Imogen Tyler: 0:03
I'm Imogen Tyler, a sociologist working on social inequalities, and in the stigma conversations and meeting inspirational activists, academics and welfare workers to help me understand stigma - as something about feelings and experience - yes. But also about power, politics, history. I'm interested in where stigma comes from, how it divides and marks us all - sometimes literally - and what we can do about it.

Andy Knox: 0:35
Change can happen, change has happened. And we are at - I would say - an apocalyptic moment. That means things have been revealed for what they're truly like.

Helen Greatorex: 0:48
If you're outraged about something, the chances are it's linked to some sort of policy that could be changed, that could then improve people's lives.

Geraldine Onek: 0:57
I think with antiracism is that proactivity? Isn't it like... actively having those discussions, even though they make you feel uncomfortable?

Imogen Tyler: 1:06
Join me as I meet a GP, horrified at how poverty is making us sick.

Andy Knox: 1:11
A lot of people come to us simply to say 'my life's terrible, and I don't know what to do about it'.

Imogen Tyler: 1:18
The Citizens Advice head - worried at how destitution is becoming the new normal - yet, is still something wrapped up in shame.

Helen Greatorex: 1:27
You can have a working mom, and she can tell you that she's no money to feed the kids and that although - yeah, a food parcel would be great - she can't put the oven on to cook that food. That story should be shouted from the rooftops. Just that one story.

Imogen Tyler: 1:42
And the academic is talking to the people changing the story of stigma, by tattooing themselves with the number once put on the arm of the ancestors who survived Auschwitz.

Alice Bloch: 1:55
It was about love. It was about wanting the survivor to know that they were loved, that their trauma was understood that the memory lived on and it shouldn't be a stigma.

Imogen Tyler: 2:08
Because the story of stigma might well be overwhelming, but it's also a story of hope.

Geraldine Onek: 2:14
I always teach - even children - that adults don't know everything. Every day is changing. We're finding out more information day to day.

Imogen Tyler: 2:22
Right on? Woke? Critical. Yep. So join me - Imogen Tyler for The Stigma Conversations coming soon from the Sociological Review. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and read more on the podcast page at thesociologicalreview.org