The Conversation

Steering a small boat across oceans by yourself - why do it? Kim Chakanetsa meets two women who have been alone at sea for months - and they chat about encountering sharks, avoiding pirates and having to call their mums. Roz Savage is the first woman to have rowed solo across three oceans - the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. She had no background as an adventurer and in fact was a UK management con...

Treading the boards with two musical theatre directors from Nigeria and Pakistan. Kim Chakanetsa discusses the hunt for local talent, the emotional journey of opening night and running a tight ship in rehearsals. Nigerian theatre director and producer Bolanle Austen Peters has re-ignited Nigeria's passion for their culture through her highly successful musicals focused on local stories using local...

Sorting out the messy business of divorce, in France and India. Veronique Chauveau is a divorce lawyer based in Paris, where she's been practising for more than 30 years. The bulk of her work is with the rich and famous, but she also finds time for a 'reality check' through taking on international child abduction cases. And she is an undisputed expert in jam making! Vandana Shah is a divorce lawye...

Space Scientists from the UAE and the UK discuss the missions they're involved in and what they mean to them. Sarah Amiri is the lead scientist for the UAE's Mars Mission. Their plan is to send an unmanned spacecraft, the 'Hope', to reach Mars in 2021, where it will provide unprecedented data on the Martian climate, and also send a message to the youth of the region that there are paths available...

Feminism is not known for being funny but we're hoping to change that on The Conversation this week as two feminist stand up comedians go head to head to explore the funny in feminism. They are Aditi Mittal, one of India's top stand-up comedians today and Zahra Noorbakhsh, one half of the internationally acclaimed podcast #GoodMuslimBadMuslim. Also starring a live studio audience of young and alar...

Two women who get inside Presidents' heads, tell Kim Chakanetsa how they turn their bosses' thoughts and ideas into powerful oratory. Sarada Peri is Special Assistant and Senior Speechwriter to President Obama. She says a good speech writer is like a ghost, and that her job is really to inhabit the President's mind on any given topic. For her, the goal isn't to emulate what he sounds like, it's to...

In 2002, the French Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt became perhaps one of the best-known hostages in the world when she was kidnapped and held for over six years, deep in the Colombian jungle, by the Farc or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Watching Ingrid's emotional release on TV in 2008, was a young Canadian journalist called Amanda Lindhout. A month later she herself was taken ho...

Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayilova became the subject of an international release campaign last year when she was arrested and detained by her government, and her cause was taken up by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. Khadija had been delving into the President's family businesses, and published allegations of extensive embezzlement of oil funds. She spent 18 months in prison before being given...

Get your dancing shoes on because this week Kim Chakanetsa brings together two supremely talented ballroom dancers who between them have a pile of trophies. We talk about the glamour, romance, athleticism and also the rivalries, injuries and tears that go on behind the scenes. South African dancer Oti Mabuse has been Latin American dance champion in South Africa eight times and she is currently gr...

Can you beat the so-called 'curse' of the child performer? Maryam Maruf brings together two women who grew up on camera - the American star of the films Matilda and Mrs Doubtfire, and a South African youth TV presenter. At six years old Mara Wilson was playing Robin Williams's daughter in Mrs Doubtfire, then she bagged the leading role in the film version of Roald Dahl's Matilda. For a few years s...

How do you feel about graffiti and street art? Is it a democratic form of creative expression, or an eyesore, a public nuisance, that gets your blood boiling? These are questions that Kim Chakanetsa puts to her two guests today. Olga Alexopoulou lives in Turkey but is originally from Greece. She has a master's degree in Fine Art from Oxford University but she likes to paint on walls, big walls. Sh...

When you are involved in the race to shed light on some of our biggest scientific questions, does your gender matter? Kim Chakanetsa brings together two successful female life scientists at the new world-leading Crick Institute in London. They are both leading ground-breaking research in their respective fields, and are joined by young women from Camden School for Girls who are considering a caree...

Kim Chakanetsa is in candid and intimate conversation with two women who have made the life altering decision to enter a religious order. Mother Hildegarde is a nun in a silent, cloistered Catholic convent that overlooks London's Hyde Park. Originally from Australia, she entered religious life at 35, giving up her family, friends and name. She says she wanted to wear a habit, but found obeying the...

Siphokazi Mdlankomo comes from South Africa and Marissa Begonia from the Philippines but they have plenty in common. They have both dedicated a great deal of their lives to taking care of other people's households and children. They are Kim Chakanetsa's guests on this programme and they are discussing life as a domestic worker. Marissa Begonia left her three young children to work overseas. It was...

Growing up in Santiago Melissa Aldana learnt to play the tenor saxophone or 'horn' at her father's knee, though he took some convincing that she would stick with it. She did, and went on to become the first ever female instrumentalist to win the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Award in 2013. Melissa is now the leader of a successful jazz trio based in New York, and loves her work, but is concerne...

Kim Chakanetsa meets two women who are taking on the challenge of combating bullying in Pakistan and the US. Zainab Chughtai says the bullying she endured as a young girl inspired her to go into schools to try and stop other school children experiencing what she did. The emotional impact was so severe on Zainab, she says it's affected her personal relationships as an adult. Her campaign, Bully Pro...

Sapna Bhavnani is one of India's most celebrated hair stylists and is known for her own cropped hair and tattoos. Her Mumbai based salon, Mad-O-Wat, is the go-to place for Bollywood's A-list when their hair needs some attention. Clients include actors, politicians and sports stars like Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Sapna says her hair appointments can often turn into therapy session...

Two women whose aim is to make sex work safer in Uganda and New Zealand join Kim Chakanetsa to exchange experiences. Daisy Nakato is the founder of WONETHA, a sex workers' rights and support organisation in Kampala, Uganda. She says she chose to go into sex work at 17, but did face many challenges including violence from clients and running from the police. She is now building a better relationshi...

Kim Chakanetsa gets into the driving seat with two female truckers from Sweden and Australia. Elin Engstrom test drives heavy haulage trucks for Swedish transport company Scania. The 26 -year-old has been in the business for six years and started out operating forklift vehicles, which had to be loaded manually. When she saw that the big trucks had rollers she realised that was the job for her. Eli...

Kim Chakanetsa finds out what it's like to run a ship in South Africa and the Philippines. Zimasa Mabela is the first African woman to command a navy vessel. Commander Mabela is in charge of a de-mining ship based in Cape Town, South Africa. She grew up two hours from the sea, but only saw it for the first time aged 18. A few years later she felt compelled to join the navy so she could see the wor...

Kim Chakanetsa brings together two women from the US and UK, who have been at either end of the adoption process, to reflect on their choices. Judith Fleming is an actor and writer based in the UK who decided to adopt a child, on her own, at the age of 40. We are using a different name to protect Judith's and her son's privacy. Judith looked through many profiles, but says when she saw a picture o...

Kim Chakanetsa brings together two athletes from the UK and Egypt who know what it's like to stand on the start line and have the whole world watching you. Dame Kelly Holmes became the first British female athlete to win a double gold at a Games when she won the 800m and 1500m in Athens, in 2004. Her talent was spotted by a PE teacher at school and her Olympic fire was sparked at the age of 14 wat...

Ekaterina Dobrokhotova was born in Moscow, and moved to Quebec when she was eight. She learnt magic as a teenager via the internet, practised every day for hours, and soon began to perform in public. Ekaterina is now the most watched female magician on YouTube. She specialises in the art of card manipulation, and believes the true secret of magic is not how good you are, but about how you make peo...

Presenter Gemma Cairney gets behind the decks with two female DJs who get dance floors pumping in America and South Africa. DJ Lady Lea got hooked on house music and the Cape Town dance scene as a teenager in the early 1990s. She started taking her record box to clubs and playing early morning sets. Now rated as one of South Africa's top female DJs, Lea plays electro, funky, deep, tech, minimal an...

A celebrity nanny from Australia and a Brazilian nanny who works in the US tell Kim Chakanetsa what it's like to look after other people's kids 24/7. Australian nanny to the stars Philippa Christian has worked for actors, singers and Middle Eastern royalty. Even though she won't name names the 'Nanny Confidential' author reveals what it's like to work for Hollywood employers. Philippa loves the ch...