LRN No.37: the five stages of reporting neurosis

Plus: University Challenged

I’m writing this on a long-haul flight to Phoenix, Arizona, scrunched up, trying to type on a laptop that’s not fully open because the bloke in front of me has reclined his seat as far as it will go. But I am in my happy place: I’m on my way to report a couple of stories in the USA. It is an absurd privilege to get to travel the world and interview people for a living. I love it.

Cacti in Phoenix's Desert Botanical Gardens, seen shortly after landing. Who doesn't love a nice cactus?

I am happy, but also nervous. It’s the same every time. After over 20 years of being a journalist, I still freak out a bit before every interview. It goes like this:

First, you think they won’t agree to speak to you.

Then they agree to speak to you. So you start to worry that they won’t show up for the interview.

Then they show up for the interview. So you worry that the interview won’t be any good.

Then the interview is good. So you worry that your voice recorders¹ weren’t recording.

Then you realise that your recording has worked. So you begin to worry that you will not be able to do justice to the interview in any piece you write.

That worry lasts until you’ve got a finished draft.

It’s probably good that I feel this way. It means I’m still taking every story seriously, never getting complacent, always aware of what could go wrong at any given time. And war-gaming what might go wrong helps you to be nimble - to find another story, another person or way to tell it – when it does.

But man, it can be exhausting.

The process is definitely easier when I’m working with a team on an audio or video documentary, because there’s someone else to share the responsibility and therefore the freaking out. Unless your producer is as neurotic as you are. I mention no names, but certain LRN readers may recognise themselves here.

There are other benefits to reporting neurosis. I always keep the last day of any reporting trip free so that I can do last-minute interviews if anything does go wrong; when it doesn’t, I have free time to explore a foreign land.

The first time I experienced this was when I found myself alone in Las Vegas in 2017 having interviewed a very bad sex robot engineer. I had an entire day to kill before my night flight, and I spent it walking for miles along the strip, agog at the scale and the ugliness of it all, listening to music on my headphones, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.

Luck had nothing to do with my soon-to-be-broadcast stint on Christmas University Challenge. (Well, perhaps there was a little bit of luck involved.) I was the captain of the Queens’ College, Cambridge alumni team, along with the author Richard K Morgan, the literary critic and author Stephanie Merritt, and Prof John Zarnecki – an actual rocket scientist.

I am not allowed to tell you how we did, but I really do think you should watch. My episode goes out on BBC2 at 8.30pm on 30th December.

Things that have caught my eyes and ears:

• Felt very privileged to see a screening of Zurawski v Texas, an extraordinary documentary about the harrowing consequences of the overturning of Roe Vs Wade

• Enjoyed the hideous and glorious Francis Bacon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, the best gallery in London (probably)

• Was transported back to a time when magazines were king and journalists thought they were rock stars watching Loaded: Lad, Mags and Mayhem. Interesting to see the legacy of it all for the key staff there, none of whom seems to have escaped without some kind of mental or physical trauma

• Loved at this Atlantic piece on academic fraud in the field of business psychology (discovered via Stuart Ritchie’s excellent Science Fictions Substack). It’s a long read about an academic who makes up facts and figures in research papers about the human tendency to make up facts and figures. And it includes some unsubstantiated gossip from an academic who specialises in studying gossip

1. Note the plural. I always record on at least two devices to allay recording neurosis, but I still have to check them as soon as I’ve finished. And back up the recording as soon as possible. Twice.