6min chapter

The Art of Being Well cover image

Ronit Menashe & Vida Delrahim: The Fertility Crisis and the Missing Link in Reproductive Health

The Art of Being Well

CHAPTER

Fertility and Environmental Toxins

This chapter delves into the complex relationship between fertility and environmental factors, particularly the impact of toxins like BPA and phthalates found in daily products. It emphasizes dietary choices, lifestyle adjustments, and stress management as critical elements in enhancing reproductive health.

00:00
Speaker 1
If we do have a real collection, as I mentioned, even if we slightly hid it before 2010, we definitely, from the beginning, realise that the real objects were important, at least to us. So in another amateur way, we did make sure they were not simply left in boxes, in piles. So we've got real things. And because I was working with Edith Hall, who was one of the founders, founding directors with Oliver Tapplin of the APGRD, Edith and I were working on a kind of bigger parallel project to Oliver's interest. We were in a way approaching a bit more like theatre historians. We were very interested in tracing. What was really a lost history of the Greek plays on the British stage, ranging from 1660 to the restoration period right up to the beginning of the First World War 1914. So we, above all, in the small team that we began life as, were collecting things and we were going to, you know, sales. I still love going to those theatrical memorabilia sales, which occasionally pop up in London in particular. And you know, just going through all this stuff that, of course, no one was remotely interested in kind of play bills. I mean, mostly, of course, 19th century. But we got a lot of plates. I know I'm ashamed to say we know they all have been ripped out of books and dealers are selling them individually. But in a way, we've given them another life because, you know, we are sort of reintegrating them in some ways into books. But so we've got a, I'm not sure what the oldest object I probably should have asked, but if, and Claire came with our archivist, we're around, she would probably say, we have a couple of sort of 18th century objects. But I think most of the earlier collection inevitably is 19th century. And yeah, loads of play bills, you know, a lot of quite rich material. In the 20th century, we've got fantastic poster collection. We have masks as well. I mean, not huge number, but we have masks. I think we don't have costumes and thank goodness because I'm not quite sure, you know, we would not have the expertise and definitely the space to collect that. But people have been and continue to be incredibly generous and not just with book collection. So we have a fantastic library, I mean, very strong on theatre history, but on classical reception, I think unparalleled. And when I arrived in January 2000 to join the project coming from the University of London, I sort of said, Hey, where's our library? And people said, well, you know, you need to go to the bodily and for that you need to go to the English faculty library, you need to go to the Tailoria and for this. So I said, no, the idea is to try and make a collection so it's all in one room. And so we've done that. And of course, now visitors from all over the world come and because, you know, before they look what's in our collection, they have got everything in one space, a most incredible kind of research resource at their fingertips, which is often in specialist libraries in silos. So we did some, in that sense, sort of joining up in our collection, which has made it obviously unique and also very, very valuable. And I'd just say it's also, I think really valuable, not only for scholars and we're, of course, delighted when scholars visit more of the world. But in a way, the really exciting moments are when theatre practitioners are saying, Hey, can we come and look at this? Because, you know, we want to see, you know, what people have done before designers we've worked with and so on. So we have real collection, but in recent years and in a way before the pandemic, but it's particularly post pandemic, we've been really concerned to take our collection, like everyone else, to the researcher, to the interested party rather than to expect people to be able to travel to us, definitely terribly expensive, even in the UK to try and do that. And so we've thought of ways of increasingly, how do we take our collection to other people? And we have a lot of digital resources, you know, like you, we have a podcast series, we have regular lecture series, we try and record our events. But the first thing we realise is we don't have enough money, sadly, to digitise everything. And as one of my advisory board, brilliant international advisory board said, why would you digitise everything? Yeah, and I that was in a way the first time I have to say I actually thought, yeah, I mean, there is a serious theoretical question there. And rightly one that we hadn't particularly thought about, I mean, for us it was simply we didn't have the budget, but we could do other things.

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode