Woman's Hour - Tracey Crouch MP, Marina Litvinenko, Author Kiley Reid

Tracey Crouch MP, Marina Litvinenko, Author Kiley Reid

Download Tracey Crouch MP, Marina Litvinenko, Author Kiley Reid

Former government minister Tracey Crouch has joined the list of MPs who’ve said they won’t be standing at the next general election. She won the former Labour seat of Chatham and Aylesford in 2010 and has turned it into a healthy majority of more than 18,000 for the Conservatives. A self confessed 'sports nut', in 2015 she attained her dream job as sports minister and oversaw the government’s football governance review. In 2018 she resigned in protest at the government’s 'unjustifiable' refusal to speed up plans to curb controversial fixed odds betting terminals. Four years ago as the pandemic hit, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and following treatment went on to raise £153,000 for cancer charities. She joins Emma Barnett to talk about her decision to leave politics and her plans for the future.

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny who was announced dead in a Russian prison last week, has directly accused the Kremlin of poisoning and killing him and has vowed to continue his fight to change Russia. Someone who has been following this story intently is Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko, who exposed corruption in Russia and died in a London hospital in 2006 after ingesting tea which contained radioactive polonium. The European Court of Human Rights found Russia was responsible for the killing of Mr Litvinenko in 2021. Marina joins Emma.

Can you have a true friendship or relationship if one of you has more money than the other? Novelist Kiley Reid dominated bestseller lists with her debut, Such A Fun Age, which skewered white liberal guilt. Her new book, Come And Get It, returns to themes of race, class, and above all money. Set on a campus in southern America, it follows students and academics whose behaviour is shaped by money. Kiley joins Emma in studio.

Women get more gain from exercise than men. That's the suggestion of a new study of 400,000 people. 140 minutes of moderate exercise a week reduced women's risk of premature death from any cause by 18% compared with being inactive. Men needed 300 minutes of exercise for a similar gain. Joining Emma to discuss is Baz Moffat, former Team GB rower and co-founder of The Well, an organisation that works to challenge the status quo for women in health, fitness and sport.

Published on Tuesday, 20th February 2024.

Available Podcasts from Woman's Hour

Subscribe to Woman's Hour

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the Woman's Hour webpage.