A Professor of Psychobiology tells me how Art improves our Health

Daisy Fancourt is a professor at UCL who studies how taking part in arts and creative activities affects our mental and physical health, stress, wellbeing and social connection. Her new book, Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health, explores the growing scientific evidence behind these effects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Halt at the salty Garibaldi, you mouldy onions. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. My tour of England, Scotland and Wales is just around the corner, so I want to give it a tiny plug here at the start. My live podcast tour. This is mostly sold out, but there are some tickets left. I'm beginning in October, right? Starting on the 18th. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London is sold out, Glasgow is sold out, then Gateshead and Nottingham. Come to those live podcasts and suggest a guest for me and you'll get tickets for them at fan.co.uk forward slash the blind by podcast.

• 2:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've spent the past week working on my play. I was above in Dublin at the weekend, up at the Abbey Theatre. The Abbey are adapting some of my short stories into a play, which will be on, it'll be on the Abbey stage. At the end of September, the play's name is Animals. It's mostly based on short stories from my last collection, Topografia Hibernica. If you want to see that play, it's going to be running for about six weeks, from about, I think, the 23rd of September, all the way through October and into the start of November.

• 3:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  So go to that if that's something you'd be interested in. I'm fucking blown away. I'm absolutely blown away. I've been working on this play for about two years now. I mean, you know, that's the nature of my fucking job. I could be working away on something, but I don't, I don't mention it until, until I can confirm it's actually fucking happening. Failure is a massive, massive part of being a professional writer. So in the past year, I've had fucking movies that I thought were going to happen. I had a four, four-part, big-budget TV series, just at the very final stages of being commissioned, like literally

• 3:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  having the contract ready to fucking sign it. And then something crazy happens and it's like, sorry, we were commissioning this yesterday, but something completely out of our hands has happened and now the money doesn't exist anymore. This is not being commissioned. And that's this job. Consistent, gigantic, crushing failure. Well, it's not crushing failure anymore. It's just regular failure. The skill is to understand when you work in entertainment, writing, television. Expect disappointment. Never expect something to be commissioned. Never expect success. Learn to give a piece of work, you're all,

• 4:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  to put in the fucking effort, while at the same time knowing it's probably not going to get commissioned. You're going to work your whole off on something for six months and it's going to end up in the bin. And when it does end up in the bin, you're not going to feel disappointed because you never allowed yourself to get excited about it in the first place. You're just moving on to the next piece of work and also understanding it's not a fucking failure. Just because the TV show or the book or the whatever didn't get commissioned, you still created something in the meantime. You still wrote a script and that will inform a future success. There's no such thing as failure on a long enough time scale. If you simply tried, then you have succeeded. The only actual failure is

• 5:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  doing nothing because you were scared to try. But if you worked on something and it doesn't succeed, it doesn't sell, it doesn't get commissioned, doesn't matter. You fucking worked on something. You honed some skills, you got to practise, you've informed a future success. And that's not motivational speak bullshit. It's my, it's my actual professional experience. So my Abbey Theatre play, that's something I've been working away on for two solid years and it was only greenlit, maybe four months ago. And for that one project that's greenlit, there's maybe another six that got thrown in the bin. That's a lot

• 6:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  of failure. How I'm able to do that? Because of my patrons, the people who fund this podcast directly on Patreon. Because I can earn a living through that, I can financially afford to fail, which is very important. Because before I was able to earn a living through this podcast, let's say 12, 13 years ago, if I had a TV show in the works, which I believed was going to get commissioned, then I'm thinking, oh, that's my bills paid for the next six months. Fucking fantastic. This TV show is going to pay my electricity and going to pay my gas. And then when it gets cancelled at the last fucking minute, or doesn't

• 6:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  get commissioned, then the failure is existentially devastating. It's food falling from my mouth failure. The risk of failure is now massive, which then means the fear of failure becomes massive. This is why funding the arts is fucking important. But thank you to my patrons. I can fail all I fucking want and the worst that happens is I'm mildly disappointed. That's it. But the Abbey Theatre play that has been commissioned, it's going ahead, it's on sale and I'm fucking blown away. I'm blown away because of the amount of incredibly talented

• 7:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  people that are working on this play. Every single person working on this play is at the top of their game creatively. The director, Dan Colly, is doing an astounding job. The actors are unbelievable. I don't want to give too much away, but it's the National Theatre, hiring the best people possible. And because it's the National Theatre, it's not really being run on a for-profit model. So everybody's working on this, not necessarily to get bums on seats for this to be hugely successful. Everyone's working on it to make the best piece of art. So everybody's taking risks and everyone's being weird and being creative

• 8:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  and being curious. And I'm loving being able to, to hand my short stories over to so many brilliant, creative people and to have that, that lovely, safe, comforting feeling of, I trust these people entirely with the work. They're going to bring their unique voices to this and turn it into something beautiful that I wouldn't be able to do by myself. And I love that. I love the, the lovely trusting collaborative experience of making a piece of art, making a, theatre's really unique. It really is. It's an experiential art form. So.

• 8:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's hard to package it and sell it, this play, animals. Because of the way that Dan is adapting the stories. You have to be there, you have to physically be at it in order to encounter the work. A video recording isn't going to do it justice. Reading the script isn't going to do it justice. An audio recording isn't going to do it justice. You have to be physically present. It's an installation. It's a stained glass window in the other world. And theatre is one of the last pieces of... It's one of the last pieces of work where you can have scarcity.

• 9:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's very hard to digitally reproduce it and to feed it to the algorithm. You're either there, at the theatre, or you're not. And if you're not there, the best you can do is describe it to somebody, which is beautiful too. "I went to see this thing last night called animals. What was it about? Well, it's not really what it was about. You just, you have to just go and see it." And theatre can do that. So it's lovely to be, to be involved in something like that. So I was up at rehearsals and I don't know if you can tell from my voice, but I'm, I am burnt out to fuck. I am autistically burnt out to fuck because of the gigantic amounts of social interaction

• 10:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  that I was doing with multiple people over a sustained period of time, which I love doing. Of course, I love doing it. Speaking to creative people about art and having fun. I really enjoy that. But, what I'd like people to understand about artistic people. We don't, we don't necessarily avoid social situations because the situations themselves are like painful or we don't like doing them. We avoid social situations because of the cost of those social situations to our being, our nervous system.

• 10:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if I do two days of quite intense chatting with all those different people and all those faces that I'm reading and the eye contact that I'm making, all that crack, all that socialising stuff, which I love when it's with the right people. I have an internal battery that gets drained and then once that's drained, I lose skills. Skills of cop on, skills of planning, skills of being an autonomous, responsible adult. Executive functioning skills, it's called, but I think the way I described it there is a bit better. How do I know this is happening?

• 11:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  It, it's almost immediately after I stop socialising with people. Literally. It's worse when someone calls to my house, actually. If a person, if a person comes to my house, an area where I'm normally unmasked and myself, and then I have to do unplanned socialising in my own space. Literally the second that person leaves, the second they close the door. I feel like I'm being spun around in circles. The first sign of burnout is autistic burnout. It's disorientation, disoriented.

• 12:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's the feeling of, the example I always give because it's highly accurate. When you're on holidays and you're in a new city, you know where your hotel is. And on about the second day of walking around the city and back to your hotel, by about the second day, you have a little mental map of the immediate area. And you're like, I know how to get back to my hotel. And then something happens in the street where you lose your way. And for about 10 seconds, you don't know what direction your hotel is in. And suddenly you're in a city you're not familiar with and you're an adult.

• 12:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you have that little feeling of being lost and confused and disoriented. That's what, that's what burnout feels like. So I'll feel like that after I socialise with a lot of people. I'll get that feeling. And then I'll notice it and I'd ground myself and I'd go, okay, burnout now. Time to do some meditation, some mindfulness, checking out my body, checking out my environment, breathing, listening, feeling my feet on the floor and just saying to myself, it's okay. Your battery is drained, your battery is drained. And because of that, other stuff is difficult now.

• 13:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Let's just focus on one thing at a time. What are the important things? Wallet, keys. Like for years, before I had any fucking diagnosis, for years, I was like, why do I lose my wallet? Or leave my phone in a shop? Anytime I meet, I meet someone, anytime I bump into a person and have a chat with them and I'm kind of taken off guard. What the fuck is going on with me that I leave my phone behind? Or do something really, really stupid that I'm going to shame myself over? I used to think it was lack of confidence, low self-esteem, that I disliked myself so much

• 14:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  that when I'd meet another person, that encounter would rattle me and confuse me. And then I'd do something silly, like leave my wallet behind or forget my phone. Now I know it's called burnout. The social interaction fried my brain a little bit, drained my fucking battery and fucked with the remembering my phone part of my brain. First time, first time it ever, ever happened that I really noticed it and frightened me. I was about 10. I can't remember the exact details, but a fucking teacher screamed at me. An adult teacher screamed into my face. Another instance in my life where an adult should probably have been arrested

• 15:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  for the way that they treated me, but a grown fucking man. A grown man in his 50s screamed into my face when I was nine or 10, inches from my face. As close to punching me as he could, but using his voice. Anyway, it, it rattled me so much. It was just at the very end of school, like five minutes before the, the bell. It rattled me so much that when I then went to the shop after school, I accidentally shoplifted. I shoplifted one of those large tubs of Haggen Daz ice cream.

• 15:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  This would have been late 90s in Ireland. So a large tub of Haggen Daz ice cream was like a gold bar, a luxury item that you'd never even look at it. But when I was in the shop, I opened the freezer and picked up this big Haggen Daz thing just to stare at it. And then before I knew it, I was sitting in my dad's car, bawling, crying, shaking with this ice cream in my hand, not knowing, A, like how I'd just like stolen it from the shop. Utterly terrified that I'm now going to jail because I stole expensive ice cream.

• 16:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then being terrified that now that I had stolen a large tub of Haggen Daz, that I'm now in the car with my dad with the expensive ice cream and now he's going to be forced to buy it and it'll be so expensive that we'll be homeless. Now that's ridiculous. It was probably a fiver, even though a fiver was a lot of money in the late 90s. We're not coming at this from a position of rationality. We're coming at this from the, this is a highly burnt out 10 year old autistic child here. But it scared the shit out of me because I wasn't a shoplifty type of child. My ma worked in Duns. She would always tell me, never fucking steal.

• 17:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  When you steal it from Duns, you steal it from a big shop. It's always the workers who end up getting in trouble. They somehow get into shit. So if you think, oh, it's a big shop, your friends are doing it, they're stealing. If you do that, it's always the workers. They end up getting in shit, so don't be stealing. But when I'd stolen that giant, I didn't steal it. I picked up a giant tub of fucking Haggen Daz. Got that dizzy, disoriented feeling.

• 17:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then walked out of the shop and into my dad's car, not knowing that I'm effectively stealing the most expensive ice cream in the shop. And then I'm overwhelmed with very deep emotions of shame and guilt and all this shit.

• 18:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because an adult man had just screamed into my face and had short circuited my fucking social battery. That's autistic burnout. That's my earliest memory of it. But now as an adult, when that burnout feeling kicks in, I can ground myself. I can meditate. Keys, wallet, phone, groceries, write shit down. You know, if I can't hold it in memory, I can write it down on the piece of paper. I've got all these tools. But I'm like, something's gonna catch me out. Something's gonna catch me fucking out. So the other day, I had to return back from Dublin and I'm like, right, I'm definitely

• 18:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  feeling the burnout. I feel disoriented. Ground yourself. You have a bus to catch. Make sure you're packed. Don't leave Dublin without anything fucking important. So I had my list. Laptop, recording equipment, phone, keys, credit cards, all the really important stuff. Triple checked that's in the bag. You know what time your bus is? You know how to get there, plan the taxi. All sorted. I get onto the fucking bus. I'd left my shoes in the hotel. I'd spent so much time thinking about everything else. I forgot my fucking shoes. What's on my feet? It's because it was hot. I didn't fucking

• 19:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  notice. So I'm wearing flip flops and barefoot in flip flops on the bus. With bootcut jeans and flip flops. Nothing against anybody who wears flip flops. Nothing against it. It's just, I didn't consent to it. I don't want to wear flip flops on the fucking bus. I don't want to wear jeans and flip flops. That's not a choice I want to make. I can't put it off. I can't. Someone else might be able to pull that off. Look grand. Not me. What does it make me look like? It makes me look autistic. So I'm there on the bus and I'm practising self compassion and I'm going, look, it's not the worst. So who fucking cares? You're wearing sandals on the bus. People can see

• 20:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  your toes. Who gives a shit? So what? You're gonna have to be the strange fella. You're gonna be the weird fella for the duration of this bus journey. There was someone smoking heroin at the back of the bus. You know the Dublin to Limerick fucking bus. So worse things have happened on those buses than someone wearing barefoot sandals and jeans. I was mostly disappointed, just disappointed that I'd gotten everything else. Laptop, phones, wallets, keys, the rest of my clothes. I had it nailed. I was really happy that I'd managed to execute those functions. And then the shoes got me in the end. But then I said to myself, do you know what?

• 20:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  That only happened because it was hot. If it had been winter, I'd have noticed that my feet were cold and there's no way I would have left the hotel room in non-consensual flip flops. There were flip flops, not sandals. Orthopedic flip flops. I've big, chunky, orthopedic flip flops. Because I ended up injuring myself during the pandemic from spending too much time walking around on shit slippers. Not being able to leave the house and just walking around on shit slippers with no support. And I ended up with sciatic nerve problems during the pandemic. So I had to get these incredibly ugly, chunky, orthopedic flip

• 21:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  flops. So I'm wearing them on the bus, the bus down to Limerick. Then my phone rings. I answer the phone on the bus and it's Nostrak. One of the, one of the national radio stations, Nostrak. And they're going, how are you blind boy? Um, we noticed that the, the issue of bird droppings is in the news again in Limerick City. Would you be willing to come on to the radio live and talk about the impact of bird shit in Limerick City? Now, here's the thing. Radio stations. I get phone calls from radio stations maybe once every two weeks. So Ireland is tiny and the radio stations in Ireland on Nostrak

• 22:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  2 FM, Today FM, whatever, they need to fill their shows. They're on every single day and they need to fill that with content. So if you have any type of profile in Ireland, they'll ring you up constantly just going, please, will you just come on to talk about anything? Just for five minutes? We have a topic here and we think it might be relevant to you. Will you come on and talk for five minutes? And I always say, no, I'm not doing that. There's no point. And people kind of find it annoying. If you're just on the radio all the time for no reason, people find it annoying. There's no point. But anyway, I'm experiencing fucking burnout, executive dysfunction. So the part of my brain that's

• 22:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  supposed to go, don't go on Nostrak and talk about bird shit. Don't do that. Of course, I say, yeah, no problem. I'll do that. I didn't say, I'm actually on a bus. I'm actually barefoot on a bus to Limerick. I don't think it's a good idea if I go on live fucking radio. When do you want me? 15 minutes? Oh, great. I'm gonna be pulling into Kildare Village in 15 minutes. And I can talk to you, I can find a toilet and talk to you about bird shit on national radio live if that suits. So the bus pulls into Kildare Village, which is this really, it's not a village. It's, it's like a really long outdoors TK Maxx. It's full of outlet stores. And I go there and I find a public toilet and

• 23:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  I go inside and it's like, oh shit. Okay. I'm on live radio now talking about bird shit.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Good evening to you, blind boy. Um, this seems, we keep hearing about problems with seagulls around Dublin, but this is, is the Limerick version, the starlings. They are, they are everywhere. Is that right in this part of the city?

• 23:55Speaker 04

  How are you? And thanks for having me on. They're, they're on this one particular street, right? Bedford Row, which we call the bird shit district. And it's, it's a pedestrianized street that has trees on it. But in the summer months, you get about over a thousand starlings and they come there every, first off, they go over the Shannon River and they do what's called a murmuration. So they, they look-

• 24:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  What the fuck am I doing there?

• 24:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  What the fuck? So I did that. I did that in, in, in a toilet in Kildare Village with jeans and flip flops. There's nothing wrong with going on Nostrak. But there is. The fuck am I doing? There's, I'm not promoting a gig. I'm not, I'm not like, there's, what the fuck am I doing on the radio talking about bird shit in Limerick City? Like, I'm aware, I'm, I'm very passionate about it. I've spoken about it on the podcast. That's a different thing. That's not national radio. Does Tommy Tiernan do that? Can you think of-

• 25:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  any other Irish person with a profile who just goes on the fucking radio to talk about, talk about a foot pet? And then I, I finished, I get off live radio, get back onto the fucking bus and say to myself, what the fuck did I do that for? What'd you do that for? Why'd you go onto live radio talking about bird shit? Even though, yes, you are passionate about bird shit. Why'd you need to tell everyone in the fucking country about it on live radio? And then my phone starts ringing. It's my agent. Pick it up. What the fuck did you do that for? Why are you on the radio? I told a lot of promoters that you don't go on the radio to promote gigs and now you're on the radio just talking about bird shit. You're not promoting any gigs. So all of the promoters were like, why the fuck did

• 25:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  you go on the radio and not mention that you're doing a gig? Because I didn't mention anything. So, so that there, that happened because of burnout. I went on a bus, left my shoes in the hotel, jeans and flip flops in, in the toilet of Kildare Village, live on national radio, talking about the politics of bird shit and a fight between the council and the mayor in Limerick City. And that's the same.

• 26:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm in the car with my dad after stealing the haggard ass. It's the same shit, except now, as a, as a, an adult man in his 40s, I don't, I don't steal haggard ass from the shop. I agreed to do live radio and lose the ability to say, "No, I, I thank you so much for that offer, but I don't think I'd like to go on live radio and talk about the bird shit situation in Limerick City. It makes me look odd to the general radio listening public, and not in a good way." And that, that there is how autistic people get the reputation for being eccentric. That's eccentric behaviour. We caught it there in the wild.

• 27:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's eccentric behaviour in the wild. It's the, the things that slip through the cracks when you're trying to be normal and especially exacerbated by burnout. So I actually hadn't intended to speak this long for the introduction, but I have a wonderful, a live podcast for you this week. I recorded this in Belfast about six months ago, I think. My guest is Professor Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology. She's a profoundly accomplished expert in her field.

• 27:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  This chat, it really restored a sense of faith that I had in other human beings because Daisy, she led this massive study during the, the COVID pandemic. She led a massive study into the impacts on people's mental health and wellbeing, and the impacts that the COVID pandemic and lockdown was having on people's mental wellbeing and emotional health. And they collected massive amounts of data across multiple years with this study. And one of the things that impacted me greatly post-COVID pandemic was I came away from it

• 28:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  with a poor opinion of, of other people. Seeing how many very angry anti-vax people came out of nowhere, how many people ignored science, ignored lockdowns, put other people's health at risk, how many people behaved in ways that were really selfish, how many people sent me death threats because I thought it was a good idea that we wear masks and wash our hands. I came out of the pandemic with a much more negative view of humanity than I did going into the fucking pandemic.

• 29:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that was really sad. And the chat I had with Daisy on this podcast, she's like, "No, you're wrong. I have the data, I led the study." Most people wanted to help other people. Most people wanted to behave in ways that didn't cause pain, distress or injury to other people. Most people wanted to keep other people safe, and that's the data. The really negative people, they were just the loudest, but they weren't the majority, they were actually the minority. So I allowed social media algorithms, mostly social media,

• 29:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  which fed me very angry, distressed reactionary paranoid people. It fed me these things and I wrongly interpreted that as a good representation of society at large. So it's very nice, it's nice to find out that I'm wrong. It's nice to learn that I'm viewing the world through a very negative and pessimistic lens and that it doesn't correlate with facts or data. And I can now work on changing how I think and feel. So Professor Daisy Fancourt also does research into

• 30:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  the, the impact that art and engaging with the arts can have on our mental health. She released a book this year called Art Cure, The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health. And that was a bestseller. So we also speak about creativity and mental health. So this was a cracker of a chat. It's gonna be a long podcast, so that means you can listen to this in installments if you like. It's a cracker of a chat, so here we go. Professor Daisy Fancourt. What, what is psychobiology first?

• 31:14Speaker 05

  Psychobiology is looking at the relationship between psychology and biology. So it's saying when we have experiences, emotions, what is that doing to us at a biological level?

• 31:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Can I ask you a question? So now this, this is a really basic one, but I've been hugely interested in mental health literature over the years. And I first started to read about, we'll say emotions, understanding my own emotions and emotional literacy like 20 years ago. A word that has started creeping in more and more, and I don't fully understand it, is your nervous system. What used to be, you know, just minding your emotions has now turned into nervous system. And it kind of linguistically freaks me out a bit because it doesn't sound, do you know what I mean? I prefer words, it sounds too sciencey. But like, what is our nervous system?

• 32:05Speaker 05

  Our nervous system is the brain and also the system of nerves that runs across our whole body. So it sends messages back and forth so that our senses, what we experience is communicated back to our brains.

• 32:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  So is that if I get a pang of anxiety and then I feed it in my tummy?

• 32:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So that, that anxiety psychologically is being translated through your nervous system to your stomach. That's why we have those physical responses to stress and anxiety and emotions.

• 32:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  And has research changed a lot then over the past maybe 20 years? Where we start to, I don't know, look at these things holistically? That the brain and the body are a lot more connected than we might have given, given a credit 20 years ago?

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Exactly. We really used to think of them as quite separate, what happens in our brains and our minds and what happens in our body. But now we understand that they are fundamentally interconnected. So if you're feeling well psychologically, that actually translates through to things like better immune function even, even a reduced risk of catching colds from people. Whereas if we're physically ill, it can also mean that we start to have more symptoms of stress or depression or anxiety as well.

• 33:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Does it ever strike you that so much of this, 20 years ago, to speak that way would have been considered almost kind of airy-fairy holistic silly business? Do you know what I mean? And now mainstream science is going, "Hold on a second, this is actually what's happening."

• 33:33Speaker 05

  I think that's what's really cool about science though, is it changes because we discover new things all the time. And sometimes it really upends the way we think about the world.

• 33:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  You led a study about the impact of the COVID pandemic on people's mental health. And, I mean, Jesus, that's something. I mean, we all did the old pandemic, didn't we? Unless there's one prick in the audience who was like, "Fuck that, I'm doing what I want." And it's a strange thing, the old pandemic, because it was global and we don't fucking talk about it. Like, we don't, you'd never hear about it. Like, there's even a theory that the last big pandemic, the 1918 flu pandemic, that it's not present in a lot of literature from the time because people writing were like, "I'm not gonna fucking write about that."

• 34:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, for those three or four years after COVID, it's like, "Shut the fuck up about it. It's gone, I don't even wanna hear about it." But I know myself, I most definitely, I hate throwing around the word trauma, but I definitely have some little tea trauma from that pandemic. And I would say it left me in a state of hypervigilance that I don't think I've left it. And waking up every day and like seeing the Italian people and all their bodies piled up and then becoming obsessed with numbers every day and seeing how many people have died and the impact of that across a long period of time and the uncertainty.

• 35:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  After about two months, I was just waking up with palpitations as a given. And I don't think it's left me. Is that a common experience? Like, what, what were you finding on this study?

• 35:22Speaker 05

  Well, that was actually exactly why we wanted to run the study. Because in those early days and weeks, it was the numbers of cases and deaths that were being reported every day. But it's like, well, everybody is being affected by that, even if they're not catching it, which is why we realised we have to run a study looking at what's happening to people's mental health in this whole experience as well. We need to have numbers on that every day so that we can respond. And actually, one of the big things that came out was when people were seeing those numbers go up in cases and deaths, then actually that was one of the biggest predictors of mental health changes, of people's mental health getting worse. And we found that the more people were watching the news, the worse their mental health was getting. So it was this bizarre scenario where we were all glued to our televisions, wanting to know what was happening. But that was actually one of the worst things

• 36:07Speaker 05

  we could have been doing for ourselves.

• 36:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you had to stay informed as well.

• 36:11Speaker 05

  You did.

• 36:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  One thing that I found particularly difficult about it was at one point in my life, I used to struggle with, I had agoraphobia. When I was like nineteen or twenty and I would be afraid of like when I was nineteen, twenty.

• 36:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Being in public spaces, I would have safety behaviours where I'd be afraid to touch door handles in case there were germs, all of this type of stuff. And I conquered it and I got over it with CBT and became someone who did not live the life of an agoraphobic anymore. And then when the pandemic hit, every, it all came back to me as a rational response. It's like, I'm supposed to be afraid to go outside. In the early days, it's like when we all thought you got it off door handles. I'm afraid to touch door handles. And then there was the, did you all do the very fun practice of disinfecting your groceries? We all had that one on our hands and knees in the hallway while the Tesco delivery gives us

• 37:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  some cornflakes and all of a sudden you're putting antibacterial wipes on the cornflakes. That wasn't great for me at all. I mean, that was nuts, wasn't it? And when were you doing this study? Was it like afterwards or during the pandemic?

• 37:29Speaker 05

  It was during it, live during it. We were collecting a survey every twenty seconds of the pandemic so that we could see in real time. So we did it as a citizen science experience. There might even be people in the audience who were part of it. So anybody could sign up and we asked them to do questionnaires about how they were feeling. And then we recontacted everybody every single week, but everyone was being contacted at slightly different times. So we had this real time monitoring and we had seventy five thousand people who did the study for two years, giving us those repeated data. And it was phenomenal. It was data that helped us to decide when to release lockdowns, how to design the vaccine rollout. And it was all from the generosity of people being willing to take part in that study.

• 38:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  And

• 38:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  how would you feel about, like, another thing that was really tough during that period was everybody was experiencing mental health difficulty, but even to access mental health services now was over a Zoom call. And I know, because I, I trained to be a therapist a long time ago, the importance of physical presence, the importance of being with a person, empathy, body language, all of this. And now all of a sudden, if you're speaking to a therapist over Zoom, a huge amount of that is removed, you know? So you're just left with the voice and you're still listening to someone.

• 38:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, I want to ask you questions because I know, like, as a scientist, you're going to be like, data, data. But like personal opinion, would you like to find out how people are right now, six years on? And what would be your opinion about how people are doing? Because I, I think we didn't deal with that at all. I think we just were like, pretend it didn't happen and move on.

• 39:08Speaker 05

  We do have some data showing that, you know, many people sort of have found a way through and they're as fine as people normally are anyway afterwards. But there are still some people who feel they're really badly affected by what happened because it is, as you call it, a trauma. It's a lot to process and everybody was technically in the same pandemic, but people's experiences were very, very different depending on their own life circumstances and their own personalities and background as well.

• 39:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the reason I was hesitant to say the word trauma as well is around twenty twenty three, when we came out of that lockdown, I remember using that word online and so many, it became a trauma competition. Like some people, I was lucky enough to not lose someone, you know what I mean? To not lose a person close to me to COVID. And some people took exception to, we'll say, my use of trauma or that person's. And it was,

• 40:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  it was, I couldn't believe there was that much pain, that someone would be taking offence. You didn't have as much trauma as me. I had more trauma than you. And it felt so unprocessed, if you know what I mean, that they had to try and hold on to it, you know?

• 40:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  How do you think people are doing now?

• 40:22Speaker 05

  Well, we know that there is still, you know, high rates of mental health problems. And actually, we know that in general, mental health problems are getting worse in many countries. I think one of the things I found quite interesting during COVID though, was that people were having to find their own ways to cope because, you know, it was very hard to access mental health services, for example. But there was something that actually became a really collective response and we saw it all around the world. We saw people in Italy like singing from their balconies. In the UK, we all started painting rainbows for the NHS. You could stream plays online from national theatres that were releasing things. We were all binge watching Netflix, reading books. Bizarrely, the arts became this kind of collective way for people to process things.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  And I found it quite interesting because there was actually an article in the Singapore Times, which asked people to rank what were the jobs that are the most and the least useful during a pandemic? So obviously doctors, cleaners, they came up top. The most useless job was artists, according to the public survey.

• 41:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  I remember seeing that and getting very annoyed.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  But it was bizarre because what would we all have done without the arts when we were in those lockdowns? It was what we were all turning to, to help us process and get through that time.

• 41:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, people did a lot of box sets.

• 41:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  But we did like, I mean, people rediscovered The Sopranos. It was fantastic. What do you think we're seeing now? Is it, is it an uptick in anxiety? Is it an uptick in depression?

• 41:49Speaker 05

  We're seeing a range of problems. I think one of the, the big things that's on a lot of people's minds is youth mental health, because we are seeing that there are increasing rates definitely happening now that are not just attributable to COVID, but actually seem to be a lot more than that. So we're seeing rises in the number of young people who have a probable mental health disorder. And we're also recognizing now that it can then be really hard if people have got very long waiting lists. So it's sort of about, well, how can we help support people where they're not just being told, yes, you need help, but you've got to wait a year before you can even see somebody?

• 42:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you're looking at that data, I mean, I'm assuming it's not just one thing.

• 42:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like people love to blame phones. Now phones aren't, aren't great and the amount of news that we get is quite overwhelming. But then you've got climate clats and then you simply have the fact that

• 42:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's structurally very difficult to be a teenager right now. Like I'm, I'm an elder millennial, so I'm that strange generation where we were told, go to college and you're going to get a job, simple as that. And then the recession hits and you find out that's not true. And the idea of having a full time job, full time contracts, that these things are just gone. And that was my generation. I don't know what the fuck a fourteen year old is thinking about now with their future. But now people are saying AI is going to come in and you don't even know what jobs are going to be here in ten years. So I'm trying to think of all the different

• 43:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  distractions and painful things that are leading, are, are we better at diagnosing?

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Diagnosis is something that isn't, you know, it gets talked about a lot. And actually, I think it's really important that we can help to diagnose because often people are having experiences and they're not sure what they are, they're not sure what they mean. And actually diagnosis can help people to find appropriate treatments. But I also think it's really important that we're thinking before diagnosis about the things that can help people to stay well in the first place. What are the things that will build resilience? And one of the challenges that I think we have in education at the moment comes back to what you just said about jobs. I read an article recently that was saying seventy percent of the jobs that the current young generation are going to do haven't even been invented yet. And this means that we're trying to work out, well, what are we training young people for? And we often put a lot of pressure onto particular skills we think are important in schools.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  But actually, we know we have problems around resilience and mental health and wellbeing in young people. And actually, some of the things that are really good for that, like helping young people to engage in arts and music and creativity, things that build imagination and critical thinking and compassion, all of these things are actually really deprioritized, even though they're probably the skills that are going to be the most important.

• 44:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's the thing I really want to chat you about. And I wanted to leave this chat more to the second half, but before we break,

• 44:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  the research that you're doing, which I find most fascinating is you're looking at the impact of the arts on our mental health, which I think is so fucking valuable. Tell us about that research that you're doing. And, and for no, tell us why, why, why did you decide I want to research the impact of art and mental health?

• 44:56Speaker 05

  I actually started in the arts world. I come from a family of musicians.

• 45:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go way out of it, okay.

• 45:01Speaker 05

  I worked as a professional pianist initially.

• 45:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  But I got this incredible opportunity to work in hospitals a day a week whilst I was training and it was delivering arts programmes. And it was the most incredible experience because I saw firsthand these, and these amazing effects that the arts were having in hospitals. I remember a little boy who had really bad burns in A and E. And then when they brought the theatre group in to perform, suddenly he didn't need the morphine anymore. And there was a patient with dementia who couldn't remember her relatives, but then was singing along word perfect to a song. And I was just absolutely amazed by what I saw and I was desperate to understand what was happening. So I decided to completely retrain in science in order to be able to research this and really be able to explain and articulate why the arts are so valuable to our health.

• 45:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that again is a phenomenal thing because to say that maybe forty years ago, thirty years ago, people would just go, that's holistic nonsense. Do you know what I mean? That's, it would, to say, oh, music is healing, music can heal your health. They just go, no way. So you're, you're doing the science to go, actually, I think. And are you bringing them, is it the nervous system? Is that, how is it happening?

• 46:13Speaker 05

  I mean, I think I'd say one thing, if you look back in the nineteen eighties, people were still arguing about whether exercise was good for our health.

• 46:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  Go way out of this.

• 46:20Speaker 05

  So just shows we do change our mind on things. But yes, actually, what's really exciting in the evidence base now is it's not just people saying that they feel better, but we can actually see this physiologically. We can see in the brains when we, in our brains, when we engage in things like music and it helps us to feel happier. That's because we are activating reward networks in the brain leading to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine that help us to feel happy. When we say that we feel relaxed doing something arts based, it's because we're actually having a reduction in that nervous system activity we spoke about. We're actually seeing a reduction in our stress hormones like cortisol as well. We actually even have evidence that when we engage in the arts, it affects our immune function.

• 47:01Speaker 05

  It lowers levels of inflammation in the immune system, which are related to symptoms like depression as well as physical illness. And in fact, we even know now that arts engagement affects the expression of our genes. So people who are regularly engaged in the arts actually have patterns of gene expression that indicate that they are biologically younger.

• 47:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's mad.

• 47:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, Jesus Christ.

• 47:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  That young lad, the young lad who had the burns and didn't need morphine, did you ever get to the bottom of that?

• 47:38Speaker 05

  Lots of studies have been looking at this because it's something we actually see quite repeatedly. If people listen to relaxing music or they're distracted by arts, even like before they've had operations, they actually need fewer analgesics, fewer painkillers after the operation. So part of it is a reduction in stress response. When we're more stressed, then we're more likely to experience those levels of pain. Part of it is distraction as well. There's only so much cognitive bandwidth we have, so any kind of distraction can reduce the symptoms of pain. But also when we listen to music or art, it actually activates some of the same regions in the brain that evolve, that are involved in pain, involved in the release of endogenous opioids, so natural opioids within us, that actually help to reduce that pain.

• 48:22Speaker 05

  So it's this whole combination of psychological and physiological effects that mean that music is actually an art, is actually a really effective pain relief.

• 48:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  What do you hope for this, for this research? Do you hope to bring it to a government of some description and say, here's, go and invest in the arts, it's more than just cool songs?

• 48:41Speaker 05

  I think I kind of hope the same as exercise. I think, you know, we all want to do exercise just because it's, you know, it can be really fun to go walking or swimming or whatever, but actually it's really important to know about the health benefits because then we'll know, like, when we're feeling stressed, that going for a run is good for us. Well, equally, it's important to know that the arts can support all of that as well. It's helpful for people to know sometimes that arts could be helping aspects of their health, that they don't have medical solutions to, like, aspects of mental health as well. It can even help to know that arts could be a good substitute. You know, studies actually show that music is more effective than anti-anxiety medications at helping to reduce anxiety before surgeries, with none of the side effects.

• 49:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, the thing is, is you're saying this stuff now and it's, you're supported by data, but you're also saying stuff that, like, we all know and feel that, you know? That's the beauty of it is, you know, I always say, when I was eighteen, nineteen, and I was experiencing pretty difficult mental health issues, mainly like panic attacks when you don't know what they are, are pretty bad. Like, panic attacks are no crack anyway, but when at least you can go, that's an anxiety attack. But when you're getting panic attacks and it's just like, it's a Wednesday and I feel like I'm dying, you know what I mean? Like, because, like, that's the worst. It's like this thing happens to me out of nowhere where I think I'm in the middle of dying.

• 50:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then you go to a therapist and it's like, oh, that's just a panic attack, and labelling that alone. But I'd gotten to a point where, ah, Jesus, I say, I wasn't far from suicidal thoughts, I was that way. And David Bowie's music definitely saved me, without a doubt, because it gave me meaning and purpose. And when I was listening to Bowie, especially, it was the days before the internet, so I used to have to save up for the CDs and I'd wait for the next album and wait to save up to twenty-five quid. I was not experiencing pain when I was listening to that music, and it gave me that little bit of meaning to push through, you know?

• 50:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  And no matter how dark I was feeling, that music fucking saved my life. And it's one of those things where, when I speak about it, like I said, it feels too holistic, but now you're going, no, not at all. That was working for me as a form of mental health treatment.

• 51:01Speaker 05

  Yes. And actually, when we listen to something like music, sometimes it's happy music and that just sort of lifts our mood and it gives us those dopamine releases. But other times, it can be sad music, it can be music that gives you that authentic emotional connection and makes you feel understood and validated and gives you a way to release those emotions and process them.

• 51:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, all this, I've always wondered, out of all the arts, when it comes to music, so many songs are written about heartache and love, do you know what I mean? Compared to, like, not all books are like that, not all paintings are like that, but within music, heartache and love is very much overrepresented as a theme. And people listen to certain things when their, when their hearts are broken, you know? And what's the album? Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan is considered like one of the great breakup albums. If someone is going through a difficult breakup, they're told to listen to this album, you know what I mean? And that is, is that a catharsis, so is that what that is?

• 51:59Speaker 05

  It is. And actually, there's something that, it's actually known as the tragedy paradox, the idea that in our own lives, we often want to minimise sort of suffering, but actually we're often drawn to it in the music that we listen to and the art that we engage in. And it's actually because our brains crave those experiences to help to understand those really difficult emotions. But when you're listening to a song or you're reading a story or watching a film, you know that it's art, which means it gives you a little bit of a distance, which means your brain can contemplate those emotions, can feel them, can practise managing them, but you've got that little bit of space and it means that you're honing what's called the predictive coding of capacity.

• 52:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Get out of this.

• 52:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's actually healthy then to be able to navigate your raps.

• 52:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sing.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  What do you think heavy metal does?

• 52:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because I wonder about that. Heavy metal is on it, it's, oh, it's so, like, I love heavy metal, but it's a strange one in that most music, I find, it tends to be about being in your twenties. A lot of artists can't make it beyond their twenties, their music is so focused. That's why, just my personal opinion, right, but I think if there was a Martian, David Attenborough, and they were looking at art, they would call music a mating ritual, do you know? I always say, dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

• 53:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  But metal isn't that. Metallers, you can have a heavy metal band and they're in their seventies and that's absolutely fine. It's, it's, it's better, actually.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  I feel heavy metal gets a bit of a bad rap as well, because heavy metal is, people sometimes think it makes people angrier. There have even been, no, but actually, you're right, the studies show it doesn't. Actually, people, when they listen to heavy metal, so long as they don't hate it, if you hate it, it makes you angrier.

• 53:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Or they use it as torture in Guantanamo Bay.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. But if you're, if you like it and you're listening to it, people actually end up feeling happier and more peaceful afterwards. And they actually did some experiments to try and work out, like, what is this about? They actually did a really cool experiment with hot sauce. So they, what? Well, they had to think of a way of testing aggression in a safe and ethical way. So they asked volunteers to spike another volunteer's drink with hot sauce.

• 54:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay.

• 54:19Speaker 05

  And they, so generally, people just put a little bit in, and then they played them some heavy metal music, but just with sort of neutral lyrics. Again, they actually put in the same amount as the non-heavy metal group, and then they put in heavy metal music with really violent lyrics, and they went nuts on that hot sauce. But the point was, it wasn't about the music, it was about the lyrics. If we have any kind of violent speak or whatever, then, then that does make people be more angry and aggressive.

• 54:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  But it's nothing to do with how heavy or metal-y the music is.

• 54:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  Really? And are we rehearsing any emotions with heavy metal, do you think?

• 54:55Speaker 05

  Well, it's, it's the same kind of process, you know, taking emotions that are sort of visceral and angry, but you're, it's actually helping you process and experience those. As long as the lyrics aren't very violent, then actually it has that same cathartic process that means that you do feel generally happier and more peaceful afterwards.

• 55:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a band called Cannibal Carbs, and, like, they're very, very dark heavy metal and they have a, so they, their lyrics are, I wouldn't even describe them, just the most violent lyrics you could think of, but they're growled and barbed, so you can never understand them. So it's like that part that they understand, that you'd never understand it, you'd have to read it and go, what? That's what this song is about all along, my god. And I'm gonna give you a break for a small little pint and a piss.

• 55:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you can go in peace for about fifteen minutes and then we come back out, all right? Douglas. Let's just have a little quick Ocarina pause now, before we get back into the second half and speak about art and the impact that art can have on our mental health. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I pay my rent. This is how I pay my bills. This is how I feed myself. This podcast is my full-time job and this is a listener-funded podcast. Thank you to all my patrons because by funding this directly, as I mentioned earlier, I have

• 56:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  the freedom to fail, the freedom to be curious, the freedom to experience burnout and still be able to deliver a podcast each week. To fund this podcast, all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, listen for free. Just listen to the podcast for free, that's no problem. Because the model that we have here is that the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast, whether you pay or not, and I get to earn a living. It's a model that's based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast.

• 57:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  It also keeps us independent and not beholden to advertisers. Speaking of which, here's the Ocarina and some fucking adverts.

• 57:24Speaker 06

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• 1:01:19Speaker 06

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• 1:01:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's gonna drive some dogs wild.

• 1:01:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the Ocarina Pause. That was some adverts. UK tour, starting off October 18th. These gigs are very close. Some of them are sold out. Tickets are low for the rest. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, sold out. Glasgow, sold out. Gateshead, Nottingham. Come along to those live podcasts if you're near. fan.co.uk forward slash the blind by podcast. Then, I'm at Electric Picnic on the Saturday, I believe, in the Minefield Arena on the theater stage. I think those details are correct. I have a gig in Sligo, I think, in November, in the Hawxwell Theatre. That's correct.

• 1:02:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think it's November. We'll figure it out. It's up in Sligo, mostly sold out. Then Australia 2027. This is almost sold out as well, but I'm in Australia in fucking April. I'm just trying to find the dates here. Can't fucking find them. Hold on. Brisbane and Perth are already sold out, okay? In April 27. Auckland. Melbourne, the Palais Theatre. Then the Sydney Opera House. Tickets left for those, but they're all very nearly sold out. You'll get all of this shit at theblindbypodcast.ie, assuming the website is working. I have someone, I have someone paid to make sure the website is working,

• 1:03:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  but I, I wouldn't trust my website if I wasn't me. I'm the type of person who'd have a broken website. I don't, I don't trust myself to have a functioning website. I don't believe it. But you can give it a crack if you want. Back to the chat with the magnificent Professor Daisy Fancourt. Check out her book, Art Cure.

• 1:03:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  There is Daisy's book. Who, who gave me the gift of the large whistle backstage? Thank you so much for that. Is that a bass whistle? Wow. It's, is, is that, is it a Protestant whistle?

• 1:03:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, is it? Fantastic.

• 1:03:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm gonna get out my questions. I don't want to say we've lost touch with art, but what I would say is that art and our experience of it has very much been absorbed into, into capitalism. Art has become something that you purchase and consume. And, like, I think we've lost a sense of making art in a community just for the crack, and there's no such thing as being good or bad at it. You're simply doing for the sake of doing. Um, one of the most annoying parts of being a little child is when you're in school and everybody plays with crayons. And then you get to about four or five,

• 1:04:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  and you're put into the camp of you're good at crayons and you're not. And the not people just stop. And then you have all these adults who do not create art at all because they're not good at it. And you don't have to be good at art. You, you do art for the sake of art, because it's a human thing. Art, do you think art is uniquely human?

• 1:05:00Speaker 05

  There are other species that do things that, like singing, that make, make sounds like singing. And, you know, some of them actually do it for recreation rather than just for communication. But I'm pretty sure that our art-

• 1:05:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who, who's that? Who does that?

• 1:05:12Speaker 05

  I have to admit, this is going beyond my expertise, but-

• 1:05:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is it a bird?

• 1:05:16Speaker 05

  I've heard it about birds. I think, is it gibbons apes as well? They sing to each other?

• 1:05:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wanna hear a gibbon singing. Oh, my God. So they make noises for aesthetic pleasure?

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  That is what I've heard. But I, like I said, I'm much more focused on humans. So this is really-

• 1:05:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, I am an expert in nothing, so I'm happy to sit up here and talk out of my arse. Um, have you ever seen a bowerbird, no?

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:05:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're a very fancy bird that, oh, they build magnificent nests. But I don't know is that art? Because I don't think the bowerbird is sitting back going, look at my wonderful nest. It's more of an instinctual thing. Whereas, I mean, have you ever gotten to the bottom of what art is? Like, what purpose? Like, why do we do it?

• 1:06:05Speaker 05

  It is a really interesting question, that. Because actually, when you look back across human history, right from the first examples that we have of art, they seem to have been involved in things to do with health and with healing. Um, we think that things like singing may have at least partly evolved as a way of supporting group cohesion. So we used to bond through grooming in groups. But as our brains got bigger and our social groups got bigger, that took too much time, so we needed other ways. So singing became a much more efficient way of bonding and communicating in groups. And even now, there are studies that show that if you get together with a whole bunch of strangers and you all sing together, or if you get together and you chat or you exercise in the gym, the ones who sing bond faster with one another.

• 1:06:49Speaker 05

  It's called the icebreaker effect.

• 1:06:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Well, football, chance. I mean, that's what it is. I just, I want all the football lads now to start picking ticks out of each other's heads.

• 1:07:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  So, we at one point are- ancestors were picking ticks like monkeys and then that turned into singing.

• 1:07:09Speaker 05

  And gradually then evolved into language as a way of communicating and bonding as well.

• 1:07:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  They think that singing happened before speaking?

• 1:07:17Speaker 05

  That's what some of the theories are now that singing may have actually been introduced about 200,000 years before we started speaking.

• 1:07:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what then about visual art?

• 1:07:26Speaker 05

  Well, some of the earliest expressions that we have of visual arts are cave painting, which often are found alongside like early bone flutes and earlier instruments. And actually, it looks like those were used partly in things like fertility rituals. There were really carved bone figurines as well. So that's some of this sort of early intertwining of arts and health together.

• 1:07:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  How much of that was part of your research? How much of it was evolutionary psychology?

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Well, it comes from all different from work. It comes from evolutionary psychology, also from archaeology, lots of different fields that have kind of put the evidence together to be able to sort of try and figure out what the origins of the arts were and why.

• 1:08:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  We used to have a tradition here called keening.

• 1:08:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  And there's no keeners left. And keening, if you all know what keening is, do you? So keening, eh, very west of Ireland, but if someone died, you would hire a woman who would sing at the funeral. And it was more than just singing though. It was, yes, there was a song, but it was an expression of grief for everybody. So she was like a conductor. So she was a conductor for everyone's tears, but it was deeply spiritual. What I ended up finding out was

• 1:08:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  women who were keeners, first off, they were gifted with it. They believed that they were gifted. They were cursed by it as such. A keening woman could never refuse. So if someone came to her and said, this person has died, she had to go to that funeral. But especially during the likes of the famine where there was lots of people dying, they would get burnt out from too much keening. The reason they were terrified of turning it down is if a keening woman turned a funeral down, when she died, she'd turn into a banshee. And a banshee was

• 1:09:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  like a woman who would appear as like a ghost that sings and announces someone's death. And what I love about it is

• 1:09:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  the relationship that keening has with the banshee is it's a turn and response singing, but it goes through time and space. So the banshee sings before someone dies and then the keening woman sings after the person dies. And that ties in then with the Irish idea of the other world. Cause we didn't have heaven or hell. We had a, I'm gone very much off. I'm a tangent there now.

• 1:09:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  But keening was a thing, right? And obviously, like I said, that there's a deep mythology with it. There was a meaning. These people were gifted. They weren't just handy at singing. The sad thing about keening is we don't have any recordings of it. There's one, there's one recording because the keening woman, when they interviewed her, she's like, here's that dude with a microphone. Will you sing? And she's like, where's the body? And he's like, I don't have a fucking body. I've got a microphone. And she's like, I cannot do this if there's no body here. And if there was a body here, you wouldn't be allowed in with the microphone. So because of that, we don't have a recording of it.

• 1:10:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  But it was, they say that Dolores Ariadne from the Cranberries, if you hear the way that she sings and breathes, that that's a little bit like what keening was. But on describing something that's deeply spiritual, it's a form of art because it's singing, but it served a huge purpose in the community. And it was about the release, catharsis of emotion.

• 1:11:00Speaker 05

  But this is, I think, where we've really strayed from what we used to do because everybody used to sing, dance, tell stories as just a part of everyday life. And it wasn't seen as this thing that was not with a purpose. As you say, it had these deep meaning within society, these roles that the arts played in our day to day lives. But we've really shifted over the last couple of hundred years to the point where now many people actually don't engage in the arts. We've kind of made it into this commodity. We've made it a luxury that costs money to do and you feel like you're not good enough. And actually, we're a planet of eight billion artists. But if you ask a person on the street, did you do any arts yesterday? Only one in 20 will say yes.

• 1:11:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  And are you looking as, are you trying to promote the idea that everybody should be trying to create something for the sake of it?

• 1:11:50Speaker 05

  I'm promoting the idea that arts engagement is a health behaviour, like exercise, sleep, diets, engaging with nature. It's something that fundamentally impacts on our health and wellbeing, but it's something that we are just not appreciating or engaging with enough or valuing in our own lives or in society.

• 1:12:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Have you spoken to any people in power or given a presentation to them with your research?

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  Actually, I do. And one of the roles I have is I'm director of a World Health Organisation collaborating centre focusing on arts and health. Because actually there is really increasing policy recognition about the importance of this. And so we're actually starting to see in national governments and internationally, an awareness that arts funding and art support, it's not just a nice thing to have in society, but it actually really has quite big ramifications for, for health, for, for health economics, for the cost of things in society. And also for things like social cohesion and quite a lot of related outcomes like that.

• 1:12:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  Down south, we have the,

• 1:12:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  what's the fucking name of this?

• 1:12:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Basic income for artists, which means B I A, which is the Irish word for food, which are like B I A, bus, we have the, they just brought it in this year and Ireland is unique where now it's pretty difficult to fucking guess. It's difficult like, but a lot of artists are just being given.

• 1:13:14Speaker 05

  And they just published the first health economic analysis showing there's a really clear return on investment.

• 1:13:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that particular one, yeah. But I think what drove Ireland was it was tourism. So I think because they looked at the popularity of the likes of Fontaine's DC and Kneecap and just seeing how big this is around the world and then seeing a return on then the coolness of Ireland and the soft power that that gives us. Whereas I'd rather it's just, like, does it ever piss you off that you have to, you have to, like, you're seeing evidence that this is good for the human condition. This is good to be a human being. But in order to get it funded, you have to make these economic cases. Like, this is the same too, I find, when I speak to climate scientists.

• 1:14:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like this, the UN did a report there a month ago about water, basically. And it's, so they're showing that right now there's water bankruptcy, they call it. So we're running out of fresh water. But if you look at the whole report, they had to speak about biodiversity as if it was a bank account. Water bankruptcy, then they had to say a wetland is a bit like a savings account. And it's all this language because the only people who can do anything about it are people who understand the world in terms of finance. Are you finding yourself having to do that with this work?

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  Yes, because I think a little bit like with climate as well. It's one thing for governments to start saying, oh yeah, we can see this. But it's another thing for them to actually put the funding in, to actually put the money forwards to support this. So we've recently started trying to do a lot more of that, like giving the kinds of evidence that we know is their language that they want to see. We've just done a work across the whole of the UK, looking at working age adults alone. The wellbeing impact of engaging in the arts, like what's that worth to society? Cause if people have higher wellbeing, then they typically make less use of health services. They, they're often more productive. So they might work or they might care for people. They might volunteer.

• 1:15:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what's wellbeing? How do you define wellbeing?

• 1:15:14Speaker 05

  So wellbeing has different aspects to it. Part of it is to do with what is called your hedonic wellbeing. So it's like your feelings of happiness day to day or how satisfied you are with your life. And then some of it's eudemonic wellbeing. So it's to do with whether you feel you've got meaning, purpose, flourishing in your life. But the governments actually have financial values they attach to different levels of wellbeing because they know that that wellbeing affects your behaviours. So we've said, okay, well, we'll use those values and say, when we see these changes, these improvements in people's wellbeing over time from engaging in the arts, what's that worth? And we now know that for working age adults alone in the UK, every year, the wellbeing benefits from arts are worth 18.6 billion pounds.

• 1:15:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is there any historical point you were able to go back to, to use as evidence? Like, I don't know if you think of the sixties and the huge explosion of bands and music that happened in the sixties. And like even when I was growing up, there was a lot of bands because there was a lot of pubs and there was a lot of places that if you had a band, you could go and see a bunch of 17 year olds playing music. That's pretty much gone now. Like those spaces have disappeared and.

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  Same with lots of music venues, with libraries. It's really bizarre because actually one of our biggest exports as a country is the creative industries. And we love having famous pop stars and musicians and all of those creative professionals. But there's sometimes a disjointed thinking that actually in order to have those stars, you have to invest in arts in schools, arts in higher education, artists in communities, training programmes. You have to have all of that there. You've got to have arts in communities. And yet we've been systemically eroding all of our infrastructure over the last decade or so. Which means that if we want to maintain that massive export of our creative industries and that soft power as well, as you mentioned, of sort of having these global art superstars, we're not going to be able to do that if we've cut off all the rungs and the ladder that lead up to it.

• 1:17:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you ever look at how the Russian revolution used theatre? As I understand that you had the Russian revolution and they were trying to create like a communist state. So you have all these people who live in the countryside. And it's like, right, okay, we need these people from the countryside suddenly to work in a factory now. So what they used to do was the entire factory would become a play, a theatre. And every single member of the factory has to engage in this giant play about how great communism is going to be. And I don't know, I think that's class.

• 1:17:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I just like that idea of like, how are we going to convince these people to do this thing? Well, everyone's part of this giant play. I said, but what I like about it is I'm a huge fan of participatory art, art where.

• 1:18:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like a lot of art, like I said, it's capitalistic. It's here is an audience and then there is an object that a very skilled person has made. And this is a transaction. Whereas with art, that's participatory. Everybody's kind of stuck in. Um, what's a good example of it? Site-specific theatre. Do you ever go to a theatre show and it's like out in the middle of the street? And you don't know who's an actor and who's not. And sometimes the audience are even part of it. And it's a complete blurring of lines of, and then it's like, oh my God, I'm making art. I'm in theatre and I didn't even sign up for this.

• 1:18:35Speaker 05

  There's actually a whole movement of it called Theatre of the Oppressed, which actually started off with a director called Augusto Bao in Rio de Janeiro. And he did that. He did participatory theatre in public and he would get members of the public to come out and act out what they thought the problems in society were. And then he'd get other members of the public to try and act out solutions. And he used this as a way of coming up with new ideas. And his other role was a city councillor. So then he would put forward the ideas as actual policy changes. And it's a method that's travelled all around the world for using the forum of arts to engage citizens to help develop new ideas within society. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize.

• 1:19:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think he inspired, do you ever hear of Antonis Makas? So Antonis Makas was, I think he was inspired by the theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed. He was a mayor of Bagueta in Colombia. Now, Bagueta, this was the mid eighties and it would have been at the time of Pablo Escobar. So there was so much crime in Bagueta that society was beginning to collapse. It was like judges were getting executed and stuff. So law and order was disappearing. And what they found was because there was no sense of law and order, people wouldn't even obey stop signs. So people were just walking across the road and there was road accidents because no one gave a shit about the walk, don't walk.

• 1:19:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Antonis Makas got elected as mayor and he came from a performance art background. And he looked at the theatre of the oppressed and he brought performance art to solving social problems. So how he solved the problem of people getting hit in the street by cars, he replaced traffic lights with mimes, or mimes. Yeah, I know that.

• 1:20:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Different context entirely. He replaced traffic lights with mimes. Mimes with the white faces and this shit.

• 1:20:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  But he replaced traffic lights with mimes. So when people were jaywalking, a mime would come out and then do an impression of you. And then everyone laughs and just stopped completely, you know? So he brought all of these different ways of using art to solve the problems, you know?

• 1:20:50Speaker 05

  And it's actually really effective because one of the things we know about ourselves as humans is we really hate being told what to do. So actually, we often know that kind of didactic approaches of telling someone, giving someone advice often backfire. But because in art, we know it's sort of this make-believe world that we're engaging with. We actually tend to suspend our disbelief. And that actually means that we engage much better with the messages that we're told. And actually, because they're often emotional experiences through art as well, because emotions actually, they activate parts of the brain that are involved in memory as well. So we actually tend to remember the messages better as well. And there are some incredible examples of this that have been used around the world, actually coming back to pandemics as well.

• 1:21:33Speaker 05

  So during Ebola, one of the big challenges was how could they build trust amongst local people in West Africa who didn't trust healthcare professionals who were telling them, like you've got to wash your hands and keep a distance and things. And those messages were really backfiring, but then they engaged artists and they got hip hop artists to write songs and do no touching dances. And they have murals and storytellers and radio plays. And they used art to engage local people in creating the artwork and also communicating the messages. And that campaign although was credited with changing the behaviours of 1.4 million people during the Ebola epidemic.

• 1:22:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  The thing is, right, that's wonderful. And we're thinking art can also be used quite negatively because sometimes. So if I look at America right now and we are seeing that theatre, I think they're borrowing from the language of professional wrestling. But professional wrestling is art. It's art where the, it's like circus. These people are really, really skilled athletes, but they're actors and this is also theatre. And we're seeing this now with America, the use of theatre effectively, art language to control people. The big one being Charlie Kirk's remembrance there with the WWE stuff behind Erica Kirk. You know what I mean?

• 1:22:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, she's coming to Belfast.

• 1:23:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you know that?

• 1:23:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  Turn, what is it going to be called? Turning Point? That's, you know, that's just funded by billionaires to make neoliberalism seem okay. You know, that's what that is. I'm serious. And then the other thing is Charlie Kirk, before he died, he founded an organisation called Fal Kirk with Jerry Falwell Jr. And do you know what the literal mission statement is? Like you can see it on the website, it doesn't exist anymore. They founded an organisation to fight the idea that Jesus was socialist. That this was, it was popping up online. People would say, well, Jesus was a socialist. He threw the money lenders out of the, out of the temple. So then Charlie Kirk goes, can't have that.

• 1:23:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  So they set up an organisation to show why Jesus would actually be a horrible capitalist. So that's who you're inviting into your city. So I hope everyone shows up there and says, fuck off.

• 1:24:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  But you know what? I knew that shit was coming. I fucking knew it as soon as, my weirdest and earliest experience as a fucking Belfast is doing gigs years ago, walking around the street shitfaced at two in the morning. And then a very, very friendly 20-year-old coming up to me with a cup of tea.

• 1:24:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know about them? They're Christians. And I'm like, I'd love a lift home. Fucking hell, you're all sound up here. Tea. And then I get into their fucking car and I'm just like, something's off here. There's a bang of Mormon off them, but they're not Mormons. What are they?

• 1:24:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that happened to me twice and they tried to fucking groom me into the word of the Lord.

• 1:24:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it's just, it was such a unique, strange thing and I didn't know what they were. I just did like, fuck me. So I knew you were going to get a dose of that. Um, I'm going to put the microphone out to the audience, right? And you can ask questions about anything in the whole world. I believe there are 16 microphones out there. Oh, six, sorry.

• 1:25:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Someone corrected me at the side there. Six microphones. It's still a lot though. Can you turn up the house lights slightly?

• 1:25:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, you glamorous bastards. Fucking loads of them, isn't there? I made sure I had a scientist as a guest tonight because coming back to Belfast, it's become very obvious to me that I have quite a lot of middle-class Protestants in the audience, who I've learned are the easiest people in the world to offend.

• 1:25:39Speaker 06

  Hello.

• 1:25:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  How are you? What's the crack?

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Grace. Um, Blind Boy, you spoke about the pandemic and how a lot of people didn't lose someone. And I sort of feel that myself. Um, but there's still that kind of feeling of grief from that period. And I'm just posing my question to Daisy. Is there a concept within mental health research for collective or ambiguous grief after something like the pandemic? And how can we as a society in 2026 kind of navigate those feelings post-pandemic?

• 1:26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because you're losing, that's a wonderful question.

• 1:26:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Grief isn't just losing a person. Grief there can be, I lost three years of my life. I mean, people who were 18, you emerge from it and all of a sudden you're 21. Like people lost some seriously important, I was grand, I was in my mid 30s, nothing going on. But like, some people got the pandemic during some important times in their life and they'll never get that back and they miss it.

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  Yes. And actually, one of the things that we, we heard a lot of early in the pandemic was this kind of belief that people wouldn't follow the rules about distancing and things like that. They wouldn't do things in the greater good. But actually, it was completely unfounded because something we know about ourselves as humans is actually when we are in moments of crisis, we actually really do tend to bond together. And I think a lot of people actually felt quite a lot of solidarity that everyone was going through the same pandemic, even in different circumstances. But there was a sense of pulling together. There were mutual aid groups, there were people looking out for one another. I think part of the issue actually happened that over time, we started to get more dissent. People had disagreements about the way that things should go, how we should control it, what the rules should be.

• 1:27:26Speaker 05

  And I think that fragmentation actually also caused a lot of problems because suddenly people felt they weren't part of the collective anymore. They were on their own and that actually increased feelings of isolation and loneliness for many people.

• 1:27:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because, do you know what? A big fucking grief that I have since that pandemic is

• 1:27:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  my opinion of people changed unfortunately.

• 1:27:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  I had a much more optimistic view of my fellow humans. And when I saw just people flat out denying that it was happening or retreating into conspiracy beliefs are just some of the angriest people that I still get abuse from online are COVID people. Like these many years on, I'll get really, really angry. You told people to get the vaccine. You told people to wear masks and they're still furious. And I was left with a grief there. It's it made me go, fuck it, you can't trust people. You think that everyone's going to band together, but then it's like, we were in this situation. And it's like, you can't, you can't rely upon

• 1:28:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  them.

• 1:28:39Speaker 05

  It's an optimistic.

• 1:28:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know, I'm sorry. Dark stuff.

• 1:28:45Speaker 05

  I think it's important to recognise that actually, often you get loud voices from a few people, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're actually representing the collective views on things. And something I actually found really heartening is we were tracking through COVID compliance rates with the rules.

• 1:28:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sure, listen, you're the one with the data. Yeah, I should, I should be listening to you and your data and not someone's father who just sends me 10 messages a day.

• 1:29:07Speaker 05

  But that was the problem is that what got amplified like in news and things with the tales of when people were breaking rules and things. But actually, that was a tiny, tiny percentage of people. And in fact, what we did see generally was that that collective engagement in the behaviours that people knew would support everybody else.

• 1:29:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I can chill out. I have a skewed negative view. And you're saying the data is is not showing this blindly.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  It we, we did see to start to see it fragment more when, when there were more and more stories of particularly high profile people breaking rules, because then of course, that does then give the message, well, hang on, if they're not following it, we have to follow it. So one of the big kind of recommendations in public health is when you have situations like that, that it has to be really clear that everyone engages in this and that kind of recognition that we are all doing it to support one another.

• 1:29:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wow. Any other questions? Usher, I'll let you pick. Because I can't really see anything. Go on there, Usher, yeah. Good one there. Uh, did you think that going for more like artistic research, you find that instead of like logic based science research from your like field, you were more funded or less funded because you were going after the arts? Oh, that's a goodie.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  It's a really good question that. Actually, a lot of the funding that we go for when we're looking at arts is the same funding that's available for all other kinds of research. You're kind of competing against all the other types of research out there on other kinds of behaviours or interventions. But I think that's really good, because it means that you have to be designing studies that have got the same level of rigor in order to be able to compete and win that funding. And actually, what's definitely happened in this field over the last decade is initially funders would give sort of small amounts of money, because this was much more kind of controversial. Would it work? Was it worth investing? Was it too risky? But now we're seeing funding very large scale clinical trials of things like large global studies as well. And that's really exciting, because it means

• 1:31:00Speaker 05

  that the evidence base is getting bigger and stronger, like week by week at the moment now.

• 1:31:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  I mean, I can't imagine it not being hugely popular. I mean, everyone likes to hear that the arts like, well, they don't do that. I mean, do you ever wonder why are sports, sports so massive and why are arts not? Like, why can't I turn on the news and hear about an artist? Why do I have to hear about a footballer?

• 1:31:27Speaker 05

  I think there are a couple of things here. One of them is to do with, you know, there are some very big organisations that can be behind sports, which can definitely help. Because when you've got that sort of lobbying power and things. But I think another thing here is about this sort of shift in perception. So I mentioned that, you know, a few decades ago, there was controversy about the health benefits of exercise. But we've really seen that shift. And we've seen that happen for lots of other things, too. I talk in the book about seat belts in cars. No one used to wear seat belts. Everyone thought it was a ridiculous idea. And then there was this change in public perception. And suddenly, there was this awareness that the evidence was there, that there was the public appetite for it. And suddenly, everyone wore a seatbelt. And I could call it a seatbelt moment, because we see that consistently for lots of health behaviours, behaviours that

• 1:32:11Speaker 05

  influence our health. And I actually do think we're heading towards that for the arts now. Like, a lot more people are now aware that the arts have these benefits, there's discussions about their value in society. We're seeing schemes like the universal income for artists. And I think things like that are promising steps that suggest that maybe 10 years from now, we'll look back and say, well, of course, arts are fundamental to our health. How did we ever not appreciate that before?

• 1:32:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what would be fun as well is like, if you're to bring art back into being something truly participatory, for certain people to get past the idea that it doesn't matter whether you're good or bad at this thing, you're doing it for the sake of doing it. And to be comfortable with being cringe and being bad and being terrible, that's, you have to do that if you want to make any type of art. You can't just be brilliant and perfect. You got to fail. You know what I mean? And I could see that as being a very enjoyable thing to do, to remove the shame and stigma. And to remind people, we, every single one of us played at crayons in school. We all played with crayons and played with plasticine. That's what we did. And then

• 1:33:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  something happened where we cut off into groups of being good and being bad. You know, I mean, adult colouring books, that was a big thing in the past few years. Something about adult colouring books made certain people feel safe enough to try art. Like, some people are terrified. Like, really, like, I'm an artist, so it's grand. But there's certain people who they would nearly be embarrassed at the idea of, I'm gonna try and sing, or I'm gonna try and play an instrument, or try and do some drawing. And I always say to these people, throw it in the bin, do the drawing and then throw it in the bin afterwards, you know, and fail and fail and fuck it up and get really comfortable with failing.

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  There's a really lovely, apparently, trend happening on TikTok of young people who are getting into things like, well, they're calling them granny hobbies. But they're things like crochet and knitting and crafts, things that involve the same kind of hand motions as being on a phone, but deliberately in an attempt to get off screens and do something that's more meaningful. And that recognition, it doesn't matter if it goes wrong, but it's something that can be a lot more enjoyable and valuable to engage in for those minutes.

• 1:34:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Did you ever look at any of that type of crack? As in, something like crocheting and whether it is almost like meditation?

• 1:34:34Speaker 05

  Actually, when people are engaging in arts and crafts, it is actually a mindful activity. It involves the same regions of the brain involved in mindfulness. And you're also much more likely to get into a flow state. So that feeling of like complete absorption to the point you forget about everything else that's going on around you. And that's a really valuable state, because it really redirects our attention. We typically spend about 47% of our waking hours mind wandering. But when we're engaged in that flow in that moment, then we, that that's really, really good for attention restoration for our brain.

• 1:35:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  What's the benefit of flow to the, our nervous systems?

• 1:35:09Speaker 05

  Well, often if we're stressed, we've got a lot going on, we'll find that our brains are kind of scatter gunning across lots of thoughts. And that can be quite malproductive. Some people sort of describe it as feeling a bit sort of brain fog or not knowing how to see through it. But if we can focus ourselves onto one activity, really get into the zone of it, then that actually helps to refocus our attention, reduce our stress response. And there was a brilliant study where they looked at hundreds of people and got them to rate their sort of flow states across all the activities they were doing over a couple of weeks. And they tracked over 200 different activities people were doing. And the one that came out, number one, was arts and crafts for promoting flow. People were more in a flow state when they were doing arts and crafts compared to when they were having sex.

• 1:35:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've never achieved flow during sex. And

• 1:35:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  I do it when I'm writing a short story. I don't think I'd like flow in the middle of sex. I start, I just get ideas and pull out. Need to write it down. And any other questions?

• 1:36:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  Usher, I'm gonna let Usher choose at your own discretion.

• 1:36:15Speaker 04

  Hello, hello, Mr. Boat Club.

• 1:36:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hello, sir. What's the crack?

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  So we're living in a very politically divided sort of like. Sort of society and to recently with the unfortunate murder of Renee Agud, we saw there are a lot of people who've retreated into a narrative despite the, you know, what they could see with their eyes. What are the psychological sort of motivations for someone to sort of like deny, to retreat into a narrative? And what are the best ways to try and sort of combat that?

• 1:36:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Are you talking about people who are becoming entrenched in some, we'll say, far right type of beliefs?

• 1:36:57Speaker 04

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:36:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay.

• 1:37:00Speaker 05

  I actually think this is one of those situations that we could be using art more. Cause I mentioned earlier that it can be really difficult sometimes to engage. And if people feel they've been told what to do or told what to think. But when there's art, there is that suspension of disbelief. There is that sense that you're entering into an imaginary world where it is separate from you, from your own thoughts. And that can be a sort of safer space to play out conversations, play out scenarios. And there have been some really interesting examples of how this has been done in different groups as a way of just trying to broaden people's views on things. There was an amazing project, actually quite a different context, but there's an amazing one that was done in America with, they were trying to support adolescents living in Los Angeles who are from the teenage backgrounds where they had very high pregnancy rates

• 1:37:45Speaker 05

  and amongst the adolescents. And they thought, well, we don't want to tell people what to do, but what if we wrote a drama, a TV drama that was all about the romantic lives of teenagers? But we played out a lot more scenarios through it. So they could play out different choices people would make around sex, around pregnancy. And they would also help to sign people, signpost people to resources. They would have ways people could engage with the characters through blogs and vlogs and all this. And they actually found it was an incredibly effective tool, actually helping to support young people in being aware of options and being able to think about their own viewpoints differently. And it actually started changing behaviours in terms of things like use of contraceptives amongst adolescents, not because they were being told, you need to change your behaviour,

• 1:38:29Speaker 05

  you need to think differently, but because they were just giving them this new, broadened way of thinking about options that just made them realise there were more choices, more ways of thinking open to them.

• 1:38:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  When you were doing the COVID research, did you, did you do anything around people who became very entrenched in conspiracy beliefs? Because I, I think it's fair to say, in terms of our lived experience, COVID was the moment when like you really started to lose friends to beliefs. I mean, a lot of people have got, unfortunately, a family member or a friend, and they just became hugely anti-vax or there was a pipeline that led to quite fascist beliefs. And it's very common for people to say, my brother can't come to dinner anymore because he's so entrenched. Did you look at that and like, why did so much of that happen at COVID specifically? Or again, am I imagining this?

• 1:39:24Speaker 05

  No, because people were scared. And actually for a lot of people, this wasn't bad motivations. It's, you know, people were worried, they were hearing things, they were legitimately scared about things. And that can translate into people doing what they think is going to be best. But it's very hard with the information nowadays to always be aware of what is the information that's factually correct, where is information sources coming from? And I think sometimes you sort of end up with more polarised views because people go into binary camps of like, well, you're right and you're wrong. This is the right belief or the wrong belief. And that's not a productive way of doing it because that makes it feel like people have chosen a side for the wrong reason as opposed to it often coming from exactly the same place of wanting to protect and support those people around them.

• 1:40:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  And just regarding your original question, something I've started doing recently, when it comes to people I know who are expressing some pretty harmful opinions, I'm very cautious about calling anyone far right anymore, unless they're flat out, I'm a big far right Nazi. Then they're getting called far right. But when it's like your aunt or your uncle or your brother, and they're saying some shit and you disagree with it, what I've found useful is I notice you're repeating some far right talking points. That's so much more effective than you're far right, because then they become more entrenched and can take ownership of the label or identify with it.

• 1:40:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  But some of the things you're saying sound to me like far right misinformation. I found that really helpful and it's a good one to put into practice. I'm going to take one last question. Do you know up there, Usher, there's someone with the hand beside you there?

• 1:41:05Speaker 04

  Oh, are we there now?

• 1:41:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  There we go. You sound like a priest. Go on.

• 1:41:08Speaker 04

  Hello, good evening. No, I've, I've long held an interest in the relationship between, sorry, I'm hearing myself twice, the non-conscious mind and the conscious mind. You were talking there about losing faith in your fellow man. And even if you know that that's just a small minority, it doesn't, it doesn't feel that way. And I can go about my life, knowing a truth, but executing it emotionally can be difficult. Have you ever investigated the relationship between that logical part of you and the part of you that ultimately acts out?

• 1:41:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  I get what you're saying there yet. When I was saying there about, you know, I lost faith in humanity. And then you're going, well, the data would suggest otherwise. It's going to take a good bit of effort for me to listen to your data and bring that onto a positive mindset, because the person who's sending the death threats is, I'm just going to listen to them more.

• 1:42:07Speaker 05

  It is an unfortunate thing. We actually pay a lot more attention to negative than to positive feedback and things in our lives.

• 1:42:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  I hate that about myself. What's that about? I really dislike that about being human.

• 1:42:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not just you, it's everybody, unfortunately. And it's a really, it's a really a difficult thing to contend with. But actually it's one of the things that often in psychological therapies, people are working out is how to integrate the sort of conscious and unconscious materials. But it's something also that the arts do, and that's something that I think is so special about the arts. They actually organically do, when we engage with them, a lot of the processes that we often want to then train ourselves to do in psychological therapies when we're thinking about our mental health, like they help us to process and think about unconscious material. They help to relax us, they help us to be mindful, they help us to understand and process and regulate our emotions. But they do so in something that's not medical. They do through something that's so enjoyable and can be so life-affirming and meaningful.

• 1:43:02Speaker 05

  And I think that's what's really just so special about the arts.

• 1:43:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that was the best set of questions I've ever gotten from any audience ever. Every one of them was a banger.

• 1:43:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  Professor Daisy Fancourt, thank you so much. Her book is Our Cure. What a wonderful night. Dog bless Belfast.

• 1:43:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  I love an old Belfast gig. I hope you enjoyed that. I'll catch you next week.

• 1:43:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the meantime, rub a dog, wink at a swan, genuflect to a worm. Dog bless.

• 1:43:58Speaker 06

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• 1:44:32Blindboy Boatclub?

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