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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, comedy, laura, comedian, climate change, health, public health, academia, disrupted, academic, podcast, ucl, jokes, lectures, important, humour, communicate
SPEAKERS
Xand Van Tulleken, Rochelle Burgess, Laura Lexx, Matt Winning,
Xand Van Tulleken 00:01
Hello and welcome to Episode Two of public health disrupted, the brand new podcast from UCL health of the public. i'm Xand Van Tulleken I'm a doctor, a writer, a TV presenter, and I'm prepared to do pretty much anything to start a conversation, public health, and I do mean anything, whether it's editing medical journals, or experimenting on my body for children's television.
Rochelle Burgess 00:22
And I'm Rochelle Burgess. I'm a community health psychologist, specialising in community based approaches to health and I'm a lecturer at UCL Institute for global health. I'm also a self confessed hippie, which means I love talking about the importance of community solidarity, social change, hugs, and all those sorts of things to pretty much everyone and anyone who will listen to this podcast about public health. But more importantly, it's about the systems that need disrupting to make public health better. Join us monthly as we challenge the status quo, and ask what needs to change and why. Each week we'll be joined by activists, scholars, artists, comedians, industry professionals, and anyone else we can think of. We want as many people from inside UCL and out to join in our public health conversation.
Xand Van Tulleken 01:12
We're calling this podcast public health disrupted because that is exactly what we want to do. We want to break down disciplinary, sectoral and geographic boundaries. We want to really understand the diverse and complex issues impacting our health. There's no area of public health as we currently know it that we're not willing to shake up. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring how comedy and humour can be used to improve health for all.
Rochelle Burgess 01:39
Our first guest is award winning comedian and author Laura Lexx, whose name sounds like a superhero, which makes me super excited. I love Laura and I've watched a bunch of her stuff online and it's great and beyond excited to have her with us today. She's picked up a host of awards and nominations for her comedy, which includes shows Tyrannosaurus lexx and trying. She's also featured on popular TV shows, including roast battle live at the Apollo mock the week, and many more, as well as performing Laura recently released her first book Klopp actually, imaginary life with football's most sensitive heartthrob, inspired by series of her tweets imagining life with football FC manager, Jurgen Klopp, which went viral and amassed over 5.6 million views during lockdown.
Xand Van Tulleken 02:24
Our second guest is Dr. Matt winning. He's the kind of person who intimidates someone like me because he is a London based Scottish comedian. So far so good. But he is also a highly qualified environmental economist who performs live climate change comedy. He hosts the podcast operation Earth, he has a TEDx talk about the importance of using humour to discuss climate change. He has a PhD in climate change policy. He is an active researcher at the UCL Institute for Sustainable resources, combining the two worlds of comedy and environmental issues in an attempt to hilariously help save the planet. What are the rest of us doing?
Rochelle Burgess 03:04
Not much, I'm not doing much at all. All right, I think we'll start with Laura, Laura, your stand up show trying has been described as brutally honest. And as somebody who has been through that process of trying, and I loath that word. It's such a weird word like, you know, I mean, my husband said to me, people ask me if we're trying, and these are my mom's friends who like knew me since I was like three. And why are they asking me about this thing that I do it with my wife to create a baby. But in addition to sort of that idea of like, the awkwardness around that term, in that, in that conversation, you talk about a lot of really important things like our emotional well being and our mental health in and around this process of trying to create a new life. And some people might think that's not immediately good, comedic material. But you know, I would love to hear why, why you've pitched that it's something a lot of people sort of, don't talk about that enough. They don't women don't talk about these things we go through enough. And I just am so inspired by your decision to blow the lid off with that. So I'd love to hear about what brought you to that place, and why you think it's so important for us to focus on.
Laura Lexx 04:21
I think it's such a boringly simple answer. Really, it's just that, because that's what I'd been going through for two years. It was all I was thinking about. So it's all I was, it was all I could write about, because I don't think my brain separates like the bad things happening and the things that would potentially be good for comedy out. It just goes, Hey, you're thinking about trying to get pregnant. So it provides jokes about and it's very unhelpful when it came to sort of going right, okay, the antidepressants have kicked in and the therapies working and I need to get back to work. What have I got to start scraping new stuff together from all I've been thinking about was this stuff. I think humans are amazing for finding laughter in sadness. It's one of our instant reactions to things. I think it's partly cultural. But it is also I think, human nature, you know, we get down and then we try and cheer ourselves back up again. And the reason I, I think trying resonated so much was that there was just so much mess in that show, like I was trying for a baby. That is gross for many reasons. Not just the people asking you if you're banging each other, but also like, people giving you tips on how to do it, and you go, go away, like the number of people that told me about, I'll just go on holiday, and you'll relax, and it will happen. And you think I've been to Greece, I've been to Spain, I've been to Scotland, where where is this swimming pool full of relaxing juice that is supposed to work?
Xand Van Tulleken 06:01
Now as a public health podcast, we should say you shouldn't be doing it in the swimming pool...
Laura Lexx 06:04
No, no. Maybe that's where I was going wrong. So that was sort of one strand of it being messy. And then my psychological reaction to it because I had this terrible eco anxiety where I wanted a baby. And I still can't switch off my biological and psychological desire for children. But also, the reality of the planet being as it was, I got into such a state about was I doing the wrong thing and having a child and was the sustainable thing to do to adopt and not have children? But how do I switch off this desire to be pregnant and to give birth. And so that was another messy, messy, messy strand. And then there was the strand where we didn't fall pregnant anyway. So that was another messy strand. And I just think there was so much in that show, where there was just so much to kind of go and all this and all this and all this, and I don't have any answers, and I get to the end of that show. And I'm still not pregnant, and I'm still not fixed. in quotation marks, and I, I don't know any more than I knew before. But there you go. There's what it all was you, if any of this has happened to you, you're not on your own.
Rochelle Burgess 07:19
And I think that's it isn't it. I've always found that comedy and laughter is sort of like our basic sharing, as you say, you know, it's it's, it's a basic human nature, to connect and engage with each other in that way. And, and the heavy stuff, like this is all heavy. And And so much of life is heavy. And I feel like laughing through that, you know that you're not alone. If somebody shares a laugh with you, then they see it.
Laura Lexx 07:41
I think it reflects the reality of what mental health issues are or for me anyway, that one of the things that stopped me getting help for such a long time in my life was that I thought, I thought depression and mental health issues were only those characters I'd seen in stuff where they couldn't get out of bed, and then they turned to alcohol and rinse their lives and lost everything. And I thought you didn't get help until that had happened. I thought that because I was still going to work. And I hadn't cheated on my husband and walked out and ruined everything, that I probably wasn't that bad. But I was just miserable all the time. And so I wanted to put something out that when that sort of said, Yes, in the morning, I would be sobbing on the floor having a panic attack or crying my heart out about this. And then in the afternoon, I would find the fact that our fish got pregnant before I did very funny. And that is that is one reality of mental health and, and I'm still up here on the stage being buzzy and, and fun and smiley, and I'm on antidepressants, like I wanted to put out a different image of what people with mental health issues are to show that it all happens at once in the same day. It isn't like an eight month comatose experience, and then you slowly get better. It can be a complete mile strong. And you deserve help whichever state of that you're in.
Rochelle Burgess 09:10
Yeah, I mean, that is perhaps the most perfect PSA for mental health that I could think of that your what you've just said right there in the sense that it doesn't look like what you think it looks. You just need to talk to people about it so you can get the help you need. Because a lot of people I mean, I guess the terminology for it, if I think about it, high functioning, because it's this idea around our functionality and the way that gets performed in society, like you can be incredibly high functioning and still be having a really horrible time. Yeah, yeah. And that's part of the messiness, too,
Laura Lexx 09:47
I think I learned that there's no martyrdom to not getting the help, I think because I got diagnosed with depression when I was like 16 or 15 or something. And so they said, Would you like antidepressants and I was 15. And so I was like, No, I'm not going to be drugged up. I'll sort my own life out. And then it took me another 16 years or however long it was 15 years to go, who am I not on these pills for? Like, I get they're not for everybody. And it's everybody's choice to make with their doctor. But I'm not going around telling everybody I meet Hey, I cope without being on antidepressants, by the way, I'm just sad. So why not take them I'm the only one that would know or be improved by being on them. But you get into these weird little mental cul de sacs with yourself. You just go? Who am I doing this for?
Xand Van Tulleken 10:34
I love the idea of boasting about not being on anti-depressents. Even though you're really unhappy. Yeah, because happy people never boast about it But if you're miserable, you're like, Yeah, well, I'm just toughing this out.
Laura Lexx 10:45
Yeah, exactly. Like but why. But why, though, who are you toughing this out for you're sad
Xand Van Tulleken 10:50
Yes she's so miserable but she still won't take the anti-depressents - it's so heroic.
Laura Lexx 10:59
She's such fun at parties, all these anecdotes about not taking pills
Xand Van Tulleken 11:05
Do you think this stuff you you're talking about is so profoundly personally experiential, but they're all it's also so widely experienced by so many couples. And to try and have a public public conversation about this to try and influence people's thinking without comedy, I would say is you would be missing a huge, huge, huge part of an important conversation that it would there were certain things you're doing that would be impossible for academia to do. Do you know what I mean?
Laura Lexx 11:36
Yeah, definitely, I think it was a big part in me coming to talk about it was because for such a long time, I had to avoid all mentions of climate change and stuff. Like I remember, I remember things like listening to no such thing as a fish, which is a delightful podcast and full of little facts, and what and I remember one of the facts that they pulled out was that all hotels coming to a certain area, and I can't remember it was like the Canary Islands or somewhere in Southeast Asia. All hotels being built there now have to be five star so that they can afford the water because of climate change making access to fresh water so difficult. They need the investment. And that fact being presented on no such thing as a fish as a sort of delightful little sidetrack left me so cold and broken from hearing, it triggered me so badly. I haven't listened to that podcast since because I now just associate it with that. So I had to cut out all mentioned I had to mute all words, I couldn't bear it. And then part of coming back from that, and rehabilitating was realising that, if I have to avoid all this stuff like this, I'm no help to the cause and the progress for a greener world. So I've got to find a way to touch these subjects again. And I wonder if other people feel similar, like it's such a big, messy, horrible subject that you feel so complicit in and helpless about? And, you know, you just feel trapped with it. I think a lot of people do that people do switch off to it, because they just go well, I don't know, I don't know what's worse. I'm told avocados are worse than beef if the beef came from the garden next to mine, but the avocado came from around the world, but I'm supposed to be vegan, but my dog's carbon footprint is bigger than mine, like. So if you can find a way to kind of go, Oh, I know, I agree. Here we go. Let's, let's roll the subject into everyday talking. So we're not so scared of it, I think is a is an important thing to do.
Xand Van Tulleken 13:40
Matt I mean, moving away from the profound individual difficulties that Laura is describing on to something more cheerful, your work is around climate change, and the coming apocalypse? Are people more willing to hear the frankly, terrifying messages that I think you have to distribute? If you do it as a comedian, compared to doing it as an academic?
Matt Winning 14:07
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think so I think it's, there's something that changes when you're doing comedy, as opposed to delivering the kind of a straight serious lecture, I think it's to do with them, especially with slightly contentious subjects, like climate change, where the messenger, you're more trusted as a comedian than you are sometimes as an academic, which is weird, you would think academics would necessarily do some of the most, you know, scientists would be some of the most trusted people, doctors, etc. But there's sort of a levity to, you need a kind of combination of both, I think, and I think that's where I've somehow managed to strike a nice balance in that I do have the knowledge and the levity in order to, to sort of communicate it but also not come across as like, I am telling you all this stuff and you need to take it really seriously, or whatever. It's not ramming it down people's throats. They don't feel like they're being lectured is that that term like we we work in academia and do lectures and in academia, it's like, oh, you do lectures, that's a positive thing. But to most people being lectured to is not a positive thing. So it's bringing it into everyday life. But it's sort of not what you know, lecturing people sounds like it's kind of ramming it down their throats. And I think comedy is has a way of making you seem self deprecating and a bit kind of war status. But if you're able to combine that, with your knowledge and background in the subject, it actually has been, I've found really helpful in trying to get the message across to people
Xand Van Tulleken 15:37
do you mix them up? So obviously, you're doing comedy shows, and you're giving formal academic lectures? Are your lectures funny? And in the comedy shows, you are obviously including your academic work, but when you're giving a lecture, do you are you in a totally different mode, if I went to see you at UCL teaching or giving a presentation to the faculty,
Matt Winning 15:56
I'd say they're quite distinct, probably, I normally try and at least a couple of jokes at the very top of any sort of boring academic lectures to just be like, I know how to talk to people. I'd quite like to do it, but one, it would take quite a lot of time to then make those academic lectures funny, in a level of detail, that's much harder than then doing it to the public, where we all have a kind of greater shared experience. You know, if you're trying to make jokes about really specific references to papers, there's not a big audience for that is what I'm saying. And also, there's something to be said, for people that have traditional views of what academia is, and I think if I came in and just was trying to be funny and, and make it silly all the time. I don't know how well my career would progress. I'm sort of slightly I think, once, maybe once I'm a bit further down my career, the lecturers will become increasingly increasingly funnier, I don't know
Rochelle Burgess 16:52
I would bet that post promotion, everything will just become comedic.
Matt Winning 16:58
I mean, I try to remember back to when I was a, you know, a student, and I always did much prefer when you had someone that was always sort semi entertaining, as your lecturer for that lecture, you're like, Oh, good, I can actually sort of, it does make a huge difference. And I think it's a hugely undervalued part of academia is the communication, you know, we're not really taught how to communicate, and academics tend to be pretty bad communicators. And that's why they become academics in the first place. So a bit of a paradoxical thing. So you know, this sort of thing, where we do podcasts, and we talk to people, that is something academia should have been doing a long, long time ago,
Xand Van Tulleken 17:36
Rochelle, I don't feel like you're restricted by this sort of behaviour that we expect academics to have. I mean, I go to conferences occasionally. And I cannot understand why people seem to be making things almost deliberately boring. Like, occasionally things seem sort of so long winded and convoluted, the message is so buried in a way that if you were trying to engage, if you were doing a TED talk, maybe not even something funny, you would have to make it a bit more sparkly, but we seem to have permission to be boring in a way I don't know. And I feel like you're not, you're not one of those people,
Rochelle Burgess 18:12
that's a very sort of nice thing to hear. So it's nice to hear that people don't think you're boring. I mean, I definitely resonate with what Matt's been saying, coming up. in academia and sort of wanting to be an academic, I always felt like I didn't fit. And one of the things that my students used to say to me early on, when I started teaching during my PhD, and they always used to say, well, it's so much nicer when we hear from you because you speak like a person. And that's, that's really it. But a part of that is actually been always disclosing something new on the show. But, uh, basically, I have dyspraxia and I found out during my PhD, and I just means I have really difficult time with speech sometimes and pronouncing certain words. So I, academia is full of like multisyllabic terms, and whatever. And so I have to speak like a human in order to, to get through anything. And it's been sort of a proxy of just like survival and linking back a bit to some of the stuff that Laura was talking about, and sort of like you do things to sort of how do we survive all these things? How do we make sense of our survival, I would use comedy to see like, I can't talk about things in the way other academics can, because I literally cannot pronounce that word. There's too many syllables. So I'm just gonna say it like this. And that's how I started communicating differently in academia, based on the necessity to like, I wouldn't have survived it otherwise. But I think academia is changing. Like there's so much more capacity in space and what always changes it funding to source science to be in better communication and dialogue with society and communities. And in order to make it worth while really and it sort of makes me think a little bit about something that's come up with both Matt and Laura is this idea and this notion of communication and The messenger and the message. And I think we often underestimate in public health, how important getting those two pieces right are the fact that the message must be trusted and the person it's coming from must be trusted. And the content must be in a way that people can engage with. And I wonder, Matt, do you think humour is something that we can use to get through the opaqueness of what you're trying to communicate? Because an environmental economist to me sounds like those two words make sense to me. And in combination, they cease to make sense
Matt Winning 20:31
I have a joke where I say, it sounds like a bit of an oxymoron environmental economist because like, you tell people, environmental, they're like, yep, got that. And then you see economist, and they go, No, not so sure. I tell them, it's a bit like being a human rights lawyer. You know, I mean, it's like, you're still a lawyer deep down. But yeah, I think comedy can really help to, as you say, get through the opaqueness. I mean, Laura touched on it really well and said, you know, it's everything is so complicated with, especially with topics like climate change, and you know, aspects of health this year, I'm an author on the ones the Lancert Countdown on health and climate change. So I've started actually bringing health and climate change together, and I find is a really effective way of talking to people as well, you know, health is actually a really good way of talking to people about climate change, because everybody kind of understands not, you know, the intricacies of health issues, but they understand what health is and why it's important, and much more so than some of the issues around climate change. So it's finding ways to talk about it that people understand. And I think comedy is a good way of sort of breaking down, you have to simplify everything, you have to make it simple for the joke to work. And you also have to make it a shared experience. So it has to be about something you all know about, if you're making jokes about something that only you know about, and other people don't, you're not going to get very far. So it requires you to do a lot of things and to implement a lot of skills that you need sort of need to do to reach the Public Enemy, I think with with comedy, so I sort of stumbled across it. If I'm honest, I was already doing comedy for about eight years before I even started really talking about climate change. And I think I'd mostly been using comedy as a way to not think about climate change. If I'm honest, I found it difficult. But I'm glad I waited that long, kind of eight years before I even started trying to talk about difficult issues using comedy, because I don't think it'd been particularly good enough until that point in time. So it really helped that I waited a while and then started to kind of apply the skills that I'd learned over kind of almost a decade to a topic that is quite hard to talk about. So you know, I think a lot of this is is about skills that we need to learn. But it's hard. You know, not everybody can spend eight years going out five times a week doing comedy shows, just to then be able to communicate some sort of health issue that is that is not sustainable. Anyway, I'm rambling.
Xand Van Tulleken 22:55
Laura, the topics you've talked about, and Matt, are sensitive anxiety creating, intimate, personal, and frequently, quite bleak. And yet comedy is incredibly, it's really the only vehicle to do the things you're talking about in the ways that you're describing. I guess there's a temptation then, for anyone making public health policy or kind of with the grand vision of public health to go Look, why don't we use comedians to do you know, make everything a bit more fun. And then we can get we get comedians to talk about cancer screening and vaccinations and people doing more exercise and going to their GP a bit more, maybe we can improve anyone's health? What do you think about the value of comedy being used for public health? And what should the relationship be?
Laura Lexx 23:41
It's complicated, isn't it? Because, yes, on the one hand, you, you think, yes, we are professional communicators. It's what we do. We're good people to spread a message. But on the other hand, I think there can be a bit of a backlash to that every now and again, with the sense of people going well hang on a minute, why the hell should I listen to you? You're a clown, usually with some sort of privilege, or at least a perceived privilege because of what you do for a living, you know, you're not, you're not one of us. You're either in the elite to entertainment or it's alright for you. You're rich, or it's so i think it's it's one of those things that needs to be done with a level of subtlety that I'm not sure people in charge, have access to... Like they are at the moment, aren't they using like, there was that story not so long ago about using sensible celebrities to urge people to get the vaccine. So I think they kind of do sort of try and do that. But I think it's one of the things that kind of makes me feel a bit ooky about comedy about issues is that I Don't want comedy to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing about something I want comedy to tell me about stuff. And then I'll make my own mind up, it was something I've really tried quite hard to do with trying was not to lay any conclusions down. But just to go, this is my experience, and whatever that brings up for you is fine. But I made that show so personally about my mental health, because I didn't want to go. And here's how you should treat people with mental health. Actually, this is how we want to be treated. Because I know everybody's different. I'm gonna clue and it wasn't like, don't tell women trying for baby this. And that because some women trying for baby my lap up advice from other people. So it's not my place to speak for all women. But what I wanted to do was, and what I think comedy can do brilliantly is you're allowed to be utterly personal, you're allowed to tell anecdotes, it's the opposite of academia. It's something I'm continually saying to my students, when I'm teaching stand up, make it personal. It's the opposite of a thesis or an essay, you're not looking at the detail. And then extrapolating out to a big theory, comedy is involved in the detail. Work on the detail, don't tell me a vague story about feminism. Tell me about you going to the supermarket and your activity there. That is what makes comedy very different to everything else. And what makes it engaging and why you don't feel like you're having stuff rammed down your throat when comedy is done well.
Rochelle Burgess 26:38
But I think that, to me sounds like what theory should be about, we sort of think about theory as the pair of glasses we put on to make sense of the world, then, just how I sort of explained to my students, what theory is, then it should allow you to see the detail and understand some of the why behind the detail. And so almost in a way, I feel like bringing more of what of the personal and the honesty and the reality of what these big concepts mean, and getting as many of those stories and perspectives out there in ways where we have this shared language of laughter or emotion is the thing that could blow the whole lid off that I think, yeah, really, that hesitancy to say, Oh, we don't need it. But actually, I would say that what you've said is 100%, what we should be doing, because what we've done before hasn't worked. Ultimately,
Laura Lexx 27:31
if you boil down to a conclusion, you're boiling off a lot of steam that is people's personal experience. So like with my own experience of of trying for a baby, and then not being able to have one, I find that very messy, because it's not that I am biologically infertile, I don't have ovaries that don't work, I haven't rinsed the IVF system and come out the other side. Broken money wise by rinse there. That's the wrong word. I don't mean like you've exploited it. I mean, like, I haven't been through it and exhausted myself and rinsed myself through it, I can't have children because I can't do it. Because every time we start trying, I get into such a psychological mess, that my health completely fails. So my own experience of talking about not being able to have children, I think I try to work out what language to use to show other people that you can say I can't have children, and it doesn't have to mean, I've got a cloggy womb or whatever it means, you know that that phrase can
Xand Van Tulliken 28:30
Can you not use confusing medical terminology?
Laura Lexx 28:33
Sorry, I'm a doctor. I don't know if I've mentioned it, I think talking about the messiness of these situations like you know, with the, I'm depressed, but sometimes I'm very fun and funny. That it there's so many different realities to all these things, and having a platform for want of a less modern phrase, I think, having space to put the detail of one of those messy ones out there and go. So messiness is okay, and I'm not embarrassed to say this, I think is important.
Matt Winning 29:11
Yeah, I mean, I would completely agree with everything Laura said as well and would just reiterate the idea of comedy being so personal, and people go to see comedians, really because they're interested in the person and those that person's story or who they are. I mean, okay, there's some comedians where you go that's like, you know, Tim, Vine or Milton Jones or whoever. That's just jokes, jokes, jokes, and people go and see them to laugh. And I'd say every other comedian people go to see because they're interested in that person and their view of the world and their experiences. So you can really only use comedy to talk about health issues if that comedian specifically already is interested and has a personal story that they want to tell about health issues. I think if you just got Tim Vine to come and write one liners about health, I don't think anyone would start getting vaccinated more.
Xand Van Tulleken 30:07
That is a lovely conclusion.
Rochelle Burgess 30:13
So, as part of our interest in sort of this idea of disruption, we've asked people every month, think about a piece of art or music or poetry that has disrupted or changed the way you think about the world, it could be something recently, or it could be something from a long time ago, just trying to bring a bit of tangibility.
Laura Lexx 30:35
I think mine would be. And I'm sorry that this is so on the nose. But I really am a comedian, and nothing else. But it will be Eddie Izzard's Glorious, I think, which was one of Eddie's early shows. And it was the first, Eddie was the first person I knew what a comedian was. And I remember there being a bit in the middle of the show, where he's talking about Princess Diana, and then says, My mum died when I was seven, and my brother was 11. And no one gave a shit. And then they just seamlessly move back into the comedy. And at the time, as a child, I listened to glorious when I was far too young to be listening to glorious, but I didn't understand that I didn't understand why you'd bring the tone down like that. But I loved everything else about that show. And so did me and my sister. And now looking back, I understand that, but that show just made me laugh so much as as like an 11 year old or however old I was. And it was the first time I knew what stand up was.
Xand Van Tulleken 31:45
I love that.
Rochelle Burgess 31:46
Yeah, I love it, too.
Matt Winning 31:47
I was also a very big Eddie Izzard fan. As a burgeoning, stand up, and as a young man, yeah, definitely was the first person that I watched and was like, Oh, this is something I want to watch again. And again. And again. You know, I've watched the same jokes again, and again and again. And what I think what I'll, I'll mention something a bit further down the line, because there's so many things in life that do disrupt you in good and bad ways. And I think it's important, I think disruption is important to development, and to be able to see things in a more rounded way. I remember seeing a show by Kim Noble in 2014. And I'd already been doing stand up there for about maybe, I don't know, five years or six years. And I thought I thought I had an idea of what stand up comedy was at that point in time. And then I saw there's a show by Kim Noble, I think called you're not alone, that sort of changed my perspective of what it would be. And he was talking about his father's dementia. And it was very weird, almost sort of, you know, performance art stuff, and it, but it was funny, and I still felt like I laughed more than that, at that than I did it a lot of things and it was very uncomfortable. And to watch and I feel like that disrupted my view of what an art form could be. And I think anything that you see that is that sort of just completely changes your perspective on what something is, is really effective, or really affecting.
Rochelle Burgess 33:14
You've been listening to public health disrupted. This episode was presented by me Rochelle Burgess and Xand Van Tulleken, produced by UCL health of the public and edited by Cerys Bradley. Our guests today we're Laura Lex and Matt Winning.
Xand Van Tulleken 33:27
If you'd like to hear more of these podcasts from UCL health of public subscribe wherever you download your podcasts or visit www.ucl.ac.uk/health-of-public. This podcast is brought to you by UCL Minds, bringing together UCL knowledge, insights and expertise to events, digital content and activities that are open to everyone.