Summer Holidays, Sex Robots and Artificial Wombs, Film Director Jessica Swale

The school summer holidays are underway across the UK – but this year they’re going to be a bit different. Thanks to coronavirus there’s a shortage of childcare and holiday clubs, helpful grandparents are mostly off-limits, parents are already exhausted from juggling home-working and home-school for four months, and teenagers are faced with another six weeks of restricted freedoms. So how are people planning to make it through to September? In her book Sex Robots and Vegan Meat, journalist Jenny Kleeman explores seismic changes in four core areas of human experience: birth, food, sex and death. Jane will be talking to Jenny about the implications of fully functioning artificial wombs, what sex robots mean for future relationships between men and women, who the people are shaping the technological changes taking place and how soon these inventions will become an inevitable part of human life. Summerland is a new film set during WW2, featuring Alice a folklore investigator debunking myths using science to disprove the existence of magic. She lives a solitary life in a seaside cottage in Sussex but her way of life is turned upside when she has reluctantly to take in a young evacuee . Presenter: Jane Garvey Interviewed guest: Leann Cross Director, Home Start Greenwich Interviewed guest: Emma Thomas, CEO of Young Minds Interviewed guest: Jenny Kleeman Interviewed guest: Jessica Swale, film director Producer: Lucinda Montefiore