When Visaka Dharmadasa’s soldier son was kidnapped by the fearsome Tamil Tigers in the midst of Sri Lanka’s bitter civil war, she couldn’t find anyone who could help find him - or the 608 other soldiers who had been taken the same night. So Visaka transformed herself, first into a fighter against the bureaucracy of the Sri Lankan government and the Red Cross, and then into a fearsome peace activist.

Defying warnings, she crosses into Tamil Tiger territory and sits down with some of the terrorist group’s most notorious leaders, appealing to their humanity as a mother. And eventually, they listen.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

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The number 1 hit true crime series is back with more women fighting crime, battling injustice and seriously kicking ass.

In Season 1 of The Girlfriends: Spotlight, our global gang of girlfriends grew to include Pussy Riot’s punk icon and political prisoner Nadya Tolokonnikova, British Nigerian beauty queen and founder of Miss Trans Global, Miss saHHara and ‘The Erin Brockovich of East Africa’, environmental activist Phyllis Omido.

Now host Anna Sinfield returns with more incredible stories of women like bodyguard Jacquie Davis, who set out on a daring mission to free a pregnant British woman trapped in Pakistan. We’ll hear the story of Helene, a member of the French Resistance plotting to escape the brutality of a concentration camp. We’ll also meet Visaka Dharmadasa, a Sri Lankan mother who sat face to face with notorious terrorists and helped end a civil war.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.
For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you’ve suffered childhood trauma, endured alcohol abuse, been through awful bereavements, how can you heal? For Silvia Vasquez-Lavado the answer was to climb to the top of the world - and then take other traumatised women and girls with her.

Silvia is the first Peruvian woman to summit Mount Everest and the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits, the tallest mountain on each continent.

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts.

For more from Novel visit novel.audio

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.