The Girlfriends: Spotlight – Details, episodes & analysis

In 2013, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year-old daughter, Ella, died from a catastrophic asthma attack. Her death transformed her mum into a formidable campaigner. First, she fought to find out what had killed Ella - why had her previously healthy little girl suddenly developed breathing problems so bad they would become fatal? 

The answer lay very close to home - Ella, Rosamund and her siblings lived just off the busy South Circular Road, and the air pollution levels were dangerously high. Rosamund’s fight led to Ella becoming the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on her death certificate. Now Rosamund is one of the world’s leading campaigners to clean up dirty air globally.

In this episode, she’s joined by a very special guest: Anna’s mum, Rachel Sinfield. Rachel’s son, Kit, also died from an unexpected asthma attack, and she’s inspired by Rosamund’s work.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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Christmas Day, 1992. Sarajevo, Bosnia. War is ranging - Serb forces surround the city. For nearly four years, its people have endured daily shelling and sniper attacks, cut off from the rest of the world in the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. More than 11,000 people were killed. 1600 of them were children. 

And in the main hospital, a baby is born: Lejla Damon. Her mother didn’t want anything to do with her - if she held her, she said, she would strangle her.

Lejla was born of sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Her birth mother had been raped, repeatedly, by Serb soldiers in a concentration camp. And Lejla was just too closely linked to her attackers for her to bear.

Lejla was adopted by a British couple, and grew up in London. She felt alone in her earliest life experiences. But in adulthood, she’s found her Bosnian identity, and become an advocate for the countless other ‘invisible’ children around the world born of sexual violence used as a weapon of war.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit novel.audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Phyllis Omido is just a few months into a new job, when her infant son starts to get sick. Fevers, dehydration, hospitalisation - Phyllis is scared. Then the doctors give her some shocking news: Her son has lead poisoning. The metal smelting plant where Phyllis works, just outside Mombassa, Kenya, is leeching toxic chemicals into the water of the nearby river. And her son isn’t the only one who’s unwell: she believes the factory is poisoning the whole community.

So Phyllis turns campaigner, and starts gathering stories from all over town. Children with skin burned off, babies dying in the womb, women with mysterious fatal illnesses… And she’s going to force her employer, and the Kenyan government, to pay attention. It’s a fight that will see her life threatened, and her dubbed ‘The Erin Brockovich of East Africa’.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped.

And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same.

Related resources

Karma Nirvana - https://karmanirvana.org.uk/ 

Unchained At Last (a US-based NGO) https://www.unchainedatlast.org/get-help/

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is not affiliated to any of these organizations and we are not in a position to endorse them.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Nadya Tolokonnikova saw her country Russia change under President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, she knew she had to do something. 

She started the iconic ski-mask-wearing art protest collective Pussy Riot. On February 21st, 2012, they performed their anti-Putin protest song, Punk Prayer, in a Moscow church, launching Nadya into overnight activist fame… and a prison labour camp.

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a trans woman, Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin didn’t have much faith in mainstream health care. So when she wanted gender affirming surgery to remove her testicles, she turned to her best friend and trainee doctor Willow, and asked her to perform the operation in her living room…

From this humble beginning, Eilís and Willow built a whole clinic dedicated to trans women - in a tractor barn in the rural Pacific North West.

Related Resources

Sylvia Rivera Law Project 

Big Door Brigade - Mutual Aid Toolbox

Transgender Law Centre

Trans Rescue

The Gender Reveal Podcast

Jesse Lou Lawson - Media consultancy

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is not affiliated to any of these organizations and we are not in a position to endorse them.

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Madison Conradis had her life turned upside down when someone began posting naked photos of her online. Soon, the abuse intensified with anonymous messages and calls to her family, friends and even her boss…

The police didn’t seem to care, so Madison turned to her twin sister Christine for help. Together, they transformed into online sleuths, tracking the harasser across the country to get justice for Madison and other victims too.

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators.

That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in storage all the biological evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed. This could be the key to getting justice for hundreds of desperate women.

This is a story of hard work, dogged persistence and a series of incredible coincidences…

Rose has her own show with her daughter, Sam: Sgt. Brady's Crime Podcast (not affiliated with The Girlfriends: Spotlight): https://podfollow.com/1560081982

If you’ve been affected by sexual violence, there are organisations which can help. 

In the US: https://www.nsvrc.org/survivors

In the UK: https://survivorsnetwork.org.uk/get-help/ 

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the moment she heard a guitar being played in an empty classroom at her convent school in the Philippines in 1961, June Millington knew what she wanted to do with her life: rock and roll. 

So when a girl called up June and her sister and asked if they wanted to start a band, the answer was hell yeah. 

They went on to become Fanny, the first all-female rock band to release an album with a major record label. June and her bandmates moved into a house in LA, toured the world and won fans like David Bowie. But they were also up against sexist stereotypes, skeptical audiences and critics who couldn’t believe that a group of women could rock just as hard as any guy. 

But June wasn’t about to let that stop her. This is the story of how she stuck it to the man and blazed a trail for generations of female musicians to come.

June is the co-founder of the Institute for the Musical Arts, which offers workshops and events for women in music: https://ima.org/

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nellie Bly was a true trailblazer. In late 19th century America, women were expected to get married and become housewives, or go into a suitable career like teaching. 

But Nellie didn’t do any of that. Instead, she changed journalism forever, becoming one of the world’s first female investigative journalists, and paving the way for a generation of incredible ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’. 

And Nellie’s first investigation was probably her most dangerous: In 1887, she deliberately got herself committed to the most notorious insane asylum in New York, to expose the abuse of women inside its walls. She was drugged, half starved and manipulated by doctors as the screams of other patients echoed around the corridors…

Researcher and author Kim Todd tells us Nellie’s story.

Kim’s book about Nellie and the journalists she inspired is called Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’.

We want YOUR stories for our Girlfriends hotline! Did your bestie ever bail you out of an awful date with a fake emergency phone call? Or show up on your doorstep with three weeks’ worth of lasagne when you’d just had a baby? Or sit with you in solidarity while you grieved the loss of a beloved grandparent? We want stories that are big or small, meaningful or silly.

Record yours as a voice memo (under 90 seconds) and email to thegirlfriends@novel.audio. Please don’t include your own name or anyone else’s real names.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.