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Xand Van Tulleken 0:03
Hello and welcome to season 2 of public health disrupted with me Xand Van Tulleken…
Rochelle Burgess 0:09
…and me Rochelle Burgess. Xand is a doctor, writer & TV presenter, and I’m a community health psychologist and Associate Professor at the UCL Institute for Global Health.
Xand Van Tulleken 0:19
This podcast is about public health, but more importantly, it’s about the systems that need disrupting to make public health better. Join us each month as we challenge the status quo of the public health field, asking what needs to change, why and how to get there.
Rochelle Burgess 0:33
In today’s episode, we’re exploring how people, bound by common experiences, characteristics, or interests, can improve their health through nonclinical methods. It will look at how we can go beyond traditional notions of formal health and care service provision in the community to find solutions to health problems.
Xand Van Tulleken 1:07
So I'm very excited about this to our first guest today is Dr. Daisy fancourt. Daisy is an associate professor of psycho biology and Epidemiology at UCL. Her research focuses on the effects of social factors on health including loneliness, social isolation, community assets, arts, cultural engagement, and social prescribing. Daisy leads the team running the COVID-19 social study, which is the UK is largest study into the psychological and social impact of the virus. So she gets so that team is given weekly data to government, World Health Organisation and hundreds of community and third sector organisations. She also leads the COVID minds network and international network of longitudinal studies exploring the global mental health impact of the pandemic. Daisy is a member of the lancet COVID-19 Commission and the World Health Organisation expert group on mental health and COVID-19. She established in chairs the international arts health Early Career Research Network, the UK March network and is a consultant to the World Health Organisation and Arts and Health. And I should say, personally, Daisy, I cite to you all the time, whether I'm discussing the Dominic Cummings effect, whether I'm trying to encourage friends, patients, anyone I'm talking to on the telly to undertake amazing things beyond sort of the straightforward bits of health advice we sometimes dished out. So you've influenced my personal life and my professional life in many, many ways.
Daisy Fancourt 2:34
Well, what an amazing thing to hear. Thank you.
Rochelle Burgess 2:38
Daisy. That's the dream at every academics dream to hear somebody
Xand Van Tulleken 2:42
to try and improve me.
Rochelle Burgess 2:46
And our second guest today is Eric Whitacre, a Grammy Award winning winning composer and conductor. Eric is among today's most popular musicians. His works are programmed worldwide, and his groundbreaking virtual choirs have united singers for more than 145 countries. Born in Nevada in 1970. Eric is a graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in New York. He completed his second and final term as artists in residence with Los Angeles Master choral in 2020. Following five years as composer in residence at the University of Cambridge, in 2021, Eric was named a Yamaha artist. And as a choir Geek on behalf of all choir geeks everywhere. Welcome, welcome. Welcome, like beyond this is like
Eric Whitacre 3:36
Are you a singer Rochelle?
Rochelle Burgess 3:39
Once upon a time, yes, nice, classically trained and everything but I won't sing this podcast. I did it in season one. I'm not going to do it now.
Xand Van Tulleken 3:50
Okay, so Daisy, can we start with you? I've heard you speak before. You can always kind of capture that that the range of things that you study, I wanted to begin by exploring how communities can improve health and help reduce health inequalities.
Daisy Fancourt 4:06
But communities are a part of us. We're social animals. And historically, we've completely depended on communities for surviving and thriving. And intangibly, we can also build up what we sometimes call our capital. So our sort of knowledge or understanding our ability to function in these these complex world that we live in. So when people have this kind of support around them, it can support their health. Whereas when we see people who are isolated, or lonely, or feeling like they're not part of a group, this is when we start to see detrimental effects on health. So we can trace for example, a higher rates of depression incidents, a higher rate of physical illness, even higher rates of things like hospitalizations for existing health problems. We also know if we're lonely or isolated, we're less likely to do healthy behaviours, we're more likely to stay at home and be more sedentary and also when You're lonely and isolated, you can miss out on those simple conversations with friends that might help you to seek advice from a doctor, or might make you take your symptoms a bit more seriously. So what we're really finding here is that communities are one of the huge factors of our lives that can help to keep us healthy. And unfortunately, not only do we see this relationship between communities and health, but we find that the relationship effects people from lower socio economic backgrounds more, they're the ones that can often feel lonely and more isolated. And they're the ones that can also experience poorer health. So we see an exacerbation of this relationship between social factors and health, when people aren't part of communities.
Xand Van Tulleken 5:40
And can I just ask a follow up about that, I think both of you in different ways, kind of focus on communities, and obviously, Rochelle's expertise in this as well. Eric, I've seen your, you know, creating, even online communities have 1000s of people singing together, it's absolutely extraordinary. When I was at medical school, I would say the word community was not really used at all, are we facing a crisis of community or our communities deteriorating in a way that is unhealthy, and is public health, not emphasising the role of community sufficiently?
Daisy Fancourt 6:17
I feel like the concept of community is changing a lot, especially in the last couple of years, we've seen a move towards online communities. Even before the pandemic, people are relying more on messaging on video calls, telephone calls to stay in touch, as well as communities like Facebook. Now, some of these things can help with connections. But there are different types of things you get from the ways you interact with people. And when we cut out crucial parts of that interaction, like face to face elements, most research suggests that actually we do lose some of the benefits. And in fact, we've actually found in the pandemic, that often a reliance on video contacts or telephone contact can actually exacerbate feelings of loneliness, perhaps, because it feels for people like a poor alternative. For the real thing. I guess it's a bit like eating a kind of fat free cake or sugar free cake, it's just not the same. So I think we're aware that communities are changing, that can be disrupting some of the useful and supportive mechanisms that can help people's health in terms of health service delivery. One of the things that's been very interesting that I'm sure we'll come to talk about more in this podcast is ways of starting to link things like the NHS, with community and voluntary opportunities and with other sectors, which starts to bring in this concept of community. And we're getting more discussion about that at the moment with the idea of integrated care systems.
Rochelle Burgess 7:36
you know, then, and it makes me think a bit about the stuff that Eric is doing. One of the things that I would say is probably under represented in the way public health talks about community is the way that community is created that people create community, out of necessity a lot of times, right, and when you go to marginalised communities and marginalised settings, people are often building community out of nothing. And I think that's what's so nice about things like virtual choirs and virtual spaces, they allow you to build community across spaces that you wouldn't necessarily think about as being possible to transcend. And thinking about Eric, what you have enabled in the world is you've taken something that is community building, and I've been in choirs and sort of felt that sort of moment of like the wall of sound like being inside of the sound that you're creating as a group. And it never occurred to me that I could, you know, do that across the ocean. Basically, I just wondered if, if Eric, you could talk a little bit about what brought you to that sort of thinking because it's just as I said, as a choir geek, fascinating.
Eric Whitacre 8:48
Yeah, for me, too, I think because I'm, I'm first and foremost, and this isn't a life I've chosen as an artist with a capital A, it's, it's, it's a brain issue, let's call it that, that I find myself drawn to things because of their inherent poetry. And with singing, I was 18 years old I'd never seen before and a choir and conductor sort of pulled me in. I looking back, I think it was just because I had a low voice and a pulse. Those were the two criteria he was looking for. And the first piece I sang was by Requiem by Mozart, this Requiem, and and I was utterly transformed with within an hour. And I remember looking back in and my first impression is exactly what you were talking about Rochelle, which is this idea that there's this wall of sound that there's this physical effect on the body that the sound is having, and there's no question that's that's true. Daisy and I have talked a lot about that the, the literal physiology of the of the music on the body. But I think when I look back at the poetry of the moment that actually bigger than that was that it was the first time in my life. I felt part of something larger than myself. And that has been The defining feature of my whole career, and I think of music making together in general, is that every single person feels part of something larger than themselves. There's no question that that's going to have these, these great knock on health benefits. But I think what was astonishing to me, Daisy and I did a bunch of work together with live choirs, and basically proving what we all felt to be true, which is that singing together and even listening to live music is good for you physiologically, it's good for your body. But then Daisy went further and did these really in depth studies on our virtual choirs. These are people who are never meeting and still receiving most of the same health benefits, as as they would if they were being together. Even at these large distances, there's a sense of community.
Xand Van Tulleken 10:51
Can you talk a bit about the the mechanism, if that isn't to kind of clinical a question like, how does that work? What were you measuring?
Daisy Fancourt 11:00
It's, it's really interesting, actually, we ran this study, we published it about a year before the pandemic. And it was considered, I think, a very niche article comparing live versus virtual singing. And I didn't really get much traction with any media, many, many hits, or reads. And then suddenly, when COVID hits, and we were all looking at desperately for ways to engage online, this went through the roof in terms of people reading and citing it. So what we were essentially trying to look at here was specifically how singing helps us to regulate our own emotions. So when we're feeling stressed, for example, how we can use singing as that way of helping rebalance ourselves. And we've seen this reposted a lot from live sing. But we wondered if you could get the same benefits from virtual opportunities. And what we found was that actually, there's almost no difference between the live and virtual experiences in terms of emotion regulation, singing had just as much effect on people to distracting them from their worries, as well as helping them to vent sort of cathartically work through their emotions, as well as helping to build their sense of confidence and self esteem. In fact, we even found that some people reported higher levels of confidence and self esteem from the virtual choir, perhaps because you're missing out on that worry that someone else is going to hear you making the mistake or whatever. But what we did find was there was that there was a clear mitigating factor. And that was how present people felt. So virtually, we found that some people felt very present, it felt like they were part of that group, whereas for others, it still felt a little bit artificial. And for those where they weren't feeling as present, it wasn't having a strong effect on their emotions. And this really comes back to that concept of feeling part of something. And it's interesting that Rochelle has spoken about being acquired geek as though it's an identity. And that sense of in group pneus is one of the things that helps us to cope with stressors to buffer worries in our lives help regulate our emotions. Interestingly, if you're put in a group where you feel out of group, it actually makes everything worse. So it's not that we can't just force community on people by saying, Do this choir, it's definitely going to make you feel better. It has to be a choir, where people feel that it resonates with their own sense of identity and increases and supports that identity. So it's possible for some people that their group identity will come from a completely different activity.
Xand Van Tulleken 13:14
Can I ask them the phenomenon that you're you're both describing in terms of the kind of the actual effects on people's body, their experience of being themselves, their identity, those things have very big implications for their physiology and physical health as well. You're not just talking about maybe coping with the stress of the day, which is no small thing. But these are things that will cascade into the family health, longevity, like actually have big implications for the rest of their lives potentially. Is that right?
Daisy Fancourt 13:50
Absolutely, if we're seeing that people, even for a few minutes, are managing to stay a little bit calmer, or feel a little bit more in control in a day, as a result of doing singing as part of a group. If that's something that's repeated regularly, then that's not only the experience in itself, of these little moments of repose. So you know, moments when you're lowering your blood pressure moments, when you're lowering your heart rate, your breathing and oxygen, you're calming your minds, if they're repeated, we're getting those benefits more and more, but also the tools of that the knowing that you can regulate your emotions actually helps people to use that in other contexts outside of singing. And one of the things we've also been doing a lot of work on in the last few years is understanding how these mechanisms go beyond the individual but back out to the wider communities. So what we can see here is essentially a movement where you start to have more and more support more and more of this community building through activities like choirs and it might sound a little bit perhaps utopian to think in this way, but actually, in the UK, I think we've got something like 40,000 Community choirs, so that's a vast number involving huge, huge amounts of people. And that's just choirs not to mention all the other kinds of creative groups that are out there. So you can very quickly We start to see how these small individual organisations and groups of people can actually build into a much wider network.
Rochelle Burgess 15:07
Just to jump in on on that point, I think. And I know days that you've been sort of advancing the platform for social prescribing in England and across Europe really and beyond. And I just sort of wondered if you could talk a little bit about some of these other types of interventions, you know, how important basically sort of the arts on prescription become, really to health systems.
Daisy Fancourt 15:33
We know in the UK that in primary care, for example, around one in three visits to the GP is actually not around a medical problem, it can be around something that's social. So that might be around loneliness, it might be around broader social circumstances that people are living in. Now, these aren't things that a GP can write a prescription for. So what we're looking at is ways that we can support people that will assess the broader parts of their lives. So with social prescribing the concept is that a patient can be referred through a GP through another health professional, or even directly themselves to someone called a link worker. And this person will be able to help connect the patient through to things that could benefit them, it's actually assessing what might be the contributing causes. If someone's going to the GP with mild or moderate depression, there's probably something underlying that before the pandemic, we were really nicely placed in this, we had about a million community assets. So that was things like allotments, gardens, all these kind of group based things, libraries, museums, galleries, music venues, there's been a huge amount of strain on these organisations because of COVID. And we also do face an issue around inequalities, I guess, returning to that theme as well. And that sometimes you get more of these activities in wealthier areas. And therefore, you end up with a postcode lottery as to whether there are the right opportunities to find these in group experiences that people need to support their health. But nonetheless, I think it's one of the most exciting developments in the health service, since it began the fact that we're starting to think beyond health and consider how these other sectors can support health as well.
Xand Van Tulleken 17:02
Can I pick up on that, that lovely range of stuff, then, Eric, you the beginning described yourself as an artist, and I think you said that it was a state of your brain, which I took to mean that you cannot help but be that way that there is stuff that kind of needs to come out. So you've got a wide range of things, where part of what we're talking about is the community effect of you know, whether it's whether it's bird watching or sharing an allotment or being in a choir, and part of it is also that other specifically artistic thing. What does that do to your health? And how important is that?
Eric Whitacre 17:47
Well, I'll speak anecdotally. And then Daisy can back it up with actual hard numbers. Actually, Daisy, right, I'll just say things and you come with the science. So for me, what I have discovered over and over and over is that the simple act of creating something, and this used to be for me composing music, building note, by note this piece, it had a profound effect on my body. I know, everybody has experienced something like this, that I became quieter, more empathetic, I breathe differently. My day was simply better because of the experience of having done that work. And then ironically, during this past COVID time, I wasn't writing as much. And also I was looking for things to do with my family and here at home. And so I started cooking, I started gardening, I started building puzzles, I got the the crayons in the paper and did the colouring and all of this. And what's what's fascinating to me is it all has exactly the same effect, which to go back to the poetry description of it in my mind, is to create a sense of Twilight, not the terrible movie or book but that of bliss, the state of mind where where you're simply focused on the task at hand, and there's nothing else and I'm certain I'm I know Daisy will that will now say, yeah, here's the science behind that. It doesn't have to be sitting down and writing a symphony. It can be the simplest task.
Xand Van Tulleken 19:21
Is he right Daisy? Also, you lost us all the Twilight fans, they've all tuned out that's half the audience gone immediately.
Eric Whitacre 19:33
They know they know it's bad.
Daisy Fancourt 19:37
It's really interesting, Eric, but you're saying you're getting this not just from music, but from these other creative activities. And the way that we theorise it within my research team is we think about it in terms of the active ingredient. So this is how we think about pharmacological things we think about drugs, what are the ingredients in them that lead to the health outcomes. So with singing in a choir, for example, you're getting these different ingredients? social interaction, deep breathing a focus on posture and body awareness, you're getting by auditory stimulation, you've got a purpose to work towards, you've got this routine and structure in your day. There are so many other things we've we've identified, I think it's well over 160 Different ingredients. Now. Now with other activities, you'll probably take off a lot of similar things like if you're doing your cooking at home, for example, you'll be getting similar aspects of focus of meditation, sensory engagements, you might be missing some other ones like the social elements of your cooking on your own, but you might be gaining others instead. So what we tend to think about is that a lot of these creative activities share many common ingredients, your depression might be improved through singing, through gardening through cooking, it's likely because of the vast number of shared ingredients they've got for you.
Eric Whitacre 20:52
And Daisy, we also know that there's genuine hormonal changes in the body, right? While while these things are happening, especially when singing in a choir,
Daisy Fancourt 21:00
yes, these different ingredients then activate different mechanisms that affect our health. So the mechanisms can be things like reducing stress hormones, reducing levels of inflammation in our immune systems, helping us to feel mentally focused. So supporting cognition and cognitive development, supporting a sense of self and self esteem, socially connecting us with others behaviorally giving us routine and structure in our lives. So it's really that interplay between the ingredients, the components of what the activity actually is. And then the way those components affect us psychologically, biologically, socially and behaviorally. That's how we get these health effects.
Rochelle Burgess 21:37
Something I've been thinking about a lot while you've been talking. And Daisy, I know you touched on it earlier. It's some of the evidence that talks about the inequalities in terms of access and sort of people taking it vantage of things like arts on prescription, we know that actually, there's social patterns in the sense that you're more likely to have a middle class, I will say, Yummy Mummy in the sense that I now sort of find myself categorised in that framing of that kind of existence, where they will be more likely to have the ability to take up those types of things. And so some of that is structural, but a lot of that also can do with identity. And that that thing you're talking about, about people seeing themselves as belonging in the arts having a place with things like choirs, and because I sang in sort of classical choirs, you know, Eric, when he said the Requiem, my whole body just sort of had pins and needles, because, you know, I've sung many requiems, that one was one of my favourites. And, you know, people didn't expect that of me, because I'm a black woman, they didn't expect me to be in that type of music, creative space. And so it's an interesting thing to think about is how, how do we ensure equity and sort of uptake? When one of the things we work against or the way that people see themselves in the world? How do we sort of get around that? How do we sort of get to a place where people see that things like Mozart's Requiem is for them, or that choirs or for them, or that the arts are for them? Because if we're going to build that into a system of trying to create equity, and promote equity and health, that to me feels like a really big barrier.
Eric Whitacre 23:23
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really interesting. It's, as an artist, I never thought of myself as an Evangelical, that I would be like, trying to convince people that this is a good thing. And as part of that, evangelist spirit for the arts, I feel now that it's, it's essential for artists everywhere to start actively reaching into these communities, and bringing people into the fold. And it would be beautiful if there was a partnership with with health services and institutions. Absolutely. I think sometimes when it's talked about publicly, there's this idea that if those people who are on the outside could simply just make the effort to join. And I think it's not a realistic solution. We've got to go get them.
Daisy Fancourt 24:07
Daisy, in terms of when we're actually looking at this through research, there are a couple of really key things that pick up on what you were saying Rochelle about the structural issues that can act as barriers to people engaging, but also the psychological factors and that sense of identity that might feel like it's preventing people and with the structural things, we know there's a gradient socially across who engages in the arts as a voluntary activity. And this is often determined not just by your own socio economic position or education, but by that of your parents as well. So it's something that's passed down through likely through your early childhood experiences. And in fact, I've spoken to a lot of patients over the years who've gone through social prescribing. There was one in particular who was facing a number of mental and physical health problems, including depression, he'd had a stroke, chronic pain, and he wasn't doing anything artistic, but he was convinced by his link worker to do one session of painting, and it was just one session was what he was convinced to do. And It broke down that barrier of initially trying something out. And he was so hooked in that session that he's since gone on to be a professional artists leading his own community projects, but other people through social prescribing, one of the most fascinating things we found in my studies is that actually people from lower socio economic positions are often the ones that benefit the most from arts and creative and community engagement. It's having disproportionately large effects to those who need it most. Yeah,
Rochelle Burgess 25:28
it reminds me a little bit of one of my, one of my studies in South Africa, where we were looking at narrative therapy intervention, where it was combined, sort of storytelling, narrative therapy, and they sort of did these arts projects where they sort of built the storybook of their life. And when, when they were talking about this is for women in sort of living in under huge sort of levels of adversity and townships in South Africa. And in sort of talking to them after the intervention, and you know, you had depression scores dropping to zero, I'd never in my life thought that that's what I would see. And the thing that women said the most, was that, despite everything that was going on around them, engaging in that intervention gave them hope. And so it made me sort of start to think about the importance of hope, as mechanisms for improvement. And as I guess one of those, like active ingredients is the importance of hope. And which would be incredibly important in spaces where the structural disadvantage is so big, or the gradients are so big that people can't see it. Don't experience that. And so the, what that creates for them is, yeah, that's sort of nice to hear that because it's really beautiful reiterates that feeling from that study, which was really amazing. And after graduation, they all broke out into song, they all sang the they were all singing every women's group Sung was spectacular. Again, meeting of my two favourite things,
Eric Whitacre 27:02
how beautiful. That's the thing to write with, with hope, the most from a sense of purpose. I think that's the beautiful thing about in my part of the world with musical ensembles is that immediately you become, you become essential to the group.
Daisy Fancourt 27:16
It's fascinating how these, what we might think of as small states in our lives, more psychological states, they actually have profound impacts on our risk for illness, our ability to manage illness, and our ability to cope and live day to day.
Xand Van Tulleken 27:30
It's so I think, inspiring is sometimes an overused word. But it is very interesting listening to the combination of the two of you talking about personal experience with this kind of mighty heft of science, shoving it along as well are certain ingredients that you're talking about to do with community creative output, contribution, purpose and open those things do you have a kind of set of like, here are five things you should look for, you know, maybe it is that the ingredients of acquire or, or one of these groups that if you don't have them, you should be actively seeking them for the sake of your physical and mental self.
Daisy Fancourt 28:11
Something I tend to say is recommend people try and get their five fruit and veg today, don't they in their 30 minutes,
Xand Van Tulleken 28:19
I'm looking at I think that's what I'm looking for is like what is the equivalent in community arts of 5 fruit and veg a day?
Daisy Fancourt 28:28
I think I'd say do one creative thing every day. Even if it's only for a minute or two. It'll be interesting how quickly that'll probably spiral into doing a lot more.
Eric Whitacre 28:37
And also, there's the basics, right that if you drink a litre of water each day, if you get, try to get 678 hours of good sleep every night, read a book for 30 minutes, spend 10 minutes of quiet time not looking at your phone not doing anything, just just breathing, that we already know those have a massive impact on your daily life. I'll now say the most California thing that I'll say on this podcast, which is saying something which is that the Buddhist monk shouldn't be Suzuki Zen Buddhist monk. He described that the first breath of meditation as taking a long drink from a glass of cool water. And I found over and over and over throughout the day that if I just stop whatever I'm doing, just take a deep breath and think of it as drinking a glass of cool water and then exhale, everything changes. And oftentimes it's just these little steps to the left. Suddenly, lots of things come into focus. I'm glad
Rochelle Burgess 29:39
I'm glad you asked to. Our last sort of question that we asked everybody is again back to this idea of disruption. And this will be a good question for you guys in particular, to share a piece of art or music or poetry that has disrupted your perspective or way of thinking and sort of change The way that you engage with the world.
Eric Whitacre 30:01
Okay, so so I've got a good one, I think it's profoundly disruptive. And again, a little bit like that, that single, that's that single breath. It's a small thing. So during the pandemic time I've rediscovered stoicism, the philosophy and and writings, everyone from Seneca to Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Aurelius, amongst the 1000s of other diamonds of wisdom says this, Memento Mori, remember your death? Remember that you will die. Now live your life. And it's an extraordinary thing at any moment, anywhere you are, no matter how bad things are, no matter what is happening. If you just stop for a minute, remember, I'm going to die. I am. I'm mortal. And I know that Zen your reaction is what everyone's
Xand Van Tulleken 30:53
laughing because it's so strong, but it's so great. And you're you're doing it with kind of warmth and humour, which is lovely.
Eric Whitacre 30:59
Remember that you're gonna die, right? So
Xand Van Tulleken 31:05
mind the person next to you as well.
Eric Whitacre 31:08
But I'll tell you what's interesting about that is I actually think that's the that's that's the spirit with which the Stoics and especially Marcus Aurelius was delivering this message, the idea that this is not something with which to despair, this information, it's a hard disruption, it resets everything because it gives an urgency then to every moment you're living. It's a profoundly different life, if you can live and think that way.
Rochelle Burgess 31:35
Yeah, I can totally see that.
Daisy Fancourt 31:37
I wish I hadn't let Eric go first
Xand Van Tulleken 31:42
I was just gonna be like, great. Daisy, follow that.
Eric Whitacre 31:48
Sorry, Daisy, is it's hard to top death. I'm really sorry about that. That's coming into the top.
Daisy Fancourt 31:55
But I guess in my area of were doing scientific research on these factors that include arts and creativity, they sometimes feel like this real clash of two L's, but there was a really beautiful artists work that I came across a few years ago, she's called Clary Reese. And she does these amazing works in petri dishes, where she uses explosions of paint within the petri dish to create different colours, shapes, images, and she does one every single day, she's been doing it for years. So she must have 1000s of petri dishes, stored in a garage somewhere. But for me, I loved the idea that you could actually find this way of combining science and art so beautifully in this in this lovely circle, which of course gives that whole encapsulated feel. And for me, I've got pictures of her work up in my office. And that, for me, like just encapsulates what I'm trying to do each day, but also what I think is so important for public health, that people have that balance in their lives of the medical and the artistic, the creative and the health.
Rochelle Burgess 32:54
That was amazing. You could totally go say,
Xand Van Tulleken 32:57
I wasn't worried. I wasn't worried. I love that. That's it. It's lovely to hear a thing that you haven't heard of before. That's amazing.
Rochelle Burgess 33:06
Yeah. What a treat, and then look that up for sure.
Xand Van Tulleken 33:10
Thank you very, very much. Indeed. I hope that anyone listening would understand that policy is essential that public health has to engage with this but also that you as an individual, have your own your instincts, your creative and artistic desires, your desire for community. It's sort of scientifically, incredibly valuable for your health as well. So so feel inspired to pursue it. Thank you both very much.
Rochelle Burgess 33:38
It's been brilliant. Thanks, guys. Thank you. 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 Annabelle Buckland. Our guests today were Dr Daisy Fancourt and Eric Whitacre.
Xand Van Tulleken 33:58
If you'd like to hear more of these podcasts from UCL health of the public, subscribe wherever you download your podcasts or visit www.ucl.ac.uk/help-of-public forward slash, you're not going to type that in obviously just you can search engine of your choice type in UCL health or public. It'll get you there. This podcast is brought to you by UCL Minds - bringing together UCL knowledge, insights, and expertise through events, digital content, and activities that are open to everyone.
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