Future Leaders, Jodi Picoult, Breast Cancer

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They’re called Future Leaders and they’re fifty of the brightest and best, according to The British Council. They’re in London this week for high-powered training and networking. They were selected from 16,000 applications worldwide. We talk to two of them: Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi from Nigeria and Shreya Nayak from Canada. Oluwaseun set up the Stand To End Rape Initiative after it happened to her. Shreya works to get more women involved in politics as well as getting them more computer-savvy. Jodi Picoult has a knack for writing stories about what's topical. The setting for her latest one, A Spark of Light, is an abortion clinic where a gunman holds patients, medical staff and protestors hostage. A police negotiator who has a personal involvement tries to save their lives. In this novel every shade of opinion is explored and it's published at the point in time when the appointment to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh re-ignites the debate in America about access to abortion and contraception. We hear a conversation between two breast cancer patients who are sharing their experiences with one another as well as supporting one another. One is the BBC Journalist, Carly Appleby who was diagnosed with Grade 3 primary breast cancer when she was 37 in 2017 and Ginny Ring who was diagnosed with the same type of breast cancer when she was 50 in 1998. She's now 70.