The online platform TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, with more than one billion monthly active users. Young people in particular love watching and creating videos and the content is often funny and upbeat. But author and content creator Tova Leigh contacted us to say she has noticed more and more disturbing content on the site that encourages violence against women and girls.
Following the slew of sleaze and misconduct allegations against MPs at Westminster is there an argument for a change in the way our parliamentarians are selected? Would greater scrutiny of individual applicants at an early stage avoid some of the issues encountered over the last few years and could it lead to greater female representation? Emma Barnett talks to the political journalist Michael Crick who has recently founded the twitter thread Tomorrow’s MPs which monitors political party selection processes, and to the former Deputy Chief Whip of the Conservative party who served as MP for Guildford for many years, Anne Milton.
A few weeks ago we asked listeners about the matriarchs in their lives, the redoubtable women whose stories deserved to be told. We got so many great stories that we decided to hear some of them on air. Today, listener Zoe from the Peak District on her nan May Mythen. She had 15 children, refused to send her learning disabled son to an institution as was common in the 1940's and inspired her grand-daughter Zoe to be brave and try stand-up comedy.
Normal is a term we bandy about all the time, but have you ever stopped to think about what it actually means, and whether it’s helpful as a concept? Sarah Chaney is the author of Am I Normal? The 200 Year Search For Normal People (And Why They Don’t Exist). She joins Emma to explain why she believes that women in particular have been hard done by in the history of the so-called norm.
