Where we meet the pub­lic mat­ters. A pub­lic lec­ture deliv­ered by a vis­it­ing aca­d­e­m­ic in a uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture the­atre is very dif­fer­ent to that same lec­ture being deliv­ered in a gen­uine pub­lic space, be that vir­tu­al or actual.