Samira Ahmed

Full of naughty bits..

Through the Square Window A podcast guiding you through the UK television we watched in decades gone by, presented by cultural journalist Samira Ahmed and TV journalist Graham Kibble-White.

Full of naughty bits.. it’s March 1979 @gkw.bsky.social & I present the latest ep of @squarewindowpod.bsky.social is out now… podfollow.com/through-the-...

Friend went to London Book Fair today & spotted my book cover at @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social stand. Thankyou!!

Thankyou! Awful to see the destruction being caused now.

Several female scientists saying because they’re driven by facts, you focus on facts and it helps you ignore the sexist perceptions of you.

Love that Dame Julia Knight knew as a schoolgirl that she wanted to be a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Interesting how many female scientists here are saying going to an all girls’ school was crucial for encouraging going into STEM. Except for Prof Stephanie Henson, whose male physics teacher at an all girls’ school told them girls shouldn’t/couldn’t do physics. She was determined to prove him wrong.

Afternoon panel on climate change. Prof Gabriele Hegerl points out her past research on 1930s Dust Bowl heat waves showed link between environmental destruction, climate change, mass migration & social unrest. A warning from relatively recent history.

Art of Persia - Series 1: Episode 3 Samira Ahmed goes back to when Persia faced her gravest threat, Genghis Khan, and reveals how the Safavids, who succeeded the Mongols, give Iran a powerful new identity.

You can see these places that ordinary Iranians hold so dear in episode 3.. filmed almost exactly 7 years ago. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Unesco sites in Iranian city of Isfahan damaged by US-Israel strikes There have also been reports of damage to the third-century Falak-ol-Aflak Citadel in Khoramabad, western Iran

More damage to Iran’s UNESCO heritage sites by US/Israeli attacks. Places in Isfahan we visited for Art of Persia.. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/10/u...

Prof Uta Frith suggests “melancholia” may not be entirely accurate given the active aggression with which some men are attacking women’s equality.

Learned from Prof Louise Archer’s Presentation that there’s an excellent sociological phrase for the new male “traditional” backlash against women & EDI. It’s called patriarchal melancholia. What Freud would describe as a narcissistic wound or injury.

There's a new episode of Through the Square Window arriving tomorrow (with @samiraahmeduk.bsky.social and @gkw.bsky.social) looking at TV shows from 1979. CONTAINS NAUGHTY BITS.

How lovely!

Discussing importance of m & f scientists to take parental leave. Need better childcare.
Dame Jocelyn: On site at unis.
Prof Uta Frith: (with glee) and then the psychologists cd do experiments!

Chemist Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu of Cambridge University recalls studying for her phd while a single mother of three young daughters, living in a B&B, sharing a bathroom with many other families. And how important was the empathetic support of her supervisors.

Went on to work on the Cassini programme.

I’m livid too.

Astronomer Royal Professor Michele Dougherty recalls how at school in S Africa girls didn’t take physics gcse. Luckily she managed to study physics at university thanks to supportive staff.

She was and still is denied Nobel prize recognition of her discovery of pulsars.

Speaking at a Royal Society conference about women in science. (Only admitted as fellows since 1945)

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell recounting how as 1 woman out of 50 physics undergrads at Glasgow Uni in 1960s, she learned not blush because male students wd whistle & catcall louder every time she entered lecture theatre. (A uni tradition to treat women this way at time. Teacher or student. Every time).

Thankyou!

Hurrah! Thanks

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Cillian Murphy, Timothee Chalamet's opera comments, Deepa Anappara, and are non-fiction books dead? Cillian Murphy talks to Samira Ahmed about new film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

🎧 Latest BBC Front Row: Cillian Murphy on Peaky Blinders, Deepa Anapparna on her ace new novel about Tibet, is non-fiction in free fall? And The Stage’s editor Matt Hemley on Timothy’s Chalamet’s faux pas de deux www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Cillian Murphy, Timothee Chalamet's opera comments, Deepa Anappara, and are non-fiction books dead? Cillian Murphy talks to Samira Ahmed about new film, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.

🎧 Latest BBC Front Row: Cillian Murphy on Peaky Blinders, Deepa Anapparna on her ace new novel about Tibet, is non-fiction in free fall? And The Stage’s editor Matt Hemley on Timothy’s Chalamet’s faux pas de deux www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Ryan Gosling. For Monday’s BBC Front Row.

Featuring Peter Cook and Joanna Lumley having their palms read..

I found a lovely production photograph which is in the book in which you’ll be able to pick your mum out of the lineup 🎶

How A Hard Day’s Night ripped up the pop movie rulebook YouTube video by Word In Your Ear

First interview for my forthcoming BFI Film Classics book on the Beatles' first film... Always a joy talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth...A Word In Your Ear.. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkSD...