I have heard somewhere an argument that if the Industrial Revolution - economic development - had started in Africa rather than Europe, then sun and wave technology would now be at the forefront, not the old fossil fuels.
I've ended up in prison a number of times, once in Cambodia, once in Cuba - for hours rather than days.
I remember the Silver Jubilee clearly because we had a fancy dress street party in Sheffield. I dressed up as a Japanese girl with a too-big red kimono - cultural appropriation hadn't been invented in 1977. I was six.
I have worked out I can quite happily jog the distance to work as long as I hail a cab first and leave my high heels on the back seat.
It's arguing, in a very good and positive way. It's sort of sitting down and pulling an argument apart. I think that's a very oddly Jewish thing. And it's the chaos of family and a slight sort of cosy messiness of it all.
My second TV assignment ever was to go to Cambodia to look at the state of the country in the dying days of the Khmer Rouge. I was naive, awkward, and not very good at writing to pictures.
I think what I notice now is that a lot of the things that are said to us on camera on air are not particularly believed and quite often not true and its an extraordinary position to be in when you've had WhatsApp messages, text messages off record.
We're not robots. There isn't a perfect formula for an interview and there are days when you bring too much of you and there are days, quite honestly, when you don't bring enough of you.
There's no point meeting somebody with a meat cleaver the moment they open their mouth - because they're going to clam up, you're going to have lost your impact and the audience is going to hate you for not allowing anyone to say anything.
Some interviews wind you up. Some test your mettle. Some reduce you to a gibbering wreck.
I think you go into a debate trying to be fair minded and trying to be balanced but occasionally there will be a sense where it feels like the moral imperative is pulling you one direction or another.
I certainly don't want to be part of a media that forces confessions from people who are not going to behave any differently the next time round.
As in life, so with television: timing is everything.
I am always impressed by interviewers who can do the whole thing without notes. I can't. I need reminders on my knee. Dates, first names, quotes in bold text.
I am addicted to the highlighter pen, my papers generally a garish mix of type, Biro, unreadable scribble and lashings of luminosity, as if they belong to the unhinged.
It is the little things that throw me - the wrong pen, the wrong font. An interview done standing up is a disaster. I need my knees to rest notes on.
I'm not sure I buy the argument that the public is more mistrustful - the debate will always garner that kind of traction because anything the BBC does is always in the spotlight.
So often people read conspiracy into a thing when it's really a confluence of cock-ups and the wrong button being pressed at the wrong time, or the guest you wanted gets into the wrong taxi and doesn't show up.
It starts with denigrating experts so people don't trust facts, then it destabilises institutions, then it works to get its message out in the media, so that's what people cling to.
I think increasingly I really come to appreciate the people, the politicians, the interviewees, of any stripe and size who are able to answer a question. It seems such a small, gentle thing to demand in 2019 but it has actually become the biggest ask that we can make.
