Italy's Football Failure, Russia's Blogger for President - a podcast by BBC World Service

Italy’s failure to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 60 years will damage more than national pride. It will also carry a big financial cost – one estimate says Fifa stands to lose $100m. Is this really true? Also, we fact check the claim that 45% of Nigerian women marry before their 18th birthday.

For the second in our special series from Russia, we trace how opposition leader Alexei Navalny has used social media to move from writing LiveJournal blogs about corruption to trying to run for president.

Also, how true are beliefs about the differences between the way men and women speak, such as women apologise more and men interrupt more? Catherine Carr speaks to leading linguists, who have studied thousands of conversations and gathered data to find out what’s going on.

(Photo: Alessandro Florenzi of Italy at the end of the Fifa 2018 World Cup Qualifier play-off, 2017. Credit: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)

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