Maids to the rich and famous

Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to two women who research what happens to our thoughts, feelings and behaviours when we speak many languages. To what extent do we have a “mother tongue” – and what happens if we stop using it?Dr Aneta Pavlenko is a Ukrainian-American linguist who loo ...  Show more

Ella Al-Shamahi talks to women in Switzerland and the UK about how job sharing can boost a career and bring many benefits to both work and home life.Irenka Krone-Germann is Swiss and has written several books about job-sharing and part-time working. She co-founded the information ...  Show more

Author Nicola Upson has imagined the life of Stanley Spencer from the viewpoint of his maidservant. Ella Parry-Davies researches the lives of women from the Philippines who work as domestic and care workers. The novel The Farm by Joanne Ramos imagines a surrogacy service provided ...  Show more

Maria Callas is one of the most famous opera singers. She was brought up in New York and Greece by an emotionally abusive mother who forced her to sing. Despite being admired by Hollywood stars and royalty, she fought sexism to rise to the top but never had a happy private life. ...  Show more

Two hundred young women from Sierra Leone, west Africa, have been trapped in the Arabian sultanate of Oman, desperate to get home. Promised work in shops and restaurants, they say they were into tricked becoming housemaids, working up to 18 hours a day, often without pay, and som ...  Show more

Dakota Fanning joins the show to talk about her role in the limited series, Ripley. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling novels, the series follows Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to t ...  Show more