with Cathy MacDonald

Cathy’s This Spiritual Life guest this week is queen of the North East – Joyce Falconer; better known to River City fans as Roisin McIntyre. Joyce shares her spiritual upbringing in New Torry in Aberdeen, getting her big break with a working class Aberdeen accent, plus her final scenes after more than two decades in ‘Scotland’s soap.’

Cathy will also be hearing from the academics determined to put the modern Catholic Women writers (beside the great Muriel Spark) back in the spotlight.

She also finds out about the 21 care homes across the capital and East Lothian as the Edinburgh Festival comes to them for Fringe Cares Fest run by Edinburgh Interfaith Association. Plus, Jeanette Dickson from Edinburgh - whose own tragic circumstances inspired her to offer support for bereaved grandparents - shares her personal story. Her kind actions have earned her a place in the final of the BBC’s Make a Difference Awards.

This week's Faith Forum panel are:
Fiona Stewart, who heads up a public leadership programme for a Christian charity; Bob Davies, Professor of Religious and Cultural Education at the University of Glasgow and psychotherapist and anthropologist Dr Salma Siddique.

Together they discuss some of the week’s biggest headlines, including the death of country singer Dolly Parton; her lyrics, philanthropy, faith and mesmeric likeability. As Meta are forced to pay billions of dollars for harm to children, the panel examine how the power of tech giants holds up against the power of the people. Will concerned communities here in Scotland manage to do the same as AI data centres arrive on our shores? And as researchers validate the existence of ‘accent bias’ the panel discuss the judgements we make about the way people speak.