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Fi Glover presents the Sunday edition of Radio 4's series capturing the nation in conversation: today's programme covers the vital support offered by friendship, and also family life in all its rich variety.

Betty, a retired cook from Hull, chats with her daughter, Elaine - a cleaner - about bringing up ten children with lots of love, but not much money. Catherine tells her friend, Liz, about the impact the fact that her parents met when they were a priest and nun had on her childhood, and on her current relationship with the Catholic church. And friends Anne and Steve talk about how each has supported the other through the serious dramas of life: bereavement and the suicidal despair caused by childhood abuse.

The Listening Project is a new initiative for Radio 4 that aims to offer a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not 大象传媒 interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Many of the long conversations are being archived by the British Library which they will use to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Mohini Patel.