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“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.”

“When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.”

“ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.”

Are today’s grandmothers too protective and anxious? Benedetta Cappelini, Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, certainly thinks so. She talks to Sally Feldman, who is currently writing a book of advice for new grannies, about the effects of the new trend in intensive parenting.



'Intensiveparenting', with its emphasis on extra curricular activities, supervised 'playdates' and conversations about thoughts and feelings is fast becoming the norm for this generation of parents, requiring the investment of significant amounts of time, money and energy in raising children. What are the implications for grandparents who did not raise their own children in this way, but who regularly look after their grandchildren?

“My grandchildren are so busy with all their extra classes that I seem to spend most our time together acting as a taxi service.”

“When the children come to stay I’m constantly worried about keeping them safe.”

“ I’d love to have fun with them, but my daughter expects me to supervise their homework and test them on their spelling.”

Are today’s grandmothers too protective and anxious? Benedetta Cappelini, Professor of Marketing at the University of Durham, certainly thinks so. She talks to Sally Feldman, who is currently writing a book of advice for new grannies, about the effects of the new trend in intensive parenting.



'Intensiveparenting', with its emphasis on extra curricular activities, supervised 'playdates' and conversations about thoughts and feelings is fast becoming the norm for this generation of parents, requiring the investment of significant amounts of time, money and energy in raising children. What are the implications for grandparents who did not raise their own children in this way, but who regularly look after their grandchildren?

What are grandmothers for? That’s what Sally Feldman wondered when she first learned that her daughter was pregnant. As a former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she was familiar with so many aspects of female experiences. But faced with the prospect of a grandchild, she realised she was clueless. So now she’s writing a book of advice for new grandmothers. This podcast is a conversation with four grandmothers. Their discussion is a taster of the forthcoming book, featuring some of the joys and challenges of this most precious role.



Sally would love to hear from other grandmothers, so do send your comments here, or else contact her at: sallyjoyfeldman@gmail.com

With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley.



Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn.



The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult.



If you hear people from intensive care,  telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening.



Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area.



Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy. My name is Rachael Jolley. I'm a journalist and podcast producer. In this episode, we look at the challenges for the National Health Service as it faces COVID in winter 2021.



With Welsh hospitals reporting some of the longest waiting times ever and the Scottish government calling in the army to help drive ambulances are we as prepared as we can be for the winter ahead?



And what does it feel like inside one of the UKs most famous hospitals right now? In September Prime Minister Boris Johnson said further restrictions could be put in place if the NHS is threatened this winter. By the end of the month COVID hospitalisations were already at a high level. To find out more and see how different this winter might be from the last one I spoke with two doctors who work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.



We talked about how they'd coped so far and how they're preparing for this winter and what their biggest worries were. I spoke with Mark Toshner, an academic at Cambridge University, who is also a pulmonary physician, a specialist in illnesses relating to the lungs, at Addenbrooke's. While Mark doesn't normally work in intensive care last year, he was called into help out during the worst of the emergency. And Pod Academy also heard from Andrew Conway Morris, a clinical scientist at Cambridge University and a consultant working in intensive care at Addenbrookes.



First we heard from Mark Toshner.



Mark, if I were the Secretary of State for Health, what would you be asking me to do right now?



Mark Toshner:  The first thing I would be asking is for our really honest acknowledgement that we're in a difficult place and that we have just under, I think we might even have topped 8000 people in hospital now and we've had that for weeks now, between about 7000 and 8,000 and that this was supposed to be our period of rest, or quiet time, during the summer. In actual fact we've seen almost historic highs of healthcare utilisation.



That's a really tough start to then go into winter for, and, so we're in a really vulnerable position.



Rachael Jolley: And Andy, what is it like in intensive care right now?



Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area



Mark Toshner: I've got plenty of colleagues who've essentially just been the coal face now for the better part of a year and a half or longer, and you can see the toll that it's taken on some of them. And it has a pretty heavy toll. And so the winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how diff...

It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody. But is geopolitics getting in the way of good public health policy as we strive to overcome COVID-19?



 



 



In this podcast, Rachael Jolley, former editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship and research fellow at the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield considers how geopolitics is affecting government decisions around vaccines and distribution, with guests from the US, UK and the Philippines.



 



Mark Toshner: It's not about individual countries. It's not about individual regions. It's not even about blocks. This doesn't work unless we vaccinate everybody.



John Nery:  The survey shows that something like 68% of Filipino adults have doubts about whether they should take the COVID-19 vaccine or not. Then that's just really worrying.



Jeffrey Wasserstrom:   So we can think of it as soft power sort of related to having a space program, to have this idea that Beijing is one of the world capitals that's at the forefront of various technologies.



Michael Jennings:  And if you look at many African countries, they've responded extremely effectively. They've made use of technology.  Rwanda has been making use of drones to get messaging to very remote communities.



Rachael Jolley:  Hello, my name is Rachael Jolley and welcome to this episode of a series of podcasts I've hosted for Pod Academy on the global politics of the pandemic. In this episode, I talk to academics in the UK, USA and the Philippines about how national agendas are affecting decision-making, how the virus has to be tackled internationally and how history can sometimes get in the way.



We also talk about misinformation around the disease and why, if we don't think globally, then in the end, the virus wins. Geopolitics is increasingly a major factor in the discussions around COVID whether about access to PPE or access to the vaccine. Delivery of stocks or stopping vaccine supply arriving over a border often gets tied up with the politics and economics between countries.



As some nations trumpet how well they've done, they rank themselves against others. There's something of a global competition to see which national leader can take the most glory. In the midst of this, there are countries trying to win friends and influence people by delivering stocks of vaccine to those that don't have any. Economic alliances are being built or improved while others are being undermined.



With us on the podcast are Mark Toshner, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a pulmonary vascular physician who spends a lot of time on Twitter answering the public's queries about vaccines when he's not looking at the impact of long COVID. We also hear from John Nery, who's based in Manila in the Philippines and teaches media and politics, and is the chair of the journalism centre at the Ateneo de Manila University. Also joining the conversation are Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor in the history of China at the University of California at Irvine, and Michael Jennings, Michael is a reader in international development in the department of development studies at SOAS, University of London, and researches global health and development.



I started by talking to Mark Toshner. Mark, are you worried about geopolitics getting in the way of people's acceptance of vaccines?



Mark Toshner: [00:03:09] The short answer to that is yes. I usually deal on social media with individual concerns about vaccines. And so I spend a lot of my time just addressing people and what their concerns are and, and I think they're complex and they vary from region to region.



They vary from place to place,

Cautiously, museums across the world are opening their doors. But there's one place where, even during the pandemic, you always get to be up close - the virtual museum. In the digital environment, the museum can take on a new role, less a place of authority, more an agora of ideas. But we have to think outside the box to solve curatorial issues in the digital space.  Zara Karschay takes us on a tour......



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To see each and every brushstroke. To handle priceless objects. A place where figures in famous works of art turn to look back at you. A place where you can stay as long as you like in front of the Mona Lisa. Virtual collections aren't new. But for much of last year, our only option to see museum was online. And 2020 had many more cultural institutions racing to develop their virtual collections and tours. As we enter the promised ‘new normal’, or perhaps even a ‘virtual-first’ era, where we might come to see a collection and objects online before going in person, we wonder, what can virtual collections give us that physical collections cannot? How can we turn the novelty of technology into something more meaningful, something that introduces us to new stories that helps us change our minds? Or maybe, that even changes the perspective the museum has of itself?



 



ME: We are definitely rethinking how we're using digital in our collection.



 



ZK: This is Maria Economou, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Glasgow.



 



ME: The digital is not just the technology that underpins it, but also affects the way the museum is seen. It affects its identity, the way we see ourselves. I think the first few years of digital heritage and digital activity, the digital, unfortunately, was the strong partner, and the cultural heritage was the weakest relative. It's improved a lot, but you see even today that sometimes the whistles and bells and the graphics the tech was really the main driving engine rather than, “Who are we doing this for?” “Who are the users?” “What do these collections require?” and being focused more that way.



 



ZK: In the digital environment, the museum can take on a new role, less as a place of authority and more, an agora of ideas, which also reforms the way that visitors see their role in the museum.



 



ME:  To think of themselves not just as end-users and consumers and producers of this material, but to put themselves in the position of being critically engaged with this. How do we make sense of personal memories? What do we feel are common memories to be shared? What gives us and helps us define ourselves? It's a shift in your position, in your role, and much more active one.



 



ZK: In 2018 Professor Economou produced the Digital Heritage Strategy for the university's museum, the Hunterian. One of its themes was to find ways to engage a broader public by building and sharing knowledge. From the digital agora to the ancient Roman marketplace, the Hunterian can tell stories about associated but disparate collections, well beyond the walls of the museum.



 



ME: The actual act and art of storytelling has been taking place for so long. And all good cultural institutions are doing some form of storytelling. Even if it's just by putting objects together, even the juxtaposition and placement in space is telling a story and a narrative. We have, for example, in the Hunterian an important part of the Antonine world collections, which is from Roman Scotland. So, one of the parts of the Roman Empire’s most northern frontier, then it goes all over Europe, and then the rest goes south to Africa. So, it's a great big scheme for UNESCO to connect all the sites that relates to the frontiers of the Roman Empire. We were looking at how digital storytelling can support emotional e...