment And I would regularly go and visit this particular oak tree And it was winter And so this oak to me just looked like it was in a fairly boring field

You know, a nice hill, a little local patch of wild And throughout the year, the first year I was sitting with it, I became aware of the grass growing up higher and higher. And then it started to explode. And then by summer it was an absolute riot of flowers and insects. And I was sitting in a meadow. And that was an incredible discovery. I'm fascinated by that trajectory and that change that must have come.

So how was it for you? It was an incredible. journey and it was that deepening of noticing the changes. It's like living with a child, you don't notice them shooting up because you see them every day. But with the seasons changing, it was so slow and winter was quite tough. I was buffeted by winds. It was... How long are you staying underneath the tree? Usually I'd be there for 20 minutes to half an hour, but if it was like really bad weather and I had to go and be somewhere that day. So I would have to go in the morning, whether it was raining or not.

So winter was very much its own pace and it was hard. And I was wrestling with, why am I doing this? And sometimes I'd take a hot water bottle. But then I noticed the narcissus starting to grow beside me. And the anticipation of the day that it would actually burst was great. And little moments like that became real markers of my year. And the whole point as well of my year with the tree was to connect with nature in a different way to really become in relationship with nature rather than just being an observer. Well, your next track which we want to play is called slow.

We are slowing down, taking some time to think about wonder. But was it hard to make the time alongside the work commitments, caring responsibilities? I'd say there'd be a lot of women thinking, oh, I don't think I could drop everything. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm 48 this year, and I was working three days a week for the organisation I founded at the time,

and so I did have a bit of flexibility of when I needed to go into Bristol. My son had turned 21, he'd left home, and my husband was about to embark on a year-long project in Glasgow, but there was space in my life, and I was right into my perimenopause, well and I was tired after 10 years of sort of frontline campaigning on plastic pollution and I wasn't

really sure what was next for me. I could feel that things were changing in my life, in my body and I just kind of seized the moment and I felt like nature had the answers and it was just a 10 minute walk up behind my house so I could actually fit it in in a half an hour window. I could scamper up the hill sit for 15 minutes and scamper back and pretty much get on with my day. Did it rejuvenate you? Absolutely. I mean, prior to that year, I think I went and had osteopathy or some kind of treatment every six weeks because my back hurt.

I had health anxiety. I was stressed. And as soon as I started the practice, I don't actually think I've been back to see my beloved osteopath. in the last two years. Did anyone ever join you under the oak? Well, yeah, sometimes. I mean, it was a solo project, but there were times when work did call me away,

and I did need to stay overnight somewhere, but I always made sure I could get back the next day, so I'd go to the oak very early on the day I was leaving, and some nights I would come back, and I'd need to visit the oak in the dark, and so my husband would come with me for those moments, because as a woman, unfortunately, I didn't feel safe for various reasons to go on my own and close my eyes in a wild space.

It's very evocative, I have to say. I planted an oak not that long ago. Amazing. And what I found was kind of awe-inspiring that it probably won't reach its maturity for another 50 years. I'd be long gone by the time this tree is kind of in its full glory and maturity. So it kind of makes you stop and think as well about the little bit of time that we're actually on this earth. Yeah. What would you like people to take away from what you've done?

I think it would be the sense that nature is rooting for you and it knows exactly what you need. And it is always at the ready to offer it to you. And to help you. I love the idea of this oak-shaped hole there that made its way into your life and kind of brought you back to yourself. Natalie Fay, her album, daughter of nature, her poetry collection Under the Oak, they're both out now. Right, back to our listeners for another wow moment. Small adventures or successes with my little human. I forgot how simple life can be and it is wonderful how little people see simple stuff as just wonderful.

Britbox has the best of British TV, period. Let's get started. The best mystery, period. I like a good detective story. The best romance, period. This is the book that will open the heart, Miss Mary Bennett. The best drama, period. Welcome to the grown-up work.

Stream the best British period dramas, including The Lady, inspired by a true story of murder and scandal. And from the world of Jane Austen, the other Bennett sister, only on Britbox. Start your free trial at Britbox.com. Live BBC Radio is now available on BBC.com and the BBC app. Get global perspectives, rich conversation, and immediate reaction. action to breaking news stories wherever you are. Listen to the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 stations 24-7. Visit BBC.com slash audio or download the BBC app to start listening.

She was the sister who went unnoticed. A daffodil might look plain next to a lily, but on its own there is much to be admired. Now her greatest chapter is yet to come. The most important thing just to be yourself. From the world of Jane Austen's pride and prejudice comes a new Britbox original drama. Mary, you will flourish. Based on the best-selling novel, The Other Bennett Sister, now streaming only on Britbox.

Watch for the free trial at Britbox.com. Well, we've been describing the feeling of wonder as seeing afresh, like seeing through the eyes of a child, like our listener. Here's the story. A six-year-old girl in the UK recently had her sight restored, thanks to the medical breakthrough of my next guest. One half of a husband and wife team in the United States. They'd worked for over four decades on a gene therapy to treat

inherited retinal disease, eventually leading to the treatment that gave Safi Sanford her sight back. The little girl is from Stevenage. She has the rare inherited condition of leber's congenital amaurosis. It prevents cells in the eye from making a protein that is needed for normal vision. and her parents had been told that she would lose her sight entirely by the age of 30. Let's first hear a clip of Lisa Sanford, the mother of Safi, speaking to Radio 4's today program about her recovery. She was pretty much completely blind in the dark before. And when people hear night blindness, they just think it just means at night time. But actually that's not the reality.

Any sort of low-level lighting was a real struggle for us. We had to rely on torches to just do everyday things like, you know, eat a meal, do some colouring, go to a kid's party. It was really, really bad. She couldn't see it at all in the dark. We couldn't get trick or treat. And life was really, really hard. She missed out on an awful lot.

But we just didn't know how much of an improvement we were going to get. You know, I just thought if she can see a bit better, that would be amazing. You know, I could never, in a million years, have imagined results like this. We were able to get trick or treat in last October. And she was running down the path in the dark shouting, I can see. And we were just in floods of tears, the whole family just thinking. You know, this has actually given our little girl her life back. Lisa Sanford there, the mother of Safi.

Well, I played that clip to my next guest, Dr. Jean Bennett. She is Professor Emerita of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania. And her work alongside her husband, fellow ophthalmologist Albert McGuire, had made Safi's recovery possible. Here's how Jean reacted. I'm just overwhelmed whenever I hear stories of people who've had this treatment and it's changed their lives. And it makes me cry actually hearing now that they have had their treatment, they can see better and they can see what's going on in the classroom.

And I feel so lucky to be able to have witnessed this myself. And you haven't met Safi yet, but you have met some of the other 500 or so recipients of your gene therapy in the States. What have they told you about what it was like to see? So one of the most illuminating experiences that I had was the first subject that we recruited, who happened to be from Italy, from Sicily. So we offered to put her up at our house, and so we could follow her after the surgery and she wouldn't have to travel back and forth. And she had the surgery and she came downstairs the next day. And she looked in the mirror and she said, Mamma Mia!

When she saw her face. And then she started describing things that she could see. She looked out the window and she saw branches waving in the wind. She saw reflections from a pond. She could see the pattern of grain of wood and furniture. There were just so many observations that she made. And it was just, it was such an amazing experience to be able to hear this first. It was like a child seeing something new for the first time in absorbing the world and learning about it.

And that I think really illustrates that wonder that we are talking about today as well. Yes, yes, absolutely. Could you explain briefly in very much layman or laywoman's terms how this works? Yes, it's a surgical operation. and people are treated under general anesthesia because you can't sneeze. This is very delicate microsurgery. So they're treated under general anesthesia and then they go home later that day. It's a fairly easy recovery.

Luxterna is the name of the product. What the product is is a recomminate virus, which is neutered. The guts of the virus and the virus itself, even in the wild type form, has never been shown to cause disease or harm. But we removed the guts of this virus and replaced it with the gene, which is missing in the normal wild type form in these individuals. And use that to deliver the DNA into the cells which normally produce this gene. It's necessary to use this piggyback method because DNA itself is really highly charged

and it will not pass through cell membranes to be able to get a digital. into the cell efficiently, we needed to use that technique. So like a virus will bring it along, so to speak. That's right. Viruses do it. They know how to do well. So fascinating. Get things into cells.

But you know, what strikes me about you and your husband with you is that you don't consider limitations. You have that mindset of possibility and being able to wonder what might be possible. Where does that come from? I think the wonder comes from just the joy of science and wanting to know what would happen if you intervened in this case with genetic therapy. The question for me was, wow, maybe you could use this gene transfer technique to be able to treat a disease at its root. And I wanted to see if I could do that. It was pie in the sky. I was totally naive and there were so many obstacles I didn't know about, which was probably a good thing because otherwise I wouldn't have followed this path.

But you found somebody who is ready to do that with you as well, which is your husband, Albert McGuire. I should say as well, congratulations to both you and your husband on a two million pound breakthrough prize for life sciences that was just awarded to you at a ceremony in Hollywood known as the Oscars of the science world. That must have been fun. Oh, it was just incredible. It was an amazing celebration. It's really fun to see all of these glamorous celebrities celebrating us nerdy scientists. Exactly, but probably very much would love to emulate you

because this could be a movie. Particularly, here's one scene. How you met your husband? So we were in the same class in medical school and we were assigned as partners for dissecting a brain during our first neuroanatomy class. And he's like, she is the woman for me. But I imagine it must have been very different, you know, 40 years ago, what you were up against compared to what your husband to be at that point was up against, being a woman in that world.

Absolutely. I grew up in my scientific world as being one of the few females, like from the training point on. And it was very difficult to find female role models. I got used to being like the only female in a group when we were in school and then later on as a young faculty member. When I was first recruited to University of Pennsylvania, I was just thrilled. And I'm still thrilled in retrospect. It just wonderful opportunity. It gave me a chance to try out all of these crazy ideas.

And so I didn't really think about it at the time. but I wasn't given any startup funds to be able to buy a microscope, to be able to fund a technician to help me, things like that. I had nothing. And that was fine. I did it, but I had to become the jack of all trades to be able to build things, repair them, to bring in used pickle jars to be able to store my reagents. It was a challenging time. And in retrospect, I realized that this was really not a fair situation as I saw some men being recruited who were given a million dollars startup funds to be able to purchase all these things. But for me, it was what it was.

What is it? Necessity being the mother of invention. Exactly. You got it. But what became difficult when I was a junior faculty member, was seeking mentorship, finding a female who had been able to have a life, you know, have marriage and children while running a very difficult career where you're basically running everything. And I looked around it at University of Pennsylvania, which is my university,

there were approximately 600 tenured faculty member. And there were at most a handful of female tenured faculty members. I asked them how they did it. And they said, well, we decided not to have children. This is just too demanding a career. And I already had three children under age six. So what was I going to do? You're going to do with them? Yeah. Of course, my family came first. My kids were like most important in my husband. But I decided just to put on the jets and see how far I could go. Dr Jean Bennett there Professor Emerita of Optomology

at the University of Pennsylvania You are listening to Women's Hour as we explore how women can find wonder every day. Still to come, the first ever female boss of DC Comics home to Wonder Woman and she'll tell us about taking the helm 50 years ago

this year. But I want to turn to my next guest who was called a child prodigy or a wonderkind at the tender age of 10 By 11, she was the youngest girls ever to pass A-level computing. By 20, she had received a master's degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Oxford. At the time, she was one of only three women in a class of 70.

Now, Dr. Anne-Marie Emaffodon, MBA is the CEO of the Social Enterprise STEM-METs, supporting girls and young women in two careers of science, technology, engineering and maths. It is a sector that's still male dominated with just over a quarter of the workforce made up of women that is according to government census data. She's also recently been made the Women in Tech envoy for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. And if all that is not enough,

you might also know her from crunching the numbers in real time as the resident arithmetician on Countdown on Channel 4, which is also a thing of wonder to behold. Great to have you with us, Anne-Bray. excited to be here. What wondrous conversation I know. I know. There's a lot to think about. I want to go to those rapid fire calculations. When you're doing them, are you surprising yourself like you're surprising us? Sometimes, yes. And it's not even me surprising myself. It's the numbers surprising me because they do end up talking to you. We always explain that a little more to us. It's hard to explain.

You end up in a bit of a, sometimes it might be a kind of a flow state. But when you're recording, it's five episodes in a day. Oh, my goodness. Three days on the trot, mind you. And so by the 15th episode, you are in this almost kind of arithmetical trance, whereas the numbers show up and you've got the three digits. You know, then, yeah, you're in conversation with them. I love that thought.

That's given us a lot to think about. Let's go back to Little Anne-Marie. When you were a child, I know you were a wonderkin, as they say. I also read that you took apart the VCR when you were a kid. I did, yeah. Yeah, which is a mathematical kind of project, shall we say. I'm reminded also of Catherine's discussions, like in that sense to have that freedom to explore and to be inspired by mathematical concepts.

I mean, how do you make that happen? I mean, if you're my dad, you don't kill me when I take apart your VCR player. You nurture that and you say that everybody has learned lessons here today. Maybe I shouldn't turn my back when we leave Amory of any machinery in the house. I think I get to talk to folks quite a lot about curiosity, curating those opportunities for wonder. But I think it's also something, again, that we, in the way that we might raise children, the way we might engage with folks, we end up disincentivising.

that exploration. So as I said, my dad didn't kill me. I know what I'm like with my devices and nobody's allowed anywhere near them to even have the time to take them apart. However, when we think about curiosity, think about wonder. I think it's also about giving folks space

to have that wonder. I mean, I feel really fortunate at the Stemet's events that we allow the young people, at least, to come and have that wonder and explore, whether it's AI, whether it's data, whether it's cyber, whether it's Python, whether it's coding, whatever it might be. But also adults having that time to not just have this shove down

your throats that we must use this in this way and here's how the regulation is and here's what things must be but no sit and wonder if you were going to have the time to explore and to try this out and to see what does happen when you prod it from this end but prod it from that end or use that word or use a different word I think it's quite exciting actually for us to create those environments and those spaces for folks to indulge in that curiosity and then access the wonder that there is in so much of what's coming I mean the other thing we've had in this conversation is wondering what has been. I think I also spend a lot of time wondering in what could be.

The future, yeah. I think we get that a little bit from somebody who went through that, which I was very struck with with Dr. Jean Bennett, who, you know, little by little chipped away and arrived in the future with something that has helped hundreds of people. It's the legacy of wonder. And what I think is beautiful about that is she's helped hundreds of people in that she didn't imagine

and actually weren't part of her initial wonder. I wish that we had more time to explore that and to get excited about that and to delve into wonder for the sake of the legacy of the wondrous. But Wonderkind, I've mentioned that, child prodigy. Was there a lot of pressure with that, Amory?

That title? No. No? There wasn't. There wasn't. No, their reason. My dad's great. My dad's great.

I mean, there wasn't the pressure because it was about wonder. I mean, it started off. You were enjoying it. It was playing. I was enjoying it. I was exploring. And the expectation wasn't that I'd be a wonder kid or that I'd be a child prodigy. The expectation was I was going to get to see more maths, enjoy more mats. And to be really frank, that I would stop disrupting the other students in the class.

So you were a disruptor in more ways than one. Yeah, a class clown because I'd finished it and it was like, let me. Yeah, two plus two was four. I get it. Let me sit and have jokes with my friend next to me. And so I think that, you know, I've had to fight against the odds to be a woman that enjoys the mass, that leans into it, that sees wonder in all of it, and is also able to apply it and doesn't have that mass anxiety,

despite all the subliminal and not so subliminal messages that have been fed into me. You know, in the same way that the maths anxiety messages weren't getting through, those pressure messages also did not get through. I love that. Dr. Anne-Marie, Em, Afidane, her latest book is, She's in control how women can take back tech. It is available now. Listening to that, lots of my guests.

Any more wonderkins around this table? Definitely wasn't a child prodigy, although I was writing silly poems from a very early age. Which is lovely, though, you know, and we could think about Sir Isaac Newton, discovering the theory of gravity sitting under an apple tree, you know. Geniuses have done what you have done. Catherine, you do give talks in schools.

How do you inspire that sense? of wonder. I think one of the great ways you can inspire a kid is to give them a sense that they have within their heads a mind that is different from any mind that has come before and any that will come after, that there is something and that their imagination is because it is infinite, larger than the world itself. And then Ella, so that's one mind in one small child that Catherine is talking to. But you very much think about as well all those minds. coming together, that human endeavor is cumulative. Yeah. It's funny because I think we've kind of mentioned the lone genius thing.

And not that we're not indebted, we are absolutely adept to those lone geniuses. But that is also a lie. When we look at the world that we've created around us today, it is the result of the many, over many, many, many years collaborating and working together. Yes, you've got to think about it in the world. around, so to speak, instead of that one voice, or perhaps some of those voices that have been forgotten, as Anne-Marie was telling us as well. Now, we could not devote a whole edition of Woman's Hour to wonder without giving a nod to the kick-ass, red, blue and gold-clad comic book

heroine, Wonder Woman. When her creator, William Marston, launched her onto the world in the early 1940s. He declared that Wonder Woman is a psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who I believe should rule the world. Well, my next guest didn't get as far as ruling the world, but there is still time. But she did become the first ever female boss of DC Comics, home to Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, taking the helm 50 years ago this year. How amazing. Jeanette Cannes was only 28 when she was hired as publisher and later promoted to president. and then editor-in-chief, eventually stepping down after 27 years. Janette, you're so welcome to Women's Hour. We're delighted to have you. Oh, thank you. I've loved listening to these other women,

and they have instilled a total sense of wonder in me. Well, we're glad to hear it. Now, where comic books always your go-to when you wanted to be inspired or filled with wonder? Reading just opened up so many portals for me, so many worlds, so much humanity. and comic books were part of that, but they were also very intimate, very personal, very portable, and they felt different from hardbacked books

because they were on paper and because they had these amazing visuals. How did you get the gig at DC Comics? When I had graduated college, I founded three magazines. They were all for young people. The first was all written and illustrated by kids for each other, and it was this extraordinary critical success and an equally large financial disaster.

Okay. And by the time I was 23, I owed so much money and knew everything about bankruptcy plans. But it was in my blood. So I created a second magazine called Dynamite for a company here called Scholastic, which became their most successful magazine in their entire history. I created a third magazine called Smash. But while I was publishing Smash, I got a call from what is now Warner Discovery, and they said, we're firing our publisher, and we don't want to hire anybody. But you're sort of the expert now.

When publishing for young people, would you talk to us? And I said, sure. I came down. Hopefully I was polite, but I was very, very frank. Afterwards, they said, you know, we don't want to hire anybody. But the next day I got a call asking me to lunch. I thought, why lunch? Are they going to offer me this job that does not exist? I thought, let me think. I love making magazines, but this was 80 comics a month, merchandise, television, movies. It was so over my head that I had to say yes. I came on Groundhog's Day, as you said, 50 years ago, I saw my shadow and stayed forever. So this is what I say, the epitome of field of fear and do it anyway.

But I want to know about this young woman who was fearless, who had been on a roller coaster of success and failure, and then was ready to step into these big shoes. Where did that come from? Because we all want to learn a little from you. I have to credit my parents so much. They've believed I have an older brother. They made no distinction between the two of us.

They wanted us, most of all, to be good people and happy. And they basically felt that we could do anything that we wanted. And that was up to us, whatever we wanted to do, to find something we love and to pursue that with a passion. You wanted to do things differently, I understand. What sort of changes did you make once you were the woman in charge? The most important thing to me was about creativity. creator rights. When I came to D.C., creators had absolutely no rights whatsoever. And most humiliating

of all, when they went to endorse their checks, on the back of the check, when they signed, it gave all rights throughout the cosmos in perpetuity to the company. And this was so exploitative. And I knew what it felt like to be on that side of the table. And so one of my most important battles really was to ensure that creators had their credit given for every comic, that they were, and the credit was on the first page of the comic book, that they had royalties, that they would get their artwork back, if we destroyed their artwork at the printer, that we would pay for it, that they would have a share in the licensing and the TV shows and the movies. And it changed the industry.

By doing that, it also opened up a door to all kinds of things. new creations and comics, it helped us move it, DC, from what was considered like a disposable kids' medium to a very sophisticated art form. It also happened that by the time you left, half the workforce was female. That's true. How do you feel about that? How did you see it? And was it like a conscious decision to try and make that happen? At a conscious level, I wanted our company to be diverse and welcoming to everybody. And that all began, I think, just because there was a woman at the top of the company and suddenly people felt free to hire other women and to hire people of color and to hire

people who were openly gay at a time when that was a hard thing to be. And so, yes, I felt so proud when I left that half our staff were women and they're also in really important positions at the company. But it wasn't just in terms of our staff and the hiring. It was a lot of the in terms of the content of our comics, that we touched on so many themes that were so important that included things like the environment and domestic violence, and we had the first black superhero, the first gay superhero,

all these things which become sort of touchstones for young people, reading, and even adults, reading the comics to feel that they were recognized, that they were seen. So it was behind the scenes with the staff, And it was in the content of the comics we published. I kind of have Wonder Woman's theme song in my head. You know that Boehner goes, fighting for your rights.

That's reminding me of you very much, Jeanette. But what do you think your superpower is as a female leader? People have talked about community. And I think that that was it. It was respect for everybody, respect for everybody's contribution. You launched the Wonder Woman Foundation. Tell me more about that. Wonder Woman was about to have her 40th anniversary, and I wanted to celebrate, and I wanted to start a foundation in her name.

And I consulted with Gloria Steinem, who gave me the best advice. She said, don't give awards in the traditional categories like business and law. Give awards in the categories that define who Wonder Woman is. So we established categories like women pursuing justice and truth, women helping us. other women, women taking risks. And we were so lucky because back then it was Warner Communications. They supported this idea. And we gave grants to women.

We decided who were over 40 because it was Wonder Woman's 40th. But we also wanted to say, it's not over when you're 40. You are richer and more experience and more to contribute when you're 40 and above. And we want to acknowledge that. And we have these luncheons where we bring these women in from all over the the country and they would speak about the work that they were doing. And it was so moving, really. There was never a dry eye in the house.

And these grants were unrestricted. And I remember there was a nurse who worked in rural areas where no other medicine could find the people there. And she said, you know, my truck, the tires are worn. Can I use this money to buy new triers? We're like, you can use this money for anything. for any for self-care, anything that helps you personally, anything that helps your work, we are in your debt.

You mentioned Gloria Steinem there. I always struck a wonderful interview that was done on Women's Hour with Gloria Steinem, and she is now 92, and she talks about that she doesn't have role models. You know, women are living so much longer now, fuller lives, and that she is our role model as she trailblazes, as she has always done for us. Jeanette, you are still working in the entertainment industry. You run a film production company. What are you working on right now?

We're renowned for signature films like Clint Eastwood's Grand Tarino in the burial with Jamie Fox and Tommy Lee Jones. But the film that I'm really excited about, we're just closing a deal right now to tell the story of Van Gogh's sister-in-law, who is the young woman who actually made him famous. Oh, that sounds wonderful. That sounds like a great story to speak. that on Women's Hour.

Jeanette Cannes is a real wonder woman. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. It is a pleasure and it's a pleasure to be in this conversation with these other remarkable women who have humbled me and inspired me. I'm so glad to hear it. Jeanette's book is

called In Your Space. It is available now. Now, what will you be taking away from today's conversations? Is it something perhaps you've learned? something you'll be reminded of. Ella, what will stay with you?

It's interesting that everybody keeps mentioning nature. Yeah, isn't it? I was kind of intrigued that you mentioned other people. Yeah, I think I need to think more about people. Natalie, what will you take away from today? I'm deeply inspired.

I mean, I'm still just thinking of that incredible philanthropic grant giving where it's unrestricted and I think coming from a campaigning world it's so needed to be given those sort of funds that are restricted. I'm just in wonder from that right now. That's lovely.

Catherine? I love the idea that if we all dance together, we have greater resistance to pain. I wonder if we would also have, you know, greater resistance to tyranny. I wonder if there would be more ways we can use that kind of feel women coming together, this bonding, some wild dance. Let's do it.

We're able to overturn the patriarchy. Amory? Mine is something Catherine said about the imagination. of children and being inspired by what's inside them. Being bigger than the world. Yeah. That's amazing. I want to thank all my guests, Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidun, Dr. Jean Bennett, Natalie Fay,

Natalie Fay, Ella Al-Shahe, Catherine Rundell, and Jeanette Cannes. I hope with all our wonderings and our wanderings, we have given you a bit of a spring clean for the soul this spring bank holiday. Do enjoy the rest of it. Please do join me tomorrow for Woman's Hour at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm David Badele. And from Radio 4 and the History Podcast,

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England may or may not win the World Cup in 2006, but maybe you'll find out why it means so much to us as a country that they might do. Listen to 60 years of hurt on BBC Sounds. Ripbox has the best of British TV, period. Let's get started.

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