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I had a baby and thought I was Cameron Diaz

One day, Jen Wight suddenly believed she was an A-list Hollywood actress. In fact she was a new mum and her delusion was the onset of postpartum psychosis.

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

Available now

53 minutes

Last on

Fri 26 Jul 2019 03:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Thu 25 Jul 2019 11:06GMT
  • Thu 25 Jul 2019 15:06GMT
  • Thu 25 Jul 2019 17:06GMT
  • Thu 25 Jul 2019 20:06GMT
  • Fri 26 Jul 2019 02:06GMT
  • Fri 26 Jul 2019 03:06GMT

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Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary

Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary

Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected