Dr Louise Newson [00.00.04]

My podcast today is with Elizabeth Day, who's an award-winning author and podcaster. She runs the podcast ‘How to Fail.’ Her most recent book is One Of Us, and we talk a lot about this. We talk about some of the characters, but the main thing that's weaved through our conversation is about women not being believed or listened to, how we need to change it. We need to improve conversations for women, and we need to empower them so that they can really be the best version of themselves going forwards.

Dr Louise Newson [00.00.37]

So, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Day [00.00.39]

Louise, Dr Newson!

Dr Louise Newson [00.00.42]

I'm so excited, because I feel like I've been stalking you for such a long time, and just like I just love how transparent you are, how open you are, and it's sometimes can go the wrong way, that people share too much, and it's can be a bit sort of over the top, but it's not, you just have this sort of air of gracefulness, but also what you do is so inspirational as well,because you're allowing, women mainly, a space to just say it's okay to not be wonderful. It's okay to have shit times, it's okay to be really good as well.And I think that's really important for conversations, isn't it?

Elizabeth Day [00.01.22]

Well, thank you so much. What a compliment coming from you. I could say all the same things back to you, but I think you're completely right.There's something so powerful and so connecting when we take the risk of being vulnerable and saying this thing happened to me. Does anyone else relate? Yeah, and I'm sure you've experienced this too. I was so bowled over by the response any time that I did that - something that felt so uniquely personal and maybe a little bit niche, for instance, fertility, when I started about fertility and this wave of response that I got from a community that had been so marginalised and wrongly stigmatised in silence for so long was one of the greatest gifts of my life, in a way, because then it makes you feel less alone as well.

Dr Louise Newson [00.02.12]

Absolutely, and it's weird, isn't it? Because we've got social media, we've got our phones on our fingers, but we still can feel really lonely and really vulnerable, and I think this is where conversations are changing more than like when I was a junior doctor. We didn't have internet, we didn't have social media, so our patients hung on to every word we said in our consultations, and we were a bit more godlike as doctors, whereas now I love it, because patients are essential to the conversation and the consultation, and they're really empowered, and it might not all be with right information, but they've got this knowledge that they'd never been allowed to have before. So to share experiences both good and bad is really important, I think, isn't it?

Elizabeth Day [00.02.58]

I totally agree. And actually, social media for all of its flaws and for all of its ills, one great thing that it does is it can reach out through the screen and help a bullied child in a remote community in the UK who is struggling with their sexual or gender identity. It can help them be seen and find their community through the power of a hashtag. And that's an incredible thing, and obviously it can be manipulated and used for bad ends, but I don't think we should ever forget that.

Dr Louise Newson [00.03.38]

No, no. I mean, I started my Instagram. My daughter actually made me do it because she was in her early teens, and I was coming home from just doing my clinic say, oh my gosh, I've seen this lady. She just told me she'd been hit by a bus. The symptoms came on overnight. She'd floored she stopped working. She said, right, you put a picture of a bus up and just explain I was hit by a bus. People will get it. And I was like, that's abstract. And this was about 12 years ago, and she was right. And then I started to get DMs from people, and I remember one quite soon after in my social media,and she said, I'm 28 I'm in Canada, I'm crying, reading your message, because I realised this is me, or it could be me, and but I don't know how to get help,and it was just, it really struck me that something that you can write very quickly while you're making a cup of tea can have such an impact, but actually change her future life. Now I'll never meet her, I'll never talk to her, but she's now empowered with knowledge that she can take to wherever she wants, and that's incredible.

Elizabeth Day [00.04.41]

Definitely. And I think there's a broader context here, if we're talking specifically about women, because women have been conditioned for millennia wrongly to believe that their stories aren't important, and part of that conditioning has relied on the notion that we are the only ones experiencing it. So we're a bit odd, we're a bit weird, and we should feel shame for it. And similar to you, I did an interview recently on my podcast Howto Fail, with Vicky Pattison, and she spoke about having PMDD. And I had never heard of PMDD until I watched Married at First Sight. And there was a contestant on there who had PMDD and who spoke about it, then Vicky came on my podcast and spoke so unbelievably eloquently about what she goes through every single month. And that social media clip is one of our most popular ever,because it caused this crescendo of recognition amongst other women who had felt uniquely unseen and I think there's something so potent about that, and it's why I'm really glad, in a way, that I'm living through this era, at this age in our society. And I said to you before we started recording, I'm so grateful for the work that you do and other women like you, because I did not have a clue about the menopause. I mean, I knew it would happen, but I didn't know how it might show itself. And because of the work that you do, I was able to recognize those symptoms, and I was able not to feel shame or weird or like I was losing it or becoming, quote, unquote unhinged or and that's incredibly helpful and powerful.

Dr Louise Newson [00.06.25]

Yeah, I sit there listening about PMDD, and I feel really sad actually, because I see a lot of women with PMDD in the clinic. I mean, it's really easy to treat, because you just give hormones. There's a big drop before the period, especially of progesterone, but often of estradiol, sometimes testosterone as well. And when I started doing my work, I thought I would just do menopause. And of course, perimenopause comes in, but now the mosttransformational work is seeing people with PMDD. Because some figures say it's 5% of women have PMDD. That doesn't sound much, but that's one in 20 women.That's a lot. But then 90-95% will have PMS, premenstrual syndrome, where we'retold it's just normal to feel a bit rubbish before your periods. You could just feel a bit flat. But it's not normal. Actually, our hormones are dropping. But women with PMDD have a high suicide rate. They have lots of intrusive thoughts.And I've spoken to a lot of women in their early 20s who literally don't go out the house for three days a month. One lady said to me, I go into Tescos just to remind myself there are people living because I can't cope with the thoughts in my head. But the rest of the month, she's worrying about those days coming. So we know it, there's a big decline in hormones. So what do I do? I give her hormones for three days a month, and she's like, is this legal? I've never felt so good in my life. And it's like, This is so sad, like it's great. You know,these women are coming out of the woodwork, almost. But then, as a doctor,we're really failing women, because it's such a simple treatment for lots of women, you know, sometimes it's fine tuning, making sure the hormones are right, looking at everything else as well.

Elizabeth Day [00.08.07]

Can I ask you a slightly strange question?

Dr Louise Newson [00.08.09]

Yeah, of course you can!

Elizabeth Day [00.08.10]

In in the olden days when life expectancy was much shorter, so medieval ages, did that mean that women were dying without having gone through menopause, or was menopause earlier?

Dr Louise Newson [00.08.20]

Yeah, it's a great question, actually. So there's a couple of things there. Women's life expectancy was less. It was about 57 whereas now it's inits 80s. So we live longer 30 years or so longer, but our average menopause was more in the sort of mid 50s. And that's partly because women used to spend a lot longer pregnant. If you think of Victorian times, you'd probably have about 10 pregnancies, you might have seven live births, but you'd be pregnant a lot and breastfeeding a lot. So when you're pregnant, you have really high levels of hormones in your body, and people often feel great, but you're preserving your ovaries. You're not producing an egg every month. Do you see what I mean?So your ovaries would last longer. So then when you're not pregnant and you fall you finish becoming pregnant or whatever, then you're, you're that's why people are menopausal at a later age as well. But then people say, well, where maybe women are whinging more? Maybe women are feeling more symptoms? Well,let's look at how many women were locked up in asylums.

Elizabeth Day [00.09.20]

Exactly! Exactly that. More women therefore are experiencing this,at a time when more women feel that they are emboldened to speak. Not enough,but more.

Dr Louise Newson [00.09.31]

Absolutely, but it's just been called different things. You know.Look at the word hysteria and hysterectomy. You know, there's a reason, the ‘hyst’is the womb bit, of course. So, you know, we used to think, we as in doctors,used to think that it was a wandering womb. The womb was to blame for our mental health. And before they realized about hormones, they knew something changed when our period stopped. And I've read some books from the 1800s and they used to try and cut women because they knew bleeding would help their mood. So they would cut women under their breasts or in their ankles, because they and I get why they did it. They were trying to help because they knew that bleeding, as in having a period, mental health, would improve, but if a woman had stopped her periods, ie menopausal, they thought naively that bleeding would help their mood. So we've known it for so long, but even now, we know about hormones. We know this hormonal dip. There are millions of women globally who are not even allowed to have hormones. They've been given antidepressants or being told it's just part of being a woman. It's really sad, isn't it?

Elizabeth Day [00.10.38]

Yeah. Well, I have been on HRT for a year, and when I started experiencing symptoms last summer, I although I didn't realise it was automatically minimising them. So, I was feeling heightened anxiety. But I thought, well, I've had a really busy year, and I'm now on holiday, so it's all coming. My stress is sort of coming and being let by those Victorian surgeons,metaphorically. So then I had blurred vision. I was like, well, that's just age. I probably need reading glasses, all this sort of stuff. And I hadn't had a period for seven months. But I was like, well, again, I've had lots of fertility treatment. Maybe that's the issue all of that. And I was having several hot flashes a day and during the night. And I was like, well, obviously I am that's a symptom of perimenopause, but I'd had them before and they'd gone away again. I was like, it'll probably be fine. I'll sit it out. And then I thought, actually, these hot flashes are really unpleasant, so I am going to go and see a gynecologist, which I did, and she was amazing. She said to me, are you experiencing and then she listed the things that I've been experiencing,but I hadn't put in one category, and one of them was blurred vision. I was like, Yes, I have. And she said, and have you experienced any dryness? You know, down there? I was like, No, absolutely not. Like, zero complaints. And she said, well, we can't judge hormones from blood tests, because I'd also had a blood test from a male GP. No, your hormones are fine, and so we have to go over symptoms. She's like, looking at these symptoms, I have absolutely no doubt that you are perimenopausal, if not menopausal, and is your sleep affected? I said, no, no. I have actually always been a very good sleeper.She's like, but the hot flashes are waking you up. I said, Yes. She said, so your sleep is being affected – okay, technically. And then I went next door,because she talked me through the options, and I decided to get fitted with the coil. And so she examined my vagina. She's like you are on the verge ofatrophy. I was like, How dare you? She said, We don't want you getting UTIs. I mean, your urethra is dangerously exposed. And I genuinely, I had not noticed.And she said this fascinating thing that has always stuck with me. She said, in my experience, women who've gone through fertility treatment, they tend to minimize their symptoms because they're so used to feeling dreadful on hormones, yeah. And she was also the first person who said to me, you've had HRT before. When you were having your rounds of IVF, that was HRT. And it all started making a kind of sense to me. And then, of course, I got fitted with a coil. I had my estrogen gel. Within three days, my hot flashes are gone, and I was and my vision had actually got better. I had an eye test afterwards, and I'm so grateful for that interaction. But even me, having had these conversations, knowing what was being talked about, even I needed that help.

Dr Louise Newson [00.13.37]

Well, it's the whole thing about joining the dots, and I think we don't do it enough as women, as patients, but also as doctors as well. And you know, I'm staggered by the number of women I see have come from fertility clinics, and some of them have been successful. Some of them haven't, but lots of women have had round after round after round of IVF, and they've often had mental health symptoms, but the anxiety, the low mood, is because they can't get pregnant. Some of it will be, but what about their hormones? But they've also had physical symptoms as well. Sometimes skin changes, palpitations,muscle, joint pains, but the focus has been on becoming pregnant. And I know when I sat at my clinic about eight years ago, I phoned, I won't tell you who,somebody who runs a lot of fertility clinics, because I wanted to ask him the what education do you give to women coming to your clinic, especially those with recurrent miscarriages or problems with the IVF, about hormones and perimenopause, because they're more likely to have hormonal issues. Lots of women will have low progesterone and these hormones, we know, because they're natural, can improve fertility. So I said, well, we don't do anything. It's not our domain. We're fertility. He was getting quite cross on the phone. I said,but I do a lot of education. I do a lot for free, for healthcare professionals,for women. And he said, don't give me that. I don't believe that if you'redoing private medicine, it will be about making money.

Elizabeth Day [00.15.02]

What, says the man in charge of several fertility clinics? Wow.

Dr Louise Newson [00.15.03]

And I said, no, I haven't phoned you for any financial advice. I have phoned you because I'm worried about these women. They have nowhere to go and and I remember it very distinctly, because my husband came in the study,and he was like, are you okay? Because it was a bit of a hostile conversation,and I was really shocked. He said, Don't give me all that. He said, you might be saying you're doing it for free now, but you'll change and it will be different. And I said, No. I went into medicine to help as many people as possible, and I was really shocked, but we see it time and time again. And you know, I'm not slurring fertility clinics with the same brush, because there are those that are amazing, and there are those that seem to do a lot of tests,give a lot of treatment, and they're not even asking women about their lifestyle or anything. It's all about the hormones. And it's sort of, but the women are just sort of left a bit, you know. And it might not be any of their symptoms are due to hormonal changes, but the stats are, they're more likely to have an earlier perimenopause or menopause. So it would have been, I don't know if you had any information about, look, these are the symptoms to look out for.

Elizabeth Day [00.16.05]

No now that you say that I hadn't, and I agree with you that there are some incredible fertility practitioners out there when I was going through it. So I spent 12 years having unsuccessful fertility treatments and recurrent miscarriages. And so I had lots of different experiences of treatment, and I went to lots of different clinics. Overwhelmingly, I was seen by men. And again, there are some wonderful male medical practitioners out there. My father is one of them. He's a retired general surgeon. But it's more difficult for a man to understand, if they have never been through a period or a miscarriage,how to communicate or how that experience might shape you. You can understand on one level, and you can practice empathy, but you will never fully know or embody it literally. And it was so noticeable to me that the one time,actually, I was treated by a woman twice, and both times, it was revelatory tome. And the first woman I was treated by, she runs a fertility clinic in Greece that I'm sure many of your listeners might have been to, and I had a bicornuateuterus, which it means, you know this, but it's a heart shaped womb, so you have a septum at the top. And although not enough research has been done into it, because not enough research is done into miscarriage full stop, there are some schools of thought that believe it could trigger early miscarriage, which was always my issue, and I had always been spoken to by male fertility doctors as if it was something that either, oh well, we don't need to bother about,that it's probably not that, or it was a kind of deformity that, you know, I just had to grin and bear it. But that was, it was it was a failure. I felt that I internalize sort of bodily failure. And Penny was the first person who described my womb to me using really compassionate terminology, and she said, I remember it forever. It was the first phone call I had with her. She said, your womb is like a beautiful room, and it's got these two pillars, and it's got this wall here, and we just think for a baby to be comfortable, we might renovate it slightly.

Dr Louise Newson [00.18.30]

What lovely language though.

Elizabeth Day [00.18.31]

It was such lovely language because it didn't feel that it was my responsibility alone, and that was very noticeable to me. And one of the things I'm so passionate about is not only having these conversations, as we said at the very beginning, because so many women and men feel so alone in this journey, but also giving voice to the female experience in a way that makes other women feel compassionately understood. And I think I bring that, I hope I bring that into every kind of work that I do. So it's not just the podcast,it's also my writing. And I've got this new novel out One of Us, and it was the first time I had written a perimenopausal character when I was going through perimenopause, and it made me realize that I haven't seen it that much in fiction?

Dr Louise Newson [00.19.22]

No, it's not been spoken about enough, or if it is, it's been trivialized or almost made fun of, a bit like PMS, you know, it's bit of butt of jokes, but I want to talk about this. One of Us we’re very lucky because I have read it and I really enjoyed it, but I also felt sad and I felt frustrated for some of the characters. Some of them, I wanted to just take them home and mother them. Some of them are just like, just be honest with each other! And I'm, as a doctor, like, one of the first things I learned I had some really great trainers, was about listening and believing people. And it's belief. And I'm very and I've done it with my children. I've always said to them, if you get yourselves into trouble, I won't judge you. I'll help you, but be honest. This through the book. I'm not going to give anything away, but there's a lot of people that aren't honest with each other, but there are also,one female character in particular has tried to be really honest and not being believed. And that saddens me even more, actually, because as women, why aren't we believed? Why aren't we believed by our doctors? Why aren't we believed by our friends or family or relatives? You know, this was really awful. What happened to her, and she tried to tell someone in her family, and they didn't believe her, and that changed probably the shape of her future, didn't it?

Elizabeth Day [00.20.41]

Yes, I'm very interested in the courage of truth tellers in systems that don't reward that. And so One of Us is about a family system that doesn't reward that, which is this aristocratic, elite, privileged, Fitzmaurice family, embedded in English tradition, so that idea of not being honest in your communication is very much part of their social class, and the character you are talking about strives to tell the truth, but her family members don't want to be confronted with the truth, because it means that they would have to confront with honesty who they really are. And I think the reason that so many women in this book aren't believed is, firstly because of the systems, and it's also a political system. So, One of Us has this political theme running through it as well, like, why do we keep falling in love with the people who damage us, and why do we keep electing them? But I think the one of the reasons that women aren't believed is because we have been so conditioned by the patriarchy not to believe ourselves first, so there's a sort of lack of self-worth and self-belief. That means that when we do gather up the courage to tell the truth. We're still doubting ourselves, and we can crumble very quickly. And the character that you mentioned, and the reason we're not talking about her by name is because we don't want to give any spoilers. But she is a woman of a certain age, so we meet her in this book when she's 50, 51, and that age really fascinates me. I'm 46 so I'm a Gen X-er slash elder millennial. But I think for Gen X women, we have been given so much mixed messaging, and there is so much embedded trauma in what we went through simply to grow up. And I think that this character is also struggling with all of that. There's a there's a fundamental question of identity, who is she if she doesn't belong? And very sadly, her family has made her into the black sheep. So she's grappling, trying to find belonging, and that's ultimately the path of her destruction.

Dr Louise Newson [00.23.04]

Yeah, and there's a bit in it where there are some drugs involved and a lifestyle that, you know, wasn't great, and we see it a lot in all sorts of people. I did a survey looking at addictive behaviors in women who are perimenopausal or menopausal. So, we looked at alcohol, gambling, drugs, and I was just rereading it last night, and it was a free text comments that are the ones that really struck me. And one lady said, I've never taken cocaine before,but I needed to get some sleep, and I needed to get some of these intrusive thoughts out of my head. My doctor didn't help me. I didn't know where to turn to, and I had to escape from this cage of doom. It's really, and this cage of doom is something that people do feel very trapped in their bodies when their hormones aren't right. Not everybody, but some people get catastrophic mental health symptoms, and I've seen it so often, there's no pattern recognition. It’snot always people that have had mental health issues. Some people, it's gradual. Some people, they literally fall off a cliff, and a lot of people have PMDD. But it's like as a doctor, as a society, medical society, we are failing women if they're having to go to class A drugs to treat a hormonal problem that they can't get help for. And this character, I'm sure, didn't do it for that reason, but she was 50, so she was either menopausal or perimenopausal.

Elizabeth Day [00.24.36]

Yeah. And I really love that you pick up on that. And I do think that her addiction absolutely stems from what you're describing, which is fear of being left alone with how you're feeling, and if how you're feeling is suicidal because of your hormones, or if how you're feeling is not believed by your own family. When you tell them this awful thing has happened to you, then I can completely understand the impulse, yeah, that you have to blot it out. And actually you're just making me think of someone I know who has ADHD and struggles so much with the aliveness of their thoughts that they turn to ketamine for a period in their life, yeah, because it's quote, unquote, chilled them out. Yeah, and obviously there's also ketamine being used now for depression therapy and all that.

Dr Louise Newson [00.25.39]

It also knackers your bladder. Not all good.

Elizabeth Day [00.25.42]

When I say it someone I know it's not actually me! Yes, it does, and that was made clear to this person, and but it did really make it so obvious, like, how much pain people are in and what they seek to do to numb that pain.

Dr Louise Newson [00.26.01]

Yeah. I mean, we had over 1000 responses for this survey, but a lot of people smoking cannabis, again, just to try and calm their brain. And I'm very interested in the role of hormones in the brain, but the brain in general,how it works. You know, there's so many things that can affect our brain, and there's so much that, especially in women, it's about us having trauma, us having personality disorders, us having all these different conditions. I don't hear about men with their trauma. You know, we all have had traumatic experiences,some worse than others, and of course, it's going to affect our cortisol and affect our progesterone and everything else. But it doesn't mean we just blame that and not look at other reasons why we can help people feel better. Because women have just been left on their own a lot. And I was just writing something recently, well at the weekend, and about women being called malingerers. This is by doctors. This is what term they use. You know, these heart sink patients,women are more likely to attend a doctor. And this was in a medical journal and it said because they have more time, because the men are busy working, of course. Only in the last 10 years. We taught this at medical school, and it still filters down, that women, and it's like no, every woman that comes to my surgery and they, you know, as a GP for many years as well, they have a genuine need, and just because I can't help them, if I can't diagnose something, it doesn't mean they're making up their symptoms. I've never met someone who's made up their symptoms. You know, like your blurred vision, you would have gone to the if you had gone to an optician or an ophthalmologist, they would have said it's normal. And then if no one had thought about hormones, you would bethinking, well, maybe I am making it. Maybe it's stress, you know what I mean.And you can see how this happens more and more with women, and that's where the power of being able to educate ourselves in different ways is really important,actually.

Elizabeth Day [00.28.00]

Definitely

Dr Louise Newson [00.28.01]

Because we're not always getting it from conventional ways.

Elizabeth Day [00.28.03]

Yeah. And I think that's also, I'm not meaning to bring it back to this book the whole time, but I do think that's the power of fiction, because I obviously write non-fiction as well, which I really enjoy for different reasons. But the wonderful thing about fiction is that it is a vehicle for the imagination which sparks empathy, and you can use it to examine issues that a reader might not have firsthand experience of, but if you're doing your job as an author, you can help them understand it. So my previous novel Magpie,I deliberately chose to write about fertility, yes, but I wanted to make it into a riveting, sort of psychological, psychologically thrilling book. I wouldn't describe it as a thriller. Very there aren't any dead bodies, but I think it, I hope it's compelling, and there's a big twist in it.

Dr Louise Newson [00.28.57]

Which my husband told me, by the way.

Elizabeth Day [00.28.57]

Oh did he? That’s so annoying of him!

Dr Louise Newson [00.29.00]

Well he listens to books and I read them.

Elizabeth Day [00.29.02]

How nice of him to read it at the same time.

Dr Louise Newson [00.29.04]

Well, I didn't know he'd read it, you see, because he, this is in the car. So when I had your book, and he goes, Oh, that's really good. And then he tells me that, have you seen that? I'm this far forward, so I hadn't.

Elizabeth Day [00.29.15]

Well, I'm so appreciative that he read it though, that's great,because so many men don't read books by women, which is also frustrating. So thank you, Mr. Newson. But yes, I wanted to make it so compelling for someone to read that, then they would read it, and along the way, they would learn what miscarriage might be like. And, and I'm, I really think fiction can be so powerful for that.

Dr Louise Newson [00.29.41]

And this is great because it's not actually, I'm not spoiling anything, but it's not all about menopause or perimenopause.

Elizabeth Day [00.29.48]

I hope it’s funny too.

Dr Louise Newson [00.29.51]

But it's very relatable, but it's just great to weave in and think.And obviously the way I've thought about hormones affecting these characters,they're even different to the way that you have thought. But that's the beauty of fiction, we can take what we want. I want to see

it as a film, though I really want to.

Elizabeth Day [00.30.05]

Oh so do I, thank you. So One of Us is a companion piece to an earlier novel I wrote called The Party, and The Party is actually being adapted, so that's very exciting. And so hopefully one of us will be as well. But you don't need to have read the party to read One of Us.It's a standalone as well.

Dr Louise Newson [00.30.23]

It’s just brilliant. So I'm really grateful for you coming but I always end on three take home tips. Yeah, so this is the hardest bit sometimes,three things that you think going forward will make it easier for women to be believed.

Elizabeth Day [00.30.38]

Number one, know that you are never alone in whatever you're experiencing. I promise you the thing you think of as the most personal will turn out to have universal resonance if you can take that first brave step of choosing to share, I promise you that that is so powerful. And the more women know that, and the more that we use our voices, the more we end up being believed.

Dr Louise Newson [00.31.11]

I love that.

Elizabeth Day [00.31.12]

I think the second thing is, what you said, Louise, about you in all of your years in medicine as a GP, have never met anyone who is making up their symptoms. So if you are on the receiving end of a woman telling you something that is clearly painful to her to share, I would ask that your default position is belief until and if that's proven wrong. I think your default position, and I think this in all areas of life, actually, your default position should be generosity of spirit, and should be extending the benefit of that generosity and that belief. So that's the second thing I would say. It all comes back to listening, really doesn't it. So I think the third thing I would say is both listening and acting as an interviewer, I know that the most powerful thing I can do is not to ask the question it’s to listen, and that's why I don't when I do my podcast, I don't have a pre prepared list of questions. I have various areas that I want to discuss, but I'm always aware that someone might say something that is interesting and unexpected, and if I'm listening carefully,if I'm actively listening, it will take the conversation somewhere it needs to go. And then there's the sense that once you have listened to someone's story, acting on that in one small way to make things better for the next person, that can set off a really meaningful chain reaction.

Dr Louise Newson [00.32.54]

Yeah, that's so important. And thank you so much for sharing,because listening and believing are so important, and it's happening, but it needs to happen more. But thank you so much. It's been great.

Elizabeth Day [00.33.08]

Thank you. I've loved it. I've learned so much. Thank you for having me.

Dr Louise Newson [00.33.10]

Thank you for coming.

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