What’s love got to do with… public health?

Xand van Tulleken and Rochelle Burgess explore a deceptively simple question: what role does love play in our health and wellbeing?

Joined by award-winning poet and author Laura Mucha, and UCL sociologist Dr Rachel Benchekroun, they examine love not just as a feeling, but as a social force that shapes our relationships, communities and health.

From attachment theory and friendship to libraries, schools and community spaces, the discussion explores how connection, care and support influence the way we live, and what might be possible if public health took love more seriously.

Guests:

Laura Mucha is an ex-lawyer turned award-winning poet and Author-in-Residence in the Department of Public Health & Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Her books have been described as ‘stunningly original’ by BookTrust, ‘fantastic’ by the Daily Mail, ‘a must for every school library and classroom’ by The School Librarian and ‘a marvellous feat’ by Richard Curtis. She won Children’s Book of the Year 2024 (Non-Fiction) in The Week Junior Awards and recently broke the Guinness World Record for Largest Multi Venue Poetry Lesson together with over 43,000 young people around the world. Her books Please Find Attached and We Need to Talk About Love explore love and attachment theory by combining academic research and interviews with people in every continent of the world.

Dr Rachel Benchekroun is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL. She is a sociologist and ethnographer, and her research focuses on support networks, friendship, social infrastructure and wellbeing. At UCL's Social Research Institute, she has been researching motherhood and support networks in the context of precarious migration, and recently published a book about this. She has also been working on the NIHR-funded Fair Food Futures UK project, examining how community food organisations shape families' experiences of food insecurity. Now, at the Institute of Health Informatics, Rachel is part of the RAPHAEL project, funded by the EU and Horizon Europe, which aims to improve access to palliative care for heart failure patients.

In this episode:

• Why love, care and connection matter for health and wellbeing
• Attachment theory and the importance of feeling safe, supported and valued
• The impact of social and structural factors on love and connection
• Love, care and support as acts of resistance in challenging circumstances
• The role of schools, libraries and community spaces in fostering wellbeing
• What a more caring and connected society might look like

Hosts:

Xand Van Tulleken – Doctor, Writer, and TV Presenter and Professor Rochelle Burgess – Community Health Psychologist and Professor at the UCL Institute for Global Health.

“What has disrupted your thinking?”

Laura: Dropping ​the ​Ball, ​poem written ​by ​Rochelle ​Burgess, Undefeated and Unspoken (books) by Kwame ​Alexander,

Rachel : Maxinquaye - album by English rapper and producer, Tricky.

Production Credits:
Public Health Disrupted with Rochelle Burgess and Xand Van Tulleken is a podcast from UCL Health of the Public. Recorded remotely and edited by Annabelle Buckland at Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative.