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Episode details

World Service,25 Jul 2019,53 mins

I had a baby and thought I was Cameron Diaz

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Available for over a year

When Jen Wight was sitting in a doctor's surgery in Sydney, Australia, she had a lightbulb moment. She suddenly believed she was the American actor Cameron Diaz. The truth was very different of course. She was a new mum, and this was just the beginning of a series of unsettling delusions. Jen Wight was suffering from postpartum psychosis. When Elizabeth Suda travelled to Laos in South-East Asia, she found people turning the remains of old bombs into useful products like cutlery. The debris was everywhere, the legacy of an intense American bombing campaign connected to the war in neighbouring Vietnam. Elizabeth had the idea of producing jewellery out of the shrapnel, and she teamed up with local artisan Somechit Phouangsavat to make it happen. Judy Avey-Arroyo runs a sloth zoo and sanctuary in Costa Rica. Sloths are her obsession. It all started while she was working as a cocktail waitress in Anchorage, Alaska, and a Costa-Rican taxi driver named Luis walked into her life. She fell in love with him and moved to his home country. It wasn't long until she fell in love again, this time with a sloth that crossed their path near their home. Image: Jen Wight Credit: Catherine Cullen

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