Greta Gerwig’s subtle and beautifully nuanced touch has led to her being hailed as one of Hollywood’s greatest directors. But when she got her teeth into Barbie, she went all-out massive, pink and ‘completely unhinged’

One night in April, a stranger I met in a pub pulled out his phone and showed me pictures of something he was working on. We were in a town near to the Leavesden film studios, where the stranger had been constructing sets for Barbie , a film co-written and directed by the American filmmaker Greta Gerwig. “You have to see this,” the man said, before presenting images of a hot-pink, human-sized Barbieland, a place he described as an antidote to our hideously cold winter. Rain was forecast the following day, and even colder cold, but the stranger couldn’t care less. He would be a world away.

When I tell Gerwig this story, over Zoom, one day in June, her large eyes brighten. “That makes me feel like a proud mama!” she says, and, “Gosh, that makes me tear up.” Over the hour we spend together, while she sits in Manhattan, in a room she describes as “half office, half baby nursery,” this is the kind of pronounced buoyancy I come to expect from her. Even when I suggest the stranger perhaps shouldn’t have shown me the pictures – the set being locked down, me being a journalist – Gerwig says, in a wink-wink tone, “But I love that he felt he wanted to.”

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A new Cambridge University institute will try to harness the good and anticipate the bad effects of artificial intelligence

Stephen Cave has considerable experience of well-intentioned actions that have unhappy consequences. A former senior diplomat in the foreign office during the New Labour era, he was involved in treaty negotiations which later – and unexpectedly – unravelled to trigger several international events that included Brexit. “I know the impact of well-meant global events that have gone wrong,” he admits.

His experience could prove valuable, however. The former diplomat, now a senior academic, is about to head a new Cambridge University institute which will investigate all aspects of artificial intelligence in a bid to pinpoint the intellectual perils we face from the growing prowess of computers and to highlight its positive uses. An appreciation of the dangers of unintended consequences should come in handy. “There has been a lot of emphasis in the media on AI leading to human extinction or the collapse of civilisation,” says Cave. “These fears are exaggerated but that does not mean AI will not cause harm to society if we are not careful.”

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It sounds like you are playing a me-reasonable-and-she-unreasonable game. You must see it from from her point of view if you want to move forward

The dilemma It has been more than six years since I last saw or spoke to my sister. No explanations – just silence.

I am the eldest, there are three years between us and while we had differences growing up, our circumstances are similar in later life. So, what went wrong? A massive sudden temper flare-up and rage when I cracked a joke that she did not find funny, spewing out old grievances and resentments from our childhood that “came out of nowhere” and lots of tears. Despite my shock, I put it down to the menopause and believed we could forgive each other and move on, but all communication stopped abruptly.

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The heat is on, and so is the search for the perfect summer dress. From sleeved and strappy to mini and longline, here are this season’s best contenders

Rainbow knitted, £15.99, zara.com

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Cuerpas Reales Hinchas Reales (Real Bodies, Real Fans) is an exhibition that challenges gender stereotypes in the football culture of Latin America and celebrates the contribution female fans of all ages make to the game. The show is part of the Latin America Foto Festival in New York this month

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Bridget Christie’s glorious sitcom tackles everything from sexism to the climate crisis. It gives us a sorely needed onscreen role model and its ending is gorgeous. Roll on season two!

Every woman’s relationship with her fertility is unique, but – in a world that has always valued a female based on what is happening with her womb – there is a trajectory most of us recognise. As teenagers, we are terrified of getting pregnant. For a small window in our 20s, we are allowed the luxury of choice – pregnancy feels so easy that we can “leave it until later”. But we hit 30 and suddenly “later” becomes today. We are told to hurry up and have a baby before it’s too late. With each year that passes, so too do our options. Then comes the menopause – more than 400 periods later, they begin to stop, only to be replaced for many by unpleasant symptoms.

In recent years, television has started to explore this wild, wonderful, infuriating, mind-boggling and, at times, horribly unfair journey. But it’s only now that the later chapters are being told – in the likes of The Change (Channel 4), the debut comedy series from Bridget Christie. The 51-year-old comedian, who also performs standup shows about going through the menopause, has created a tale that both scrutinises and celebrates the experience. It is shot through with the kind of nuance that can only come from somebody who has been in the thick of it.

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Exclusive: Women urged to study symptoms and be as vigilant as they are for breast cancer

The number of women diagnosed with lung cancer in the UK is expected to overtake men this year for the first time, according to projections that have prompted calls for women to be as vigilant about the disease as they are about breast cancer.

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, accounting for one in five of the total. It has one of the worst cancer survival rates, which is largely attributed to diagnoses at a late stage, when treatment is less likely to be effective.

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I found being bald truly distressing. But losing a vital part of my armour for that long year gave me a whole new perspective

There are certain things in life we take for granted. We don’t question them. I may not have always enjoyed “good hair days”, but I always had a big head of hair. I never succumbed to tweakments, fillers or Botox to try to hold back the ravages of time. It was my hair on which I lavished time, attention and money. I could rely on it to perform. When I was working, I would swizzle it up off my face, with a bull clip, then let it down at night if I was going out. It was well behaved and, without sounding vain, I thought of it as my crowning glory.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that, when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November 2020, at 61, two days before England entered its second lockdown, one of the first questions I asked my oncologist was: “Will the chemo make me lose my hair?” His reply was: “Yes.” And he wasn’t lying. Within 10 days of completing my first round of chemo, I woke up one morning to discover my sleek mane had morphed into a crazy bird’s nest: matted, tangled and sticking out from my skull like a huge, wispy halo.

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Erica Voget’s work is part of a major exhibition inspired by how female football fans enjoy and live their passion for the game

Claudia Casado is a lifelong fan of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a football club in the city of La Plata in Argentina. Her daughter Mayra and her granddaughters, Katia and Mayte, are also fans of the club. They are pictured in Casado’s house in a poor neighbourhood, which is decked out in blue and white – the official colours of Gimnasia.

The fight for gender equality within sport really interests me. Clubs are generally considered to be dominated by men, but women have been occupying these spaces for many years, on and off the football field. Women’s football has grown over the past 10 years at a global level, but female players still face a struggle in terms of training, finding spaces to play, and earning a fair salary.

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