Podcast · True Crime

The Girlfriends: Spotlight

by iHeartPodcasts and Novel · English · True Crime

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 P***y Riot’s punk icon and political prisoner Nadya Tolokonnikova, British Nigerian beauty

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 41 min
Latest: 10 Aug 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

10 Aug 2026 · 42 min

Relisten to The Girlfriends: Spotlight: Nadya & Pussy Riot Punk the President

When Nadya Tolokonnikova saw her country Russia change under President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, she knew she had to do something. She started the iconic ski-mask-wearing art protest collective Pussy Riot. On February 21st, 2012, they performed their anti-Putin protest song, Punk Prayer, in a Moscow church, launching Nadya into overnight activist fame… and a prison labour camp. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

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Earlier episodes 28 most recent

3 Aug 2026 · 43 min
Relisten to The Girlfriends: Spotlight: Hélène Outwits the Nazis
Germany. Spring 1945. The writing is on the wall for the Nazis. And thousands of women are marching along dirt roads. If they stop walking, they’ll be shot. Their route is lined with piles of corpses. It’s a death march. Among these women are The Nine. Nine young women, all members of the French resistance, who have formed an extraordinary bond of friendship and support in the concentration camp in which they’ve been held. Their unofficial leader is 25-year-old Hélène Podliasky. And she’s about to suggest something incredible: The Nine are going to escape. Hélène’s story is told by her great…
27 Jul 2026 · 49 min
Relisten to The Girlfriends: Spotlight: Lu Ann Escapes the Order
When Lu Ann Cooper was just fifteen years old, she was told to drop out of school and marry her first cousin. She would be his fourth wife. Lu Ann grew up inside the so-called Kingston Clan, a religious sect where, Lu Ann claims, every man is expected to have many wives, and every woman is expected to have many children. All with the aim of building up the Kingdom of God. But one day, Lu Ann couldn't take it anymore. She decided she had to escape… The foundation Lu Ann runs to support other people who have fled polygamy is Hope After Polygamy. The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel…
20 Jul 2026 · 41 min
Relisten to The Girlfriends: Spotlight: Rose Solves, At Least, 86 Cold Cases
Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators. That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in storage all the biological evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed. This could be the key to getting justice for hundreds of desperate women. This is a story of hard…
E24 · 13 Jul 2026 · 39 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E24: Sucheta Exposes the Big Bull
In 1992, the Bombay Stock Exchange in India was skyrocketing. And at the centre of this chaotic, testosterone fuelled world was Harshad Meta: a man with aviator shades, a Lexus, and a reputation as a financial wizard. To millions, he was "The Big Bull," a self-made hero who promised wealth to anyone who followed his lead. But Sucheta Dalal, one of the only female journalists covering the financial markets, wasn’t buying the hype. When she started digging into Harshad Meta, she uncovered something explosive. She had 24 hours to get to the bottom of it - with her career, and the fate of…
E23 · 6 Jul 2026 · 39 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E23: Anna Catches a Catfish
Anna Rowe thought she’d found the perfect man: attentive, caring and totally devoted to his children. But Anna gradually started to suspect that things weren’t quite what they seemed… Her doubts led her to some late night dating app sleuthing. What Anna discovers will unravel everything she thought she knew about love, trust, and the man she was madly in love with. And it will set her on a path to save thousands of women from romance fraud.
E22 · 29 Jun 2026 · 37 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E22: Carolyn Builds a Wisterhood
On Valentine's Day 2000, Carolyn Moor's life changed forever when a hit-and-run accident killed her husband Chad. She was left a widow in her 30s - and with two young daughters to raise alone. And she discovered that when you’re a young widow, there’s not very much support - especially not the sort of support you need to get through the long years of grief-stricken child rearing. So, Carolyn founded The Modern Widows Club - dedicated to enabling women of all ages and backgrounds to embrace life after widowhood. She calls it ‘a wisterhood’. Plus we hear from the nurse who witnessed Carolyn’s…
E21 · 22 Jun 2026 · 32 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E21: Morrell Breaks the Ban
When Morrell Andrews’s attacker was convicted of her sexual assault, she thought her fight was over. But it was just beginning. Because in Canada, where Morrell lives, ‘Publication Bans’ were enshrined in law. These bans meant that no one, including the survivor themselves, is allowed to publicly name the victim of a sexual offense. Effectively, if Morrell talked about her story in the press, or on her own social media - or even if she texted her friends or emailed her therapist about it - she could face a criminal conviction and a fine. Morrell wasn’t going to stand for that. With the…
E16 · 30 Mar 2026 · 42 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E20: Rosamund Clears the Air
In 2013, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year-old daughter, Ella, died from a catastrophic asthma attack. Her death transformed her mum into a formidable campaigner. First, she fought to find out what had killed Ella - why had her previously healthy little girl suddenly developed breathing problems so bad they would become fatal? The answer lay very close to home - Ella, Rosamund and her siblings lived just off the busy South Circular Road, and the air pollution levels were dangerously high. Rosamund’s fight led to Ella becoming the first person in the world to have air pollution listed as…
E15 · 23 Mar 2026 · 40 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E19: Lejla Fights for the Invisible
Christmas Day, 1992. Sarajevo, Bosnia. War is ranging - Serb forces surround the city. For nearly four years, its people have endured daily shelling and sniper attacks, cut off from the rest of the world in the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. More than 11,000 people were killed. 1600 of them were children. And in the main hospital, a baby is born: Lejla Damon. Her mother didn’t want anything to do with her - if she held her, she said, she would strangle her. Lejla was born of sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Her birth mother had been raped, repeatedly, by Serb…
E17 · 16 Mar 2026 · 40 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E18: Antonia Pickets the Lusty Lady
It’s the 1990s in San Francisco, and Antonia Crane is a dancer at the legendary peep show, the Lusty Lady. In the dressing room and the mirrored ‘Fishbowl’ where the dancers perform in six inch heels, a revolution is brewing. The dancers are sick of putting up with workplace injustices, or customers filming them without their consent. And they’re about to take on the system and fight to become one of the first unionised strip clubs in the United States. Antonia Crane is author, activist, sex worker and PhD candidate at USC. You can read more about her life in her memoir, ‘Spent’. The other…
E17 · 9 Mar 2026 · 33 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E17: Tooba Stumps the Taliban
When the Taliban captured Herat City in August 2021, Tooba Sarwari had just one thing on her mind: cricket. Would she ever be able to play her beloved sport again? And more pressing, would the Taliban find the evidence of her and her team mates’ sporting achievements? If they did, it would surely spell the end for them and their families. This is the story of how Tooba, and the other members of the Afghan Women’s Cricket Team, risked everything to flee Afghanistan and start a new life in Australia - with the help of some cricketing friends. And how once they were there, they began to rebuilt…
E16 · 2 Mar 2026 · 43 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E16: Hélène Outwits the Nazis
Germany. Spring 1945. The writing is on the wall for the Nazis. And thousands of women are marching along dirt roads. If they stop walking, they’ll be shot. Their route is lined with piles of corpses. It’s a death march. Among these women are The Nine. Nine young women, all members of the French resistance, who have formed an extraordinary bond of friendship and support in the concentration camp in which they’ve been held. Their unofficial leader is 25-year-old Hélène Podliasky. And she’s about to suggest something incredible: The Nine are going to escape. Hélène’s story is told by her great…
E15 · 23 Feb 2026 · 43 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E15: Jacquie Saves a Hostage
Jacquie Davis joined the police when she was just 18 years old. She was fearless and ambitious, but she quickly realised her career progression was limited by her gender and education. Everything changed when she was recruited into The Circuit - a secretive network of freelance security professionals. As one of the only women in her field, Jacquie’s career as a bodyguard would take her to incredible places - from high-risk protection jobs for Gulf State Sheikhas, to cracking a theft ring at bougie London department store Liberty, to a daring mission to free a pregnant British woman trapped…
E14 · 16 Feb 2026 · 35 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E14: Visaka Sparks a Ceasefire
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…
E13 · 9 Feb 2026 · 40 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E13: Silvia Climbs to the Top of the World
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
E12 · 3 Nov 2025 · 37 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E12: Lois Captures Criminals
Lois Gibson has a rare gift: A gift for accurately drawing people she’s never seen before, from fragmented descriptions from traumatised witnesses. And that gift is incredibly useful to the Houston Police Department. Lois is the world’s most successful forensic artist. Over 40 years, on more than 5089 cases, she’s worked with victims and witnesses to painstakingly piece together a likeness of a suspect. And in more than 1313 cases, her drawings have nailed it with a conviction - case closed. This is the story of how she found this talent in one of the very darkest moments of her own life.…
E11 · 27 Oct 2025 · 43 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E11: Miss saHHara Crowns Queens
Miss saHHara was born to be a beauty pageant queen. As a child at home in Nigeria she would wrap herself in a mosquito net and sashay along a make-believe cat walk, delivering inspirational speeches to an imagined audience. But when she grew up and started to compete, she found that not only was she rejected from all the mainstream pageants she tried to enter, even trans beauty pageants seemed to celebrate all the cliched cisgender beauty norms. So, Miss saHHara decided to do something about it: She founded Miss Trans Global, a pageant where everybody is welcome, and where your advocacy and…
S3 · E14 · 20 Oct 2025 · 33 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E10: Phyllis Saves the People from Poisoning
Phyllis Omido is just a few months into a new job, when her infant son starts to get sick. Fevers, dehydration, hospitalisation - Phyllis is scared. Then the doctors give her some shocking news: Her son has lead poisoning. The metal smelting plant where Phyllis works, just outside Mombassa, Kenya, is leeching toxic chemicals into the water of the nearby river. And her son isn’t the only one who’s unwell: she believes the factory is poisoning the whole community. So Phyllis turns campaigner, and starts gathering stories from all over town. Children with skin burned off, babies…
S3 · E13 · 13 Oct 2025 · 46 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E9: Jasvinder Redefines Honour
When Jasvinder Sanghera was just 15 years old, her mum told her that she was going to be married to a man she had never met. Jasvinder’s older sisters had been through similar things. But instead of going along with the way things had always been in her family and community, Jasvinder escaped. And then, she helped thousands of other women and girls to do the same.
E8 · 26 May 2025 · 42 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E8: Nadya & Pussy Riot Punk the President
When Nadya Tolokonnikova saw her country Russia change under President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime, she knew she had to do something. She started the iconic ski-mask-wearing art protest collective Pussy Riot. On February 21st, 2012, they performed their anti-Putin protest song, Punk Prayer, in a Moscow church, launching Nadya into overnight activist fame… and a prison labour camp.
E7 · 19 May 2025 · 42 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E7: Eilís Runs the Ball Barn
As a trans woman, Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin didn’t have much faith in mainstream health care. So when she wanted gender affirming surgery to remove her testicles, she turned to her best friend and trainee doctor Willow, and asked her to perform the operation in her living room… From this humble beginning, Eilís and Willow built a whole clinic dedicated to trans women - in a tractor barn in the rural Pacific North West. Related Resources Sylvia Rivera Law Project Big Door Brigade - Mutual Aid Toolbox Transgender Law Centre Trans Rescue The Gender Reveal Podcast Jesse Lou Lawson - Media consultancy…
E6 · 5 May 2025 · 46 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E6: Madison and Christine Become Digital Detectives
Madison Conradis had her life turned upside down when someone began posting naked photos of her online. Soon, the abuse intensified with anonymous messages and calls to her family, friends and even her boss… The police didn’t seem to care, so Madison turned to her twin sister Christine for help. Together, they transformed into online sleuths, tracking the harasser across the country to get justice for Madison and other victims too.
E5 · 28 Apr 2025 · 41 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E5: Rose Solves, At Least, 86 Cold Cases
Rose Brady’s job running Baltimore County’s SVU was a frustrating one. The sexual violence crimes she and her team were investigating were just the tip of the iceberg. Her department was sitting on thousands of unsolved rape cases, dating back decades - with little hope of ever finding the perpetrators. That was until Rose made an incredible discovery: At a local hospital, a diligent forensic pathologist had kept in storage all the biological evidence from every rape exam he had ever performed. This could be the key to getting justice for hundreds of desperate women. This is a story of hard…
E4 · 21 Apr 2025 · 46 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E4: June Rocks America
From the moment she heard a guitar being played in an empty classroom at her convent school in the Philippines in 1961, June Millington knew what she wanted to do with her life: rock and roll. So when a girl called up June and her sister and asked if they wanted to start a band, the answer was hell yeah. They went on to become Fanny, the first all-female rock band to release an album with a major record label. June and her bandmates moved into a house in LA, toured the world and won fans like David Bowie. But they were also up against sexist stereotypes, skeptical audiences and critics who…
E3 · 14 Apr 2025 · 41 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E3: Nelly Goes Undercover
Nellie Bly was a true trailblazer. In late 19th century America, women were expected to get married and become housewives, or go into a suitable career like teaching. But Nellie didn’t do any of that. Instead, she changed journalism forever, becoming one of the world’s first female investigative journalists, and paving the way for a generation of incredible ‘Girl Stunt Reporters’. And Nellie’s first investigation was probably her most dangerous: In 1887, she deliberately got herself committed to the most notorious insane asylum in New York, to expose the abuse of women inside its walls. She…
E2 · 7 Apr 2025 · 49 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E2: Lu Ann Escapes the Order
When Lu Ann Cooper was just fifteen years old, she was told to drop out of school and marry her first cousin. She would be his fourth wife. Lu Ann grew up inside the so-called Kingston Clan, a religious sect where, Lu Ann claims, every man is expected to have many wives, and every woman is expected to have many children. All with the aim of building up the Kingdom of God. But one day, Lu Ann couldn't take it anymore. She decided she had to escape… The foundation Lu Ann runs to support other people who have fled polygamy is Hope After Polygamy.
E1 · 7 Apr 2025 · 48 min
The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E1: Tracy Hits the Bullseye
In 2019 Tracy Otto was a college student in Tampa, and a fitness fanatic. Then a violent attack by an ex-boyfriend changed her life forever. She was left paralysed from the chest down, and lost her left eye. But that’s only the beginning of Tracy’s story. In the aftermath of the attack, she rebuilt her life through sheer force of will, and discovered a passion for archery. That passion would take her all the way to the very top of elite sport: the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
S1 · 31 Mar 2025 · 3 min
Introducing The Girlfriends: Spotlight
Our brand new series The Girlfriends: Spotlight launches on Monday April 7th. Here's a taste of the incredible stories you can expect to hear... The Girlfriends: Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeartPodcasts. For more from Novel visit Novel.Audio

About The Girlfriends: Spotlight

The Girlfriends: Spotlight is a English true crime podcast from iHeartPodcasts and Novel. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: iHeartPodcasts and Novel
Language: English
Category: True Crime
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 41 min
Latest episode: 10 Aug 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1804438960

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