LRN No. 52: this is my chuffed face

Plus: planet earth after global thermonuclear war is still better than mars

This LRN is going to be a bit shorter than usual because I really must be getting on with the big article I’m supposed to be writing. My work plans have been derailed over the past week because:

(a) I spent Monday and Tuesday at a spectacular ideas festival on an island in Essex during which I gave a talk about The Price of Life and interviewed Helen Lewis about geniuses and left with a ton of new stories to explore (and books and stickers) but did none of the work I planned to do there, and

(b) I won the Orwell Prize for Journalism last week, which left me unable to sleep from excitement and disbelief, and therefore rendered me incapable of being able to write properly for days afterwards. Ironic, that.

Point (b) is a big deal for me. I never win anything. I always thought this was because people don’t know what to do with me. I’m constantly falling between categories: a documentary maker who writes and a writer who makes documentaries, someone fascinated by science and technology but also stories of human experience, politics and current affairs, a free agent who works for whichever outlet or medium suits a particular idea best. So it feels extraordinary to win. Maybe being weird is good, after all.

this is my chuffed face. Photo credit: Facundo Arrizabalaga

The four bits of work that won me the prize were:

1. A Guardian Saturday piece about a pronatlist family in Pennsylvania who want people to have as many babies as possible but don’t seem to like children very much

2. An FT Magazine piece about how the parents of fallen Israeli soldiers are extracting their sons’ sperm in the hours after their death and using it to create grandchildren

3. A Guardian Long Read about what happens when people with acute psychosis confront digital avatars of the voices inside their heads

4. An episode of my BBC Radio 4 series, The Gift, about how a DNA test, received as a Christmas present and casually taken on a rainy day, led to the discovery that two women had been switched at birth in hospital 52 years previously.

There were nine finalists altogether, each one a serious talent, and it was an honour to be nominated alongside them. (Arkady Ostrovsky’s piece on Russian deserters for 1843 Magazine is an extraordinary piece of writing, as is Alexander Clapp’s piece on drug trafficking in Ecuador. But everything on the shortlist is a great read/listen/watch.)

jamesthescribe’s drawing of my Price of Life talk at OffGrid

I learned a huge amount in a very short period of time at the OffGrid festival on Osea Island. There has been so much to mull over. Some things that have stuck in my mind:

• Douglas Rushkoff argued that tech bros aren’t disruptors at all - they are the old guard using new technologies to try and stop others from creating anything that threatens the status quo

• Anthony Dhanendran made a compelling case for why obituaries are the most interesting part of the newspapers

• Neuroscientist Anne-Laure le Cunff explained how we should see the urge to procrastinate as an important data point to interrogate rather than a reason to hate ourselves

• Dorian Lynskey pointed out that there’s little point in Elon Musk trying to make us an interplanetary species because earth would still be preferable, even after nuclear war, because earth has gravity and a breathable atmosphere (albeit one that would be filled with radiation).

I will now go and mull, and try to sleep, and also work, but not hate myself if I procrastinate.

Normal LRN service will resume in two weeks - I promise!