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Transcript: Episode 10

What does a physically distant COVID world look like?

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, mask, ucl, distance, metres, asymptomatic, feldon, wearing, sociality, virus, wash, thought, mark, greg, plastic, nick, shop, world, creativity, conversations

SPEAKERS

Nick Tyler, Mark Miodownik, Vivienne Parry, Gregory Thompson

 

00:02

Hello,

 

Vivienne Parry  00:03

and welcome back to Coronavirus the whole story. I'm Vivienne Parry, a writer, broadcaster, UCL alumna and host of this special UCL podcast, all about Coronavirus. We can't quite believe it. But we're already at Episode 10 in our series that's covered everything from mental health to viral spread this week as locked down continues to eat. We're talking about how to stay safe and alert of course, and thinking what a socially distant post COVID world might look like. Now, one of the joys of doing this podcast is extraordinary range of UCL researchers that we can bring together to add their perspective to a particular problem. And this edition is a classic.

We've got an engineer and material scientist and an award winning theatre director. So let me introduce them to you. My first guest this week is Nick Tyler the Chadwick Chair of Civil Engineering, who heads up UCL Centre for transport studies, but he's been best known in UCL for his love children, PAMELA and now PEARL, the Person Environment Activity Research Laboratory. Nick researches how people interact with their environment, and how that environment can influence the decisions we make. And with him we'll be talking about how to build a new socially distant world.

Welcome to Professor Mark Miodownik, my good friend and fellow Cheltenham Science Festival enthusiast from UCL Institute of Making, I'll be talking to him about the practicalities of being in that socially distant environment and answering every question you've ever wanted to know the answer to about face masks.

Finally, for all you staying at home, Greg Thompson, who's directed Shakespeare in English and Stratford on even in Urdu in Karachi, and in Nepali in Katmandu, but who has a home in UCL Department of Anthropology as a strategic lead for performance, creative and applied humanities. He's here to discuss staying connected and the new forms of digital interactions in our lives. So we're gonna start with Nick set the scene for us by telling us how you think COVID has changed society. Is there such a thing as opposed COVID world? And what does it look like?

 

Nick Tyler  02:17

Wow, some interesting questions there. Thank you very much. Vivienne. It's very, very good to be here. No, I don't think there is such a thing as opposed to COVID Well, I think COVID is here to stay. I think the question is how we as a species, adapt to it, and and socially how we change our behaviours in order to cope with the differences that it implies. And it's, so it's quite interesting to me I in the 1960s, there was a anthropologist in New York who observed how people did stuff in New York. And he observed the distances that they had between them while they were doing it. So he and he did loads and loads of films all over the all over the city and he came up with this idea of Creating science with proxemics as he called it, basically the times of how far apart people were when they were doing stuff.

 

Vivienne Parry  03:07

Say that word again, Nick, what's it called?

 

Nick Tyler  03:09

proxemics P-R-O-X-E-M-I-C-S

 

03:15

proximity great

 

Nick Tyler  03:16

Scrabble word to, and yeah, lots of points. And, and what he found was, you know, the people having conversations with each other, for example tended to be about one and a quarter metres apart. And, and that seemed to be so quite a good thing and it seems to be pretty consistent and across cultures and all of those sorts of things. And then people in a mobile sort of slightly more opens not conversational, but kind of recognising each other kind of way there would be about three metres apart. And then people just sort of kind of seeing that there was somebody in the distance that might be was this a friend or foe kind of decision point was around about eight metres away. And if you had people less than half a metre away, only, particularly favourite people came into that distance because if it weren't if they weren't particularly favourite people, and we're in that distance, it would be an act of aggression. And so he could sort of come out with these kind of distances. And those distances have kind of driven urban design ever since, in particular, in the last sort of 20 years ago, and people are young Gail, Danish architect very interested in the life between buildings, has been promoting these kinds of things in order to create more social spaces. And that has been very interesting thing and we've been studying these distances for a number of years. Then the last couple of years in using with my friend Pamela, we've been looking at this in a bit more detail as to why is it that people verse at one of the quarter metres, and the answer is actually quite interesting. It's basically because the voice and the ear work in such a way that in normal conversation, one quarter metres is kind of where it's comfortable to be. And our hearing can attune to that and our voice works. And also, in addition to the acoustical and sound issue related to that, it also happens to be a distance at which the fixation of Wi Fi, as the eye moves around to gain vision, okay, do what you actually see is comes because your eye takes snapshots, those snapshots work out at one or two metres to be about the size of a face. And that means that it's very comfortable to see somebody and to be able to see the micro gestures that they're doing. And in actual fact, to that distance, you can see about three people without having to do very much in terms of your own personal movement. So you tend to see groups of up to three or four people in all having conversations very rarely see a group of five, having a collective conversation, because actually, you lose one if you look at the other three. So it's a sort of interesting piece. There. So

 

Vivienne Parry  06:00

what happens though when you go on public transport because that's the key thing for all of us is because we can't actually have that two metres or one metre

 

Nick Tyler  06:11

indigent. Because in London Underground peak hours, we have about four and a half people per square metre. And that equates to sort of the physical footprint of a person is around about a quarter or fifth rather of a square metre. And that is, in other words, that is about what you get at four and a half people per square metre. So what people do is they contort and change and use devices to remove that intimate connection. So they will read a book, they'll have their phone by their face, they will contort their bodies in such ways that they don't actually face people at that distance. And that makes it extremely uncomfortable and very unpleasant. So quite correct about that. Now, but then and also that is not a particularly social space. So when COVID came along, so the world that we were in up to up to a few months ago, was, this was kind of how he saw people working. When COVID came, that all got blown out of the water, because suddenly we were required to be two metres apart. And that doesn't fit with any of those distances, certainly not the one for compensation. And so what happened? Well, what happened was the the sort of the primitive desire for sociality, that the thing that made the species divide and able to collaborate and find food 10,000 years ago, comes into play, and people start to do other kinds of social apps. So we have Italian people singing across balconies. We have Spanish people dancing on Roos, we had even in the dear old utero, people clapping for the NHS, whether or not they were clapping for the NHS, what they were actually doing was engaging in a communal social activity because we need we crave that social reality. So for me, I really dislike the term, so social distancing, because it that is not what we're doing. We are physically distancing. And we are retaining the sociality of society. Now the question for going forward in the COVID world is how do we maintain that sociality if the physical distance has to be different? Because what Edward Hall found was the physical distance and that turned out to be the same as the social distance. What we're now saying is that maybe the physical distance is going to be different. And if the physical different distance is going to be different, how do we actually make the sociality work? And that is something which we are now starting to look at. And unfortunately, the the day before the lockdown, I had a piece of kit delivered to Pamela a really cool piece of kit called f nears F stands for functional near infrared spectroscopy and what it means was to do is to scan the brain bit like a magnetic resonance imaging machine to scan the brain using light. So you can do things and have your brain scanned at the same time. And one of the things we want to do with this kit is actually have people having conversations at different distances apart and doing different activities and all those sorts of things, so that we can understand much, much more. What's the neurology of sociality, and that is, I think the really exciting thing that COVID is throwing up for us in that particular space.

 

Vivienne Parry  09:30

So can we briefly design a world which is preserves our sociality but also make sure that we're sufficiently distant and I know for me, it feels really weird being at two metres from people.

 

Nick Tyler  09:47

I think we need to figure out what it is that we need to have, so that two metres either either two metres is not necessary. That's one issue. We don't need to be two metres apart or We have a situation where we have to accustom ourselves to to me, what is it about that space that we can do that will enable us to be able to do that it may mean we have to change the way we speak may mean that we what tends to happen if you have people talking to metres distance is the sentences become shorter, is much more simplistic, is more declamatory, not particularly conversational. And so maybe that becomes the way that English is spoken in the future in the future generations also. But are there actually other things that we can do? Maybe we need to look at the acoustics to make it easier to speak at a more conversational level as a greater distance and still be heard. That may be something to do with thinking much harder about what is the ambient acoustic situation? What is the perspective for lighting because vision is a large part of hearing. And if we can actually get the lighting right, maybe we can actually buy a bit of help on the Hearing side, which is something we've been doing with hearing impaired people for some time. So I think there are things that we can actually do. And I think the design issues may not be so complex.

 

Vivienne Parry  11:11

That's fascinating. move on now to something that's beyond the environment and social distancing, but speaks to the point where we actually have to be physically closer to other people, for instance, in a tube train or in a confines of a, of a shop, or even a queue for Primark. That's happening more and more people have now I've got too close to where it's mandatory for people to wear masks on public transport. And that's when we need physical barriers. And Mark, what can businesses do first of all, to physically protect their staff and customers? And what role did materials play in this? I mean, for instance, we've seen a lot of acrylic screens been going up.

 

Mark Miodownik  11:57

Yeah, I mean, so I'm not sure Really quite how effective those things are going to be, they feel a bit more psychological than then then kind of warranted because inside of inside an inside space on the shop, you've got air flow and and the the risk is that someone who's asymptomatic. So if we just if we if we assume that people who who know they've got Covid-19, and not going out into the shops, and the only people who might infect you are people who are asymptomatic and that seems to be one of the big problems of this virus, which is that that asymptomatic phase is, is is quite long. For many people, so might be up to four days, then how could they impact other people? It turns out that at first, it was thought to be only by touch and so there was a big emphasis on hand washing, and that is also still important, but also now it's there's a growing body of evidence that it may be transmitted through aerosols or tiny droplets that come out and Your mouth when you cough, but also just when you breathe. And if you are infected with the virus, the virus is inside those little droplets and they are floating in the air. So the question you've got to ask yourself is, okay, so someone might speak and to you at the tail or across a distance, and these droplets might come out of their mouth. And they might then end to you. And also will, how long will they remain airborne for? And the answer is, it could be a long time because the smaller they are, the more they're sort of going to be in the air being boiled up by convection currents. So inside a train carriage in a shop in a physical barriers like acrylic, I'm not sure how important those really are except for psychological. What you really want is something that's going to be deposited before you breathe it and that's when you are talking about a mask. But to be really sure that you're not I mean, if I was in a shop and I wouldn't be wearing really sure that no one asymptomatic was going to be breathing into that air. And, and I was going to breathe the air in, you need something like a n 95 mask, so called

 

Vivienne Parry  14:11

flu shots and then 95 just reminders.

 

Mark Miodownik  14:14

So it stops particles or very, very fine particles 95% of them of entering your respiratory system. And so, you know, the chance of something getting into the system is reduced very, very, very drastically.

 

Vivienne Parry  14:34

But those are very much though the masks that people in health care might be wearing. And the concern is, isn't it that actually probably cloth masks are okay for for most of us and do a good enough job. And we should leave those masks for people who really need them.

 

Mark Miodownik  14:53

Well, so now we're into into risk versus benefit for the whole society I think because there are supply issues for the masks and that's why it's been recommended to the public don't wear them. Because then supply be used up. If you wear a cloth mask, what it's really doing is protecting others rather than protecting you because the cloth masks are not going to be at that sort of standard. And, essentially, if you're asymptomatic and you're breathing out and you're wearing a cloth mask, and the reason you're wearing cloth mask isn't because you think you've got it because you read cinematic so you don't even know you've got it. The reason you're wearing cloth is because everyone's wearing cloth mask because we all don't know whether we got it or not. And that's that's the major issue here is that if you get everyone to wear them, and as you breathe out, that cloth marks will stop a lot of these droplets anyway and keep them into your person. So that so it's not about you breathing in other people's stuff. It's just getting less of it out into the air. So so it's it's a subtle point here, which is that you want to protect yourself you want you want a high you want a very high certified mask if you're trying to protect the population and the people In the carriage or in the shop, you want you want a cloth mask because it is a very easily easy for a population to to obtain this model to make these masks, and it will protect a lot of people, but only everyone wears them.

 

Vivienne Parry  16:16

And another point is that cloth mask is made, you know, the name is on the tin cloth, and it's not made of plastic. And what we're seeing at the moment is an extraordinary proliferation of single use disposable items, you know, at a time when we thought we'd got plastic on the run. Now it's coming back to haunt us big time in the guise of masks.

 

Mark Miodownik  16:41

We've done some work on this and if mandating the whole population to wear masks for the next year was a public policy and everyone wore disposable single use masks which are made of plastic then then there will be 66,000 tonnes of plastic waste contaminated plastic Going into the waste stream of which there is no way to really properly handle it, plus the fact of this, it's plastic waste. So that's a really bad idea. So So it seems really important that when if the government and if on our immediate future for the next few years before, or however long it is, before we get a vaccine, everyone is going to be wearing masks, then what we need everyone to be wearing reusable masks to reduce the plastic waste, and it will have a huge impact because that's just the UK we've done our calculations for but if you think billions of people worldwide, wearing single use plastic masks and throwing them away, and we already seen them washing up in the seas, it's going to be an environmental catastrophe.

 

Vivienne Parry  17:41

I think that we ought to have an advert for here for how to make your own mask where can you find somewhere to be somewhere that will tell you how to make a mask? Could it be on the Institute of making website?

 

Mark Miodownik  17:54

So what we did is we thought, Well, look, there are lots of recipes out there for making masks and we Winstanley Make your own recipe what we realised was actually a lot of different ways of doing it suited different people, depending on their level of confidence and making their own mask and what facilities they have at home or in other places, what kind of community they're part of. So maybe they're part of a community who can make masks for them. Or maybe you want to make masks for other people. So we did a big survey of all the master designs out there and and we got an FAQ on our website, which is takes you through the steps you should take and assessing what kind of mask you might want for yourself and for your nearest and dearest and your local people who you might be looking after. And and if you look at our website, the Institute of making is called the face covering FAQ. And we go through things like well what happens if you wear glasses, which is the best mask for that because fogging is a big issue, or what if you're deaf and you wear a hearing aid around the ears becomes an issue. And so we've tried to go through all the different aspects of making a mask. simple ones, complicated ones, fun ones. serious ones, but also ones that, you know, are, you know, take into account that humans are humans and we're all different shapes and sizes,

 

Vivienne Parry  19:08

I have to say that I made one out of a sock, because it was a thing on the, on the internet about how to just make a mask by cutting down a sock, I just looked rather sinister. And it kept on popping off, which really wasn't the point of it. But talking about being a bit more serious about a mask, it's all very well and good when it's on your face. And, and of course, if you're coughing, it stops all those particles getting to other people. But there is a real problem about taking it off, isn't there and you need to be careful how you do that.

 

Mark Miodownik  19:47

Yeah, so I mean, it's it's really not very straightforward how to make get into good habits. I suppose. That's the point eight if we're going to be wearing masks, for the end of the until the end of the year. We all need to get into good habits about them. So imagine you're asymptomatic and you're, you don't know you're, you're depositing the virus on your own mask, but you're protecting other people by wearing it. So that's great. But now you've got a virus on your mask. So What you don't want is when you come back in or come out of the public transport, if you then just take that off and scrunched up and put it in your pocket, now you've got virus on your hands. And then wherever you touch, you're spreading that around the place. So what you've got to do is take off your mask, at that point, put it into some sort of bag, put that in your pockets, so you can wash it later. Then you've got to clean your hands. This is very, very important. Otherwise, a lot of us a lot of the value of wearing masks is going to is is going to disappear. And this goes for everyone. We just go and get really good habits of washing our hands very regularly, when we put take masks off, and then washing that mask as well. I mean, the beauty of the reusable mask is a it's sort of, as I was saying before you it produces less waste. But also, I mean economic from an economic perspective and lots of people, you know who this is, you know, it's not gonna be easy thing to suddenly get two or three masks you can use over the next few months. So washing it in your washing machine is up is what we recommend for two reasons. One, it's the cheapest way to do it. But two is that it uses the least energy and you might think, oh, gosh, now you're really going too far. But when you when you look at environmental impacts for millions of people wearing masks, it turns out the map energy used to wash them is actually a significant factor. And if people had washed these in hot water, and if millions of people do that, the amount of energy use creates a huge amount of pollution.

 

Vivienne Parry  21:40

So there you are. So there you are, folks, you you now know that you need to wash it but can I just give you a tip mark which is if you wash it at 60 degrees because you're watching other stuff, please choose a mask that doesn't colour run when you put it on 60 degrees because I have rather odd looking pink towels now that were white, thanks to the mask that I put in there at the same time. But thanks very much for that. And that Institute of making website is terrific. Just let me remind you, you're listening to Coronavirus, the whole story our podcast brought to you by UCL Minds. And if there's a question about Coronavirus, you'd like our researchers to answer please email us at minds@ucl.ac.uk or tweet at UCL. And we'd also like you to fill up a survey if you'd be so kind. Now let me go to our third guest. Now, some people are getting back to work, but a lot of people who can work from home or can't get to work safely are still needing to self isolate because of their susceptibility to the virus. And effectively they're still in full lockdown. So Greg, what are the challenges of staying at home and remaining connected is especially in this new partial lockdown period.

 

Gregory Thompson  23:02

Well, I think lots of people are facing lots of different challenges. I mean, in terms of people's work life, because we're sitting at desks interacting with screens for the most part, rather than being in rooms with other people. movements are restricted. So we're often having a kind of a next are in the same relationship. And depending on who we're talking to, so, you know, everyone's on the same screen. We're not doing those kind of the kind of stretching, moving, twisting our bodies, turning to face, other people, even just moving from room to room, our whole kind of sense of our physical existence has been diminished by the reality of the lockdown. I mean, it's great if you're one of those people who's been taking the opportunity to exercise more and exercise every day. But for a lot of people, they've just kind of reduced the range of their movement. And I wanted to talk to you today about a man called Ed Wardle, who I knew as as an actor, and he's turned himself into a feldenkrais practitioner. And he comes into UCL every so often on my collaborative enterprise modules and looks at how people organise themselves in space. And we do things like we go into the Bloomsbury theatre at UCL and walk across the space. Look at what what happens when you get too close to people. What happens when you are far apart in a space, all those different things to do with bodies in space and their relationships. So he's not and he's now transformed himself, as I said, into a feldenkrais practitioner, which is a system for helping people to move their bodies more efficiently. Feldenkrais was an Israeli engineer, and he got very interested in the mechanics of the body He developed this system for training your own body for learning how your own body works. And it uses very small, very easy shifts in terms of how you use your limbs, how you use your body in relation to itself. Usually when you teach that you might put your hand on someone's shoulder, you might manipulate their arm, you'll certainly look at how they're using their body. And of course, in the lockdown, the suddenly the question is, you know, how do you do this kind of stuff without being able to touch someone? And ad was kind of stuck at the beginning of lockdown. You know, I've suddenly got no clients, what do I do? And his initial impulse, like a lot of great people, a lot of it is that they must do something, they must be active. Of course, it's not just actors who feel the need to do something. So lots of people have had this impulse that they should do something every day and share it on social media. And also wanted to be altruistic in some way to, you know, to just offer something, and also the kind of doing something that would enable his own sense of discipline to kick in. So he started a Facebook group, invited people that he knew to join. And every morning at nine o'clock, he did a feldenkrais lesson for half an hour. So whoever was there, and of course, he immediately realised he was community, communicating with people that he'd never touched, and in some cases he'd never met. And he said, What kicked in was his sense of being a performer. That of course, you know, in the theatre, you're often broadcasting communicating to people you've never met. And he said, so this was a real shift in his Instead of thinking about this particular individual, he's who's in front of him and having a relationship with a as in with a one on one with a normal Feldon Christ session. He's then thinking, How do I reach lots of people that I can't see?

 

Vivienne Parry  27:16

So how do you become the Joe Wicks have a refined movement?

 

Gregory Thompson  27:23

Interestingly, Joe Wicks is about to stop doing his daily classes, he, some of his 64 million viewers might join Ed’s hundred and 60

 

27:35

and so on.

 

27:37

So Greg, tell me,

 

Vivienne Parry  27:38

you know, we've we've seen that COVID has accelerated change in an extraordinary way we've done in three weeks what perhaps we would have taken three to five years to achieve. So how much of this is going to go back and how much of it is going to stay in the digital spaces that we've now created?

 

Gregory Thompson  28:00

I would say none of it is going to go back. I mean, it's all an accelerated process of what we were doing anyway. It's just that we're all suddenly saying, Okay, now I know what zoom is, or Microsoft Teams or whatever these platforms are. I mean, you know, over the last over five years, we've all come to absorb them. It's just we've done it in, you know, five weeks. I think what is interesting is that people are communicating in simpler ways. We've accepted that there's a loss of nuance, or loss of complexity. And so we're often speaking in simpler sentences. We're speaking for less time meetings seem to be shorter. I mean, one thing I've noticed in the development of the creative humanities degree this new degree at UCL is that it's very hard to initiate new things over zoom. We're very good at going over things that we've already had a conversation about, that we We know about, but in terms of creating new thought, that seems to be reduced. So we need to find a way of how do we get our creativity back in this format, where we're not getting the same kind of social signals. We're not having the same haphazard conversations, you know, the kind of meeting in the corridor outside the, the bumping into somebody, as you get a bottle of water sale, you know, those kind of haphazard things. What's something that we need to recreate? I think in some way,

 

Vivienne Parry  29:33

that's really interesting, Greg, and actually, I wanted to ask because you happen to be three of the most creative people that we've had on the programme. So I wanted to ask, actually, Nick and Mark, how we get that creativity back because I'm certainly missing those real interactions. And it's all very well having a zoom cocktail, but it's not the same thing as sitting next to someone In a noisy bar. So, Mark, how do you how do you get that creativity back?

 

Mark Miodownik  30:05

Yeah, I wish I knew. And I'm really interested to hear Gregory's kind of analysis of the of you know how much the physicality really matters, but for those creative moments, I it certainly feels, you know, rings true to me that I haven't had any good new ideas. And I feel like most of the meetings I I am involved with is essentially kind of, we're sort of troubleshooting the status quo. We're not, we're not coming up with good stuff.

 

30:35

So yeah, how does that how does that work?

 

30:39

Any ideas? Nick, I think it's

 

Nick Tyler  30:42

both you and you mentioned in passing that I think what the secret is, I think it's about happenstance. And I think the thing about creativity is that is it's, it's our innate ability to make an advantage out of something that we didn't expect to happen and then turn that into is something that becomes formative in the future. So that might be a strange sound or an old rhythm, or just the chance meeting of somebody in maybe just seeing somebody who don't know, having a brief interaction as you go past them. These kinds of things are what then spark the process that we have, in our mind of actually then creating something and how we then represent what might be in music or poetry or art or science or whatever. But I think it's that that sense of how we deal with the surprise. So the great thing is, when you look at what we might regard as as sort of great art so I you know, if I were thinking of something, you know, Shakespeare or Mozart or Beethoven or something like that, the great thing about them is what they what they do is they create a false sense of security and everything is all quite normal and they lobby in something different. So they change, they change the metre of a line of poetry. And you're expecting it to have five big monitors. But actually, it turns out to have four. And what that does is then sparks the thought in your mind about something else. And that's, of course, why this was done. And I think that sense of being able to incorporate surprise, and, and chance and opportunity is actually really crucial to creativity. And so the question for me is, how do we create that in in the world? And I think that's about enabling seeing the world as a bit of a canvas that people can bring their own paint to, and how do we create that environment? And what that isn't, to me is a fantastic challenge.

 

Vivienne Parry  32:45

We're nearly to the end of our time, and I wanted before you will go to ask each of you. If you had a magic wand and you could make a change to the world, to this society and to As individuals right now, in respect of what's happened over COVID, what would it be? I mean, what would specifically would you change to help people stay safe right now knowing what each of you know, let's start with you, Greg.

 

Gregory Thompson  33:17

Can I can I say two things? The first thing is, I think we need to be bailing out people, not organisations or buildings. And the second thing is, we need lots of credible information out there on what this disease is and how it spreads, so that people can self organise, so that people can do that they will do the recommended thing if they understand it, I believe.

 

Vivienne Parry  33:42

Okay, how about you, Mark?

 

Mark Miodownik  33:44

I would have been much clearer right from the beginning, in making the importance of math clear to everybody, and and saying, Look, I know we live in a very open democracy and in Britain, it's a it's a very individualistic. And that's one of the delights of being part of Britain, Britain. But in this case, we need to do something that protects everybody. And it only works if everyone does it. And I would have spent much more time tearing people up to the fact that they're going to have to all wear masks. And that in doing so, that is a good thing for everyone that's more communal. And I think just trying to get Britain I'm really struck by the fact that some of the more communal societies in Europe particular have got got a lid on this far as much better than the more individualistic ones.

 

Vivienne Parry  34:35

Yes, that is really striking. Nick, how about how about you and actually you've already waved your magic wand I think on transport because wasn't it through you that drivers have become less exposed to virus by people boarding in the middle?

 

Nick Tyler  34:49

Well, actually, we brought them back boarding at the front now. We've done a lot of work on how to protect the drivers from co infection from passengers and And that is all being implemented now. But what would I do if I wanted to wave another magic? I think I think it's sort of picking up something mark. And and Greg said, I think there's a sense of commonality, the really important thing, the thing that struck me with the COVID thing is that what made communality difficult, is a lack of honesty in in saying what things are, and what is needed. And I think that has turned into people feeling very uncertain, and fearful of other people. And, and therefore, I think if we, if, if I could wave a magic wand, I would say let's all be a bit more honest about what we do and don't know what the implications are. What what's the reality here that people do not have that sense of fear of the unknown, and that she then can become much more communal in this game, we actually can exercise that sociality, which we all desire.

 

Vivienne Parry  36:00

Very wise words from all of you. Well, we've got to the end of our time, I'm afraid. It's been a fascinating discussion today. And you've been listening to Coronavirus the whole story. The episode was presented by myself Vivienne Parry, produced by UCL with support from the UCL

Health of the Public and UCL Grand Challenges and edited by the lovely Cerys Bradley, our guests today to whom very many things were Professor Nick Taylor, Professor Mark Miodownik, and Greg Thompson. If you'd like to hear more of these podcasts in UCL Minds, subscribe wherever you download your podcasts or visit ucl.ac.uk forward slash Coronavirus. And please, it would be really helpful if you could fill out that survey for us. 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. It's been a pleasure being with you. Hope to be with you again soon, bye for now.