For many families, income plunges and poverty spikes right before a child is born and remains high throughout the first year. Datshiane Navanayagam talks to doctors in Kenya and the US about the positive impact of giving cash to pregnant women and new mothers. Dr Mona Hanna is a paediatrician, professor, public health advocate and director of the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Paediatric Public Health Initiative. Mona also runs Rx Kids in Flint, Michigan and across the stat...
Oct 13, 2025•26 min
Ella Al-Shamahi talks to two women from South Africa and Germany about reclaiming the craft of brewing beer - something which was historically the domain of women. Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela is a brewmaster and the first black, female co-owner of a craft brewery in South Africa. Her award-winning range of Tolokazi beers pays homage to the female brewers of Africa, inspired by the Tolo Kingdom’s rich brewing history and celebrate ingredients unique to the African continent such as marula fruit and the ...
Sep 29, 2025•26 min
From mushrooms to sea kelp: Two female foragers in South Africa and Japan tell Datshiane Navanayagam about how picking wild food has helped them to feel more connected to their natural surroundings. Emily Smith is from the UK and lives in rural Japan. She moved there to explore her Japanese heritage and says she felt a deep and calming connection to her natural surroundings. She spends her days learning all she can about edible plants and mushrooms from books, the internet and, most importantly,...
Sep 22, 2025•26 min
Ella Al-Shamahi talks to two women from France and Finland who service and create timepieces. Camille de Rouvray is a French watchmaker from a family of horologists. One of her ancestors was the official clockmaker for King Louis XV in the 1740s. Centuries later, when Camille was 35 years old, she decided to change careers completely to continue her family's legacy and follow her true passion. After training in Paris, she opened a watchmaking studio in Mirmande, a small village in the South of F...
Sep 15, 2025•27 min
Ella Al-Shamahi talks to women from Italy and US about the craft of film restoration and the importance of bringing movies, especially those by women, back to life. Sandra Schulberg is the founder and president of IndieCollect – a nonprofit in the US that has restored more than 85 films since 2016 and rescued thousands of abandoned film negatives. She describes the independent movies they care for as ‘orphans’ and says it’s vital to keep these films alive as they’re not just cinematic heritage, ...
Sep 08, 2025•26 min
Ella Al-Shamahi talks to women running orchestras in Hungary and the UK. Orsolya Erdödy is the managing director of the Budapest Festival Orchestra working alongside founder-conductor Iván Fischer. The BFO is rated among the top ten orchestras in the world regularly performing at the world’s most prestigious concert venues. Orsolya is also chief musical advisor of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma, founded in 996 one of the oldest buildings in Hungary. She regularly appears on the Forbes ...
Sep 01, 2025•26 min
Datshiane Navanayagam speaks two women from the Czech Republic and the UK about the ways in which they use horses to promote human physical and mental health. Vera Lantelme-Faisan’s professional background is in Equine Assisted Physiotherapy in the Czech Republic. Between 2004 and 2009, she played a key role in establishing a EAT centre for children at a rehabilitation hospital in Saudi Arabia and last year she assumed the role of president of The Federation of Horses in Education and Therapy In...
Aug 25, 2025•26 min
While confidence is widely understood as important, actually building and maintaining it can feel like an impossible task. A comedian from New Zealand and a body positive writer, speaker and influencer from the UK tell Datshiane Navanayagam about how they grew their self-confidence and give advice for others on how to get it. Megan Jayne Crabbe is a British bestselling author, presenter and body confidence advocate known for helping people improve their relationship with their bodies. She produc...
Aug 18, 2025•27 min
The global housing crisis continues to grow, with the UN’s urban development agency estimating 40% of people worldwide lack access to adequate housing. Datshiane Navanayagam talks to female architects in Tanzania and Spain designing cheaper, more sustainable homes. Victoria Heilman founded the Tanzania Women Architects for Humanity (TAWAH), a group of architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and scientists. TAWAH tackles housing poverty and gender inequality by teaching women construction skill...
Aug 07, 2025•26 min
Two women from Greece and Sweden tell Datshiane Navanayagam about the dog training process and the prejudices service dogs still face when it comes to broader societal acceptance. Lia Stoll is a Greek-Canadian guide dog trainer and co-founder of Lara Guide Dogs school in Greece. She was inspired by her father, who was also a guide dog mobility instructor, as Lia grew up with guide dogs and working with people who are blind and partially sighted. Anki Celander is a dog behaviourist and trainer wh...
Aug 04, 2025•26 min
Two women from Italy and the US tell Datshiane Navanayagam about following the movements of growing wolf packs in Yellowstone National Park and the Italian Alps. Elisa Ramassa started work as a park ranger in Italy's Gran Bosco di Salbertrand, near Turin, in 1997. That same year the park recorded the first sightings of a wolf pack. They'd been extinct in the Italian Alps since the 1920s. She's spent the whole of her career tracking the local wolves, observing pack behaviour and family structures...
Jul 28, 2025•26 min
Two women from Australia and Germany tell Ella Al-Shamahi about their work in robotics: from tackling loneliness with humanoid companions to making industrial robots more accessible. Australian Grace Brown began building robots at 15, but it was the isolation of pandemic lockdown - five months without human contact - that led her to create Abi, a friendly humanoid companion robot inspired by Disney and Pixar characters. Working in secret while her family believed she was completing her master’s ...
Jul 21, 2025•26 min
Two women from Nigeria and the Czech Republic speak to Ella Al-Shamahi about what it's like to lead adventurous expeditions for other women to countries not usually on the tourist trail. Lenka Hrabalová is an expedition guide and academic from the Czech Republic. Her PhD focused on the destruction of cultural heritage in the Muslim world. Lenka uses her knowledge to lead adventurous expeditions across the Middle East and North Africa, many exclusively for women. She is the author of several book...
Jul 14, 2025•26 min
Two doctors from South Africa and Australia tell Ella Al-Shamahi about rewards of working in rural communities and the challenges of being hundreds of miles from the nearest large hospital. Dr Melanie Matthews runs a medical centre in Maningrida, about 500km east of Darwin. She’s a GP with the Mala'la Indigenous health service in the Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO). GPs working in these services are ranked as Australia’s most satisfied GPs, but it can ...
Jul 07, 2025•26 min
An Indian chef who opened a patisserie in Jaipur and a Syrian chef with two pastry shops in the heart of Paris tell Datshiane Navanayagam about adding new layers to French classics. After training at le Cordon Bleu school in Paris Tejasvi Chandela returned to her hometown of Jaipur to open Dzurt, the first pastry shop in the city. She also teaches masterclasses at cookery schools around the world to show to what extent the techniques and flavours of Indian mithai are compatible with modern Europ...
Jun 30, 2025•26 min
Two women from Hungary and the UK talk to Datshiane Navanayagam about the intensity, skill and resilience required for modern glassmaking. Mira Davida is a Hungarian glass artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She specialises in flameworking, a technique that uses a high-temperature hand torch to shape borosilicate glass. Her sculptural works often draw inspiration from botanical forms and the natural landscapes of Sweden. Phoebe Stubbs is a British glassblower with nearly two decades of experience...
Jun 23, 2025•27 min
Two women in Iceland and Bolivia talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about creating female-centred walking tours that help people get to know the cities of Reykjavík and La Paz. Tinna Eik Rakelardóttir from Iceland says that the urban planning of her country's capital doesn't necessarily reflect its progressive values. Inspired by a tour she took in Ljubljana in Slovenia, Tinna combined her expertise in anthropology and business development to launch the Reykjavík Feminist Walking Tour. The walk highlights ...
Jun 16, 2025•26 min
Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to an ex-circus performer from Bulgaria and a skydiver from France to find out what it takes to achieve some of the world’s most extreme records. Bulgarian Getti Kehayova grew up performing in the circus alongside her world-record-holding family. Inspired by her sister, who once held the record for spinning 97 hula hoops at once, Getti wanted a record of her own. After a year of intense training, she earned the Guinness World Record for spinning the largest hula hoop ever ...
Jun 09, 2025•26 min
Whitley Fund for Nature 2025 winners from Brazil and Nepal tell Datshiane Navanayagam about their efforts to save the plants and animals they love from extinction. Reshu Bashyal is working to stop illegal poaching of wild orchids and Maire’s Yew trees in Nepal. Both plants are prized for their medicinal properties. Reshu is the research lead at Kathmandu-based Greenhood Nepal and has interviewed hundreds of yew harvesters to understand their motivations and harvest techniques. She is now restori...
Jun 02, 2025•26 min
What happens when children break the law - and how does juvenile punishment vary across countries? Ella Al-Shamahi speaks with two women from the Netherlands and Finland about what’s working, what isn’t and what needs to change to better support young people in the justice system. Marlen Salonen from Finland used to be a personal trainer but two years ago became a prison officer at Vantaa Prison in Finland, a remand facility for male prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing. She works on the juven...
May 26, 2025•26 min
Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to professional wrestlers Xia Zhao from China and Divya Aale from India about their passion for the sport and what it’s like to be a woman in this industry. Xia Zhao from China started martial arts at eight years old and later became a professional athlete in Chinese martial arts, known as wushu, including kung fu and kick-boxing. In 2016, she attended wrestling try-outs in Shanghai, which led her to move to the US and become the first Chinese woman to compete in a WWE rin...
May 19, 2025•26 min
Datshiane Navanayagam talks to women from Nigeria and the UK who are trying to ensure what we throw away doesn’t go to waste. Esther Fagbo is a partner at Wecyclers in Nigeria – a for-profit social enterprise that pays waste pickers and households for their recyclable rubbish in densely populated Lagos. Alongside her work at Wecyclers she has carried out projects with Fair Plastic Alliance, an NGO that supports the health and livelihood of waste workers, including a 2024 documentary Heroes of Re...
May 12, 2025•26 min
Spoken word poetry is a powerful tool for storytelling, activism and self-expression. Ella Al-Shamahi speaks to two award-winning poets who use the craft to amplify issues they care about. Sofie Frost is a Norwegian actor, slam poet and spoken word artist. She won the Norwegian Poetry Slam Championship in 2017 and was a finalist for Norway's Got Talent the following year. Sofie's poems have repeatedly gone viral, amassing millions of views online. Wana Udobang from Nigeria is a writer, poet and ...
May 05, 2025•26 min
How does it feel to meet someone who connects you to a darker chapter of your family history? Datshiane Navanayagam is joined by two women whose experience of this has led them to delve deeper into their own family’s ties to both slavery and enslavement. Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican novelist. She discovered that she’s related to both enslaved people and enslavers when an ancestry-tracking TV programme contacted her out of the blue. Diana's latest book, A House for Miss Pauline takes inspiration ...
Apr 28, 2025•26 min
A Muslim woman from South Africa and Christian from Kenya talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about how their faith influences their thoughts on addressing climate change, inequality and restoring nature. Dr Najma Mohamed grew up in South Africa and made a link between her faith and nature early in life. She writes often about the ecological message of Islam, supporting faith-based climate and environment action. Najma is a trustee of the Islamic environmental charity IFEES (Islamic Foundation for Ecology a...
Apr 21, 2025•26 min
A Mongolian and a South African palaeontologist speak to Ella Al-Shamahi about dinosaurs and education, as well as the fight to preserve their prehistoric legacy and stop illegal fossil trade. Dr Bolortsetseg Minjin from Mongolia is the director of the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs. She is renowned for her discovery of 67 dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert within just one week. Bolorsetseg founded Mongolia’s first moveable dinosaur museum, bringing fossils and hands-on educatio...
Apr 14, 2025•26 min
An academic from India and writer from Denmark talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about how the way economies are measured influences policy and undervalues both unpaid and paid care work, and affects the lives of women on every level. Emma Holten is a Danish feminist commentator whose book, Deficit: how feminist economics can change our world, became a best seller in her home country. It highlights how economics have shaped a world in which there is no value attached to care, happiness or quality of livin...
Apr 07, 2025•26 min
Datshiane Navanayagam is joined by two women from the UK and Australia whose personal experience of menopause and perimenopause has led them to advocate for better support at work. Madhu Kapoor is a writer and menopause awareness campaigner. She experienced a range of physical and psychological symptoms during perimenopause in her early 40s which led to her resigning from her senior position in a British government department. Now she uses her two decades spent in HR and recruitment to shape wor...
Mar 31, 2025•26 min
Datshiane Navanayagam talks to controllers from the UAE and Sweden about guiding aeroplane take-offs and landings and dealing with the extreme stress of the job. Helena Sjöström Falk is the first woman president of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers' Associations. She's from Sweden and recently retired from Stockholm Air Traffic Control Center. During her career she had many high pressure air traffic control positions, including aerodrome, approach, and area control. Jouhayn...
Mar 24, 2025•26 min
From breaking bones to trudging through snow – it is a Foley artist's role to reproduce the everyday sound effects that are added to film, TV and games. By using a variety of unconventional props and their own bodies, the goal is to create an authentic soundscape that will enhance our auditory experience. If the Foley goes unnoticed then they’ve done their job well! Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to two award winning Foley artists and asks what it’s like to spend so much time, quite literally step...
Mar 17, 2025•26 min
