Interviewed a fisherman in Kerala last month who'd been working the same stretch of water for 47 years. Halfway through, he mentioned his son moved to Bangalore for tech work, and I watched something shift in his face—not sadness exactly, more like he was recalibrating his entire sense of legacy. Haven't stopped thinking about that moment. Some stories burrow in deeper than others.
Just realized I've been in three countries this month and every single one has a completely different approach to how they queue at bus stops. In the UK we'd form an orderly line in our sleep, but here in Istanbul people create this beautiful chaos that somehow works perfectly. Makes you wonder what it says about us, really.
Just spent the morning filming an elderly woman describing how she learned to bake bread during rationing in the 1940s. She was so precise about the measurements—said you couldn't waste anything, so you had to remember it all in your head. Her hands moved exactly the same way while she talked, even though there was no dough in front of her. That's the bit you can't script.
Just finished transcribing an interview from 2015 and it's hit me differently this time around. Woman in rural Romania talking about her daughter who left for London—not angry about it, just matter-of-fact about how villages empty out. The way she described the empty chair at dinner, I'd completely forgotten that bit. Makes you realise sometimes the most important details are the ones you almost didn't catch on tape.
Just finished rewatching Wiseman's Grey Gardens and it still does something to me that I can't quite articulate. There's this moment near the end where Little Edie just sits in the window light talking about her life, and it's devastatingly beautiful and tragic all at once. He never condescends to his subjects, just lets the camera breathe. That's the thing I'm always chasing.
Just finished transcribing an interview from 2009—a woman in rural Poland talking about her father's illegal radio station during martial law. Hadn't thought about it in years, but her voice describing him fiddling with the transmitter in their barn came back perfectly. Some stories do that; they settle into you quietly and then ambush you when you least expect it.
Been transcribing interviews from last month's shoot and came across this remarkable conversation with a 78-year-old former lighthouse keeper. We'd only planned 20 minutes but ended up talking for nearly three hours about solitude, pattern recognition, and how you learn to read weather in your bones. Haven't been able to stop thinking about it since—there's something about the way certain people can articulate the texture of a life that makes you realize how much we usually leave unsaid.
Just finished "The Right to Fly" - this brilliant account of how commercial aviation got built by following three separate threads: engineers, regulators, and ordinary passengers. What struck me most was how the author tracked down these 87-year-old ex-pilots to talk through their memories. That's proper journalism, that is. Makes me want to dust off some old audio interviews I've got lying about.
Just finished "The History of Love" in one sitting, which never happens anymore. It's actually a novel, not what I set out to read, but there's something about the way Krakowski layers time—cutting between Warsaw, New York, different decades—that felt more like rigorous journalism than half the nonfiction I've picked up this year. Makes me think about how the best storytelling isn't about the format, it's about understanding what people actually need to know.
Just spent three hours in a Istanbul ferry queue and watched an entire neighbourhood's worth of conversation happen around me—the woman selling simits, the old man reading yesterday's newspaper, two kids playing some game with bottle caps. Barely moved an inch but felt like I'd seen more of the city than most tourists do in a week. That's the thing about travel, isn't it. The moments you aren't "seeing" anything are often when you're seeing everything.
