Your Life Is a Business Story | The Mal Show (Podcast) with Brandy Scott

After more than 20 years interviewing CEOs, founders, ministers, and world leaders, Brandie Scott has learned what separates great leaders from everyone else.

In this episode of The MAL Show, we talk about journalism, leadership, AI, trust, the art of asking better questions, and why every business story is ultimately a human story.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, or simply curious about the people behind business, this conversation is full of insights you won't want to miss.

Topics covered:

Journalism in the age of AI
The future of media
Leadership and communication
The power of curiosity
Why every business is a human story
Lessons from two decades of interviewing global leaders

Don't forget to subscribe to our channel to get the latest episodes of the Mal Show

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:44 Why Journalism & Business Journalism
5:06 AI & The Future of Creative Writing
11:02 The Novel: Not Bad People
13:29 Covering the Dot-Com Boom in Dubai
18:15 Leaving Dubai & Reverse Culture Shock
22:38 The Survival of Radio
32:17 Journalism Ethics & Interviewing Style
45:26 Interviewing Powerful People Without Intimidation
54:21 From Moderation to Mediation
58:16 Managing Anxiety Through Radio
1:03:34 The Most Memorable Interview
1:10:47 AI, Misinformation & The Future of Newsrooms
1:21:30 Financial Literacy & Business Media's Role
1:23:50 Tribute to Malcolm Taylor
1:30:20 Don't Wait to Live: Life Lessons


To get in touch with us: 
podcast@mal.ai

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To get in touch with Brandy Scott
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandy-scott-9552a624/

#TheMALShow #BrandieScott #Business #Leadership #Journalism #AI #Media #Podcast #Entrepreneurship #Dubai #BusinessBreakfast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I had someone really early on in my career when I was spending a lot of time saying I don't want to be a business journalist, who explained to me that everything in the world was basically a business story. And that everything you you did as a person was basically an economic vote. What I chose to eat, where I chose to live. All of it is a business story, but all of it is also a people story.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Today's guest is Brandi Scott, one of the UE's most respected business journalists. For more than two decades, she's interviewed central bank governors, ministers, CEOs, investors, and entrepreneurs, and has hosted the Business Breakfast, one of the region's longest-running and most trusted business shows.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Malks had a lot of holiday banked when he died because he was looking towards a retirement that wasn't actually that far away. And so he had been like storing up his holiday dates to be paid out for them rather than to take them. It sounds trite to say use your holiday, but what I actually mean by that is don't wait to do the good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

How did that change you?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I would love to be able to honestly say that it's, you know, made me think about the preciousness and importance of using everyday fully. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Kristen.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Has it changed me? Probably has and did, in ways that would probably take me a little bit longer than your podcast to sit down and think about, because I've never actually thought about that particular question. It did just make me think, and it still does. You know, you can make all these plans right. But you also need to make sure that you are really living now.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Assalamu alaikum and welcome to the MALT Show. Business journalism does not just report what's happening in the economy, it shapes how we think about money, markets, and the future. A headline can influence confidence, move markets, and even change the way we make financial decisions. But how do you cover business without becoming part of the story? Today's guest is Brandi Scott, one of the UEE's most respected business journalists. For more than two decades, she's interviewed central bank governors, ministers, CEOs, investors, and entrepreneurs, and has hosted the Business Breakfast, one of the region's longest-running and most trusted business shows. In this episode, we talk about the responsibility of business media, what makes a great interviewer, how to explain complex economic issues without losing the human story, why trust matters more than ever in the age of AI, and what she's learned after thousands of conversations with some of the world's most influential leaders. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel to get the latest episodes of the matchup. Let's begin. Brandy, thank you so much for being with me.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

It's I'm not gonna say it's nice being on the other side of the microphone. It is interesting being on the other side of the microphone.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

It's very nice for me. I I I get to host you, it's an honor.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

We've done some role reversal.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

100%, but I guess not a lot of people got to got to host you. So I feel I feel very honoured. Thank you. Uh so Brandy, obviously you are an incredible writer, performer, if I can, if I can say so many skills. Why journalism and why business journalism specifically?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Journalism, I wanted to write for a living, and I didn't know that I could write fiction for a living, which is what I actually wanted to do. Um there's a bit of a question mark about whether you can write fiction for a living, which is a whole nother story. Um, and that's my journalism. Uh, business journalism was a bit of an accident. It wasn't really um my background or what I wanted to do. I wanted to write beautiful long-form features for the Guardian Weekend magazine uh about social issues. Um, but business journalism was what I sort of fell into. And I've tried to escape a couple of times, and I've never managed. And now it has become what I really enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

And on that, because some people would say the impact of social journalism would be higher. You'd be unveiling social issues, you'd be kind of providing a voice for people who have no voice, etc., compared to maybe business journalism, where maybe these people do have a voice in different ways. So, how do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

I had someone really early on in my career when I was spending a lot of time saying, I don't want to be a business journalist, um, who explained to me that everything in the world was basically a business story. Um, and that everything you you did as a person was basically an economic vote. So if I went out to Rock Bottoms on a Friday night, this is the late 90s in Dubai, go with me. Um, if I bought a pair of Nike sneakers, what I chose to eat, where I chose to live. All of it is a business story, but all of it is also a people story, if you like. Um and once I started seeing it like that, it it sort of flipped things for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Now, going back to saying I want to write for a living and the challenge with that, whether it's on the fiction, whether it's some other things. Now, that's one of the main challenges today for writers, for artists in general, is that it just doesn't pay enough for the vast majority of creative, creative people. And that creates kind of a limitation in the economy on the kind of contributions of artists, which is one of the most important societal contributions. How do we get out of this vicious cycle?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I honestly don't know. Um, I have a novel in print. Uh it doesn't pay the rent. Um, I do have uh well, I'm just out of the television option for it, actually, and I'm I'm I'm looking at what happens next with that. And so, in a way, the amount of adaptions we have of fiction books, you know, Netflix and and Apple and whoever else, um, helps because that's another revenue stream for for writers, your work being optioned. Um, I've been paid two or three times for my work to be optioned, even though it hasn't been even made into a television series yet. But I I don't know what the answer is. And I suspect that AI is going to make that worse, not better.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Why?

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Because if anything, it devalues the creative process and the author. So we know that there have been a lot of books that have been scraped to train AI. Mine is on, there was a bag list that you could go in and check to see if if your book had been scraped to train AI and mine had. And so if there is an alternative for publishers, for people who would otherwise be paying for creative content, um, then that is just, it just sort of shrinks the pool a bit. Now I don't know where that's going to end up, because at the moment you can really tell when something's written by AI, right? Um it has that tone to it. And so maybe we will actually end up where things that are written by humans have a premium on them, which would be great. So I don't know how this, I don't know how this particular story ends. But I do know that a lot of the the freelance work that has helped me through periods when I've been studying, when I've gone off and and done a master's, things like that wouldn't exist anymore as freelance jobs. Because I've done, you know, things when, again, when I've been a student, like, you know, writing for websites and things, and that kind of work, some of the work that I've done would very easily be now. They would just be AI jobs. You wouldn't go looking for a student to do them. So again, that that revenue pool kind of shrinks.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

But don't you think, on the other hand, AI massively increases the productivity of the writers they can finish many more novels than before and hence earn more and hopefully turn it into a source of living?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

How so?

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Like if you are guesswriting today a novel without AI, you're literally writing every single word in it, right? And editing it and proofreading yourself. Whereas I guess with AI, you're maybe writing the storyline, the character arcs, the but the details of the writing, maybe some of that is AI generated.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

I wouldn't want to do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Do you see it as kind of as unethical, as misrepresenting to the reader, or you just see it as creatively you want to own the creation?

SPEAKER_01 8:34

I see the, well, I see the writing as the fun part, but I also see it as integral to the book. Um there have been some sort of um mini scandals in the world of writing so far, where you have people who have either, you know, sort of won a prize or had a book accepted or whatever, that have then been accused of using AI for bits of it. And it is seen as a real no-no.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I want to go back to how you've kind of managed, let's say, to have a very kind of core, let's say, job in journalism that pays the bill, then you've kind of pursued your passion, let's say, on the novels as well. And also how, for example, when you went to the masters, you kept your freelance. Is that how you always view the world? Is it something stable, foundational core that can provide you stability and then a passion pursuel in parallel? And is that how you would approach life and you think you advise people to keep both going at the same time?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

What like a portfolio career? Um, I think it's how much you can manage. I wrote a novel whilst doing the radio show, um, which was hard because I get up before dawn to do my particular job. So you could argue that my most creative hours are already taken up. Most writers I know write first thing in the morning when they're when they're fresh and I'm broadcasting. Um, but I was really pleased to have the radio while I was doing that, because I didn't have to worry about the book paying for itself. I kind of, it it was a really privileged position because I it took the pressure off the book to pay the rent, if you like, um, because I had a job and therefore I had a salary and I had stability. And then towards the end, when I was editing the book, which was a much harder process for me than I would have foreseen, um, I was actually quite pleased to go to work and think about something that wasn't the book for four hours every morning, um, and to think about the conversations that I was having with my guests and the news and you know, and all the things that come with with broadcasting. So for me, having, yeah, I like, I like the stability of a job, I like the stability of a salary, um, and I like I'm not sure how I would function as a human if I was just in my head all day making things up.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Tell us about the first novel.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So my first novel is called Not Bad People, and it is about three women who are in a very small town in Australia in Country Victoria, and it's New Year's Eve, and they are letting off um, you know, the lanterns that you put a little candle in the bottom of, and some you see them often at weddings or um festivals, lantern, sky lantern festivals, and they're having a letting-go ceremony where they're writing down the things that they want to let go of on a on a piece of paper, and then they're tying it to the bottom of the lantern and letting it go. And so they do this and they write down the things that they want to let go of to go into the new year, and they watch the lanterns sort of drift off from their balcony, and then in the distance, they see one of them just catch fire because they're made of like, you know, paraffin and wax and and paper. I don't think they're particularly safe. They're actually illegal here to um let them off, I think. And then when it goes up, um they think, oh gosh, uh, because bushfire and things are are uh an issue in Australia. But they then watch it go out and they think, okay, it's fine, it's just been a little flare and it's it's burnt out. And they go to bed because it's New Year's Eve and they've had a big night. Um and then they wake up in the morning and they discover that there's been a a small light plane crash, a Cessna crash, in the same area, and they don't know if their lantern has caused the crash or not. Dom dum dum. And that's the start.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Oh wow. That's intriguing. You know, sometimes they say that with every novel writer, there is a side of the characters of that they create that's reflection of their own journey. Was that the case? Was there something that you wanted to let go as you were writing this?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

I don't know if it was cathartic. Uh I would say that there was absolutely a little bit of me in almost every character, maybe. Um I didn't really see it as therapy, I just saw it as fun.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

I want to take you back to the scene you described, kind of late 90s in Dubai. You're in business journalism. Now, this was the same time around the dot-com bubble, right? You're covering technology, and here it is, the technology world collapsing in front of your eyes. Take us back to these moments.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Okay. Well, the moment was there completely by accident for starters, because I had been a student in the UK, and I'm not British, so my time was up after I had finished sort of studying and and and doing internships and work experience, and I had to leave. Um, and I got offered a job working for a tech publisher in the late 90s here in Dubai. And I had no interest in tech, I'll be honest, Yusuf. Um, I didn't really know anything about Dubai, late 90s, not you know, it wasn't necessarily on the radar in the way that it is now. Uh, but I wasn't ready to go home. This felt like halfway. Someone was offering me a plane ticket, and I took it. And it was awesome. It was a brilliant time to be covering the tech world for a number of reasons. And we had both a bit of a lag and a leapfrog here. So, where you had the implosion around a lot of overvalued companies in the the US, here you had a lot of companies that were digitizing for the first time. And they were getting to leapfrog a lot of other stages and a lot of other sort of, you know, built-up tech that people had invested in in other countries, which was great. Um, and it also meant that that implosion didn't really happen here because it was very much a stock market bubble, wasn't it? Rather than there being anything wrong with the technology itself. Um, I mean, you know, the internet did turn out to be a world-changing, work-changing, life-changing technology. There was nothing wrong with the technology. Um, there was a lot wrong with the overhyped valuations of a lot of the companies that just called themselves something.com in the same way that we have a lot of companies that claim to be AI-enabled because at the moment it sells. So the the tech was solid, digitization was solid. We've obviously gone through a lot of incarnations. I mean, I remember sitting in an awful lot of press conferences during the dot com boom in which people would say, you know, if you don't already have a portal, you're too late. And everyone was obsessed with having a portal, and I'm not entirely even sure now what a portal was. Uh I think a portal was a website that linked you to about five other websites. I mean, it was ridiculous. But so it didn't look like what we thought it was going to look like, but it absolutely changed everything.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

When you were leaving the UK, you said midway home. Why not all the way home to New Zealand at that point?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Oh, I wasn't ready. Um, I'd left New Zealand at 17 and gone to the UK, and I would have been I don't know, early 20s. Uh and I wasn't ready to go home. Um I love New Zealand, but it's very far away from everywhere else. And it felt a little bit like I would have been just sort of putting my passport in a drawer and settling down.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

At some point though, you did go back to New Zealand, uh worked with the radio there and did your master's in creative writing there. I did. What was different at that time?

SPEAKER_01 16:49

What's changed? I think not just for me, but for a lot of expats, the way we view our time in Dubai has changed. So if I look back what would have been 14, 15 years ago, uh, this was still seen very much as a temporary uh posting. This was pre-Golden Visa and and even though we had home ownership, it hadn't sort of taken off in the way that it has now. And I think back then, and maybe even now for a lot of expats, in the back of your mind, you're thinking that eventually you will end up back home. Maybe that's when the kids get to a certain age, maybe that's when you hit a certain number in the bank account, maybe that's when a mortgage is paid off, whatever, you know, a lot of people have a date or a number in their brain, right? Or did have. And I just kind of thought I if if I'm gonna do it, I need to do it before things get too solidified. Um and so and I was also tired if I'm honest. I'd done breakfast radio for a long time and I I was ready for a sleep in. Um and so I I moved back and I sold everything um and you know, car, furniture, and and all the rest of it. And I found it really hard to settle. Um in fact, the first um novel that I actually wrote, which isn't published, but I wrote it to to get my master's degree, um, is about reverse culture shock. It was about going home and as Heraclitus says, discovering that you can't step into the same river twice. Both you and the river are different. So having this reverse culture shock that you really shouldn't have because this is your home country. So so why are you feeling weird about it? And I felt really weird about it. So I wrote about it.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

And that's when you came back again to the UE.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I did. Um it took me a wee while. I I did my masters. Um, as you said, I'd I'd done some work with Radio New Zealand. I ended up in Mexico at one point trying to trying to find myself. But I have a bit of a theory that I mean, we spend so long thinking about finding the perfect person or the perfect job or the perfect career. I think it's really important to find the perfect place. And I think a lot of it is about pace. So I can remember coming back here and going to a friend's birthday on the first weekend, I was back, and someone's saying, Oh my gosh, why have you moved back? And me joking and saying, Oh, well, I've done it for the money. And then finding them later on, because the moment I said it, I knew it was false. And saying, No, do you know what? I've moved back for the pace. Because the pace at which Dubai moves really suits me.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Some people say the pace is great when you're alone, but then with family, does it become too fast?

SPEAKER_01 19:56

I don't have kids. What do you think? You've got kids.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

I still think it's even great for them because I think we're such in a competitive world, as you said, and with AI to be even more competitive, that if you don't grow up in this fast competitive pace, you're on the risk of just being too slow for the world.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I just know it works at about the rate that my brain works. And I like that. I'm not a person who does very well on a beach holiday, lying on a on a deck chair. I like to have stuff going on. Um, and there's always stuff going on.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

You said you were tired after a few years of doing breakfast radio, and that's part of kind of decision to go back, but not even doing it for over 20 years. So how have you refounded?

SPEAKER_01 20:39

You're asking if I'm still tired.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

How have you managed your way through it?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Um oh gosh, I don't know. I do know that moving back here was the single best choice I could have made.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Why?

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Um I had missed the radio dreadfully, um, but I'd missed the city. And I've enjoyed it more on my second stint as a a boomerang, if you like, than I did the first time around. I think I appreciate it more. Uh and I've I I came back to I mean, people always say if you've lived in Dubai for a long time, oh, you must have seen it change. And I think I've seen it change about a dozen times. Do you know what I mean? Like Dubai hasn't just gone through one wave of of major change. It's gone through a a lot. And I I was so Yeah, I was just so happy to be back.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

What do you think gives the city this versatility to be able to evolve through these uh situations and periods and continue to evolve?

SPEAKER_01 21:46

I think there's a lot of things that help it. I mean, uh decisions are made fast, they're able to be put in place fast. Um having the finances behind you to do that, absolutely certainly. Helps. And I think being adaptable and being able to move with what the world needs and the the city needs.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

You said you missed the radio. Um I was also chatting with Mohanad, our producer before the show. He was also being nostalgic about uh radio, talking about the Queen's song, Radio Gaga, etc. But most people weren't really betting on radio, right? With social media, most people would have thought radio is over, people are watching, not listening, shorter attention spans, reads, etc. How did radio survive?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I have a tendency to end up in careers that people are constantly forecasting the end of. Newspapers, um, writing books, radio. So maybe I'm the hardbringer of doom. Um I think people have forecast the end of radio for a really long time, right? And on a very simplistic level, and I come from a country that that loves radio as well. Um one of the things that Dubai and New Zealand have got in common is that people spend quite a lot of time in their cars for different reasons. Um people spend quite a lot of time in New Zealand in their cars because it's a very long, narrow country that doesn't necessarily have, we don't have like a British train system, for example, to link up all the different cities. We've got um some train infrastructure, but it's it's not as it's not as as as big and integrated as that. Um and so people drive long distances to get from A to B, which I think helps. Um but also in New Zealand, actually, people listen to the radio in their workplace. But here you've got traffic and you've got, you know, people spending long times in their cars purely because of the rate that the city is growing and because of congestion, uh, which is quite frankly our friend. No one else likes it, but it's great for radio. I think we get really hung up though, on the platform rather than what we're actually creating. So I I interviewed you last week about uh about your day job and about, you know, a new AI innovation in there. And we did that interview on radio. Uh that interview also will have gone out on television because of our our tie-up with a television station. It will have gone out on our podcast. Uh, it will have almost certainly been put out on LinkedIn. It will have been clipped, and bits of it will have gone up on different social media platforms, Instagram, what have you. At what point does that stop being radio and does that start being social media?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Very true. But the one thing is, let's say on podcast, the one of the fundamental differences is on podcasts, I choose what I listen to, right? And it's this kind of listen to what you want, watch what you want on Netflix versus radio and TV, or maybe the platform is the same, but you are choosing what I listen to. How do you see this difference? Because people would have thought that by now I just don't want anything forced on me. I'll pick and choose. But here you are, you have people listening to you where you're choosing for them. So what do people really want?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

I'm not sure if that's a generational answer, that you've got generations that are quite used to having a program format, and then you've got other generations that are quite used to being able to choose when, how, and and what. Um, and the argument there, of course, then goes into you've got um generations that are used to not paying for content as as well, which is which is another another issue, right? Um I think you have a choice. So you can listen to the radio if you want, home or in your car, you can listen to the podcast, you can grab the bits that you want to on social media. All of those options are there for people. And I think that's probably where radio will end up. You can choose the format that works for you, push or pull, you know, time fixed, not time fixed, um menu format or or peck and choose to fit. We just have to make the commercial model work around that.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So just going back, you did move a lot between different formats, right? So you did do tech, business, features, radio, TV, magazine, newspapers, events, public speaking. So you did move between formats. One is is there a plan? Like do you come out and say, I want to be a well-rounded presenter who does everything, or do you go with the flow? And second, is that the right thing to do to become a well-rounded person, or is the right thing to do to really specialize and become the absolute best in the niche that you do?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Wow. Um I've never, it's funny, I've never really thought of it as moving around. I mean, one of the things that I really love about journalism is that you can effectively have the same career, but different careers. You know, I work I've worked in magazines, I've worked in newspapers, um, now I work in radio. I see it as the same job, um, even though they are very, very different careers. I think you probably find the platform uh that suits you. I mean, I can remember doing my first ever radio show with Richard Dean and coming out afterwards, and I'd been working at a newspaper, and Rich also had come from print, and coming out afterwards and just saying, This is brilliant. Like the guests have come in, we've interviewed them, we don't need to transcribe the interview, we're not having to find photos, we're not having to write headlines, I'm not having to go back and forth and argue with a subs desk, I'm not having to check it and and change it. Um this is amazing. Uh why wow. And he just turned around and said, Well, don't say anything or else everyone will want to do it. Um which I still think is true. Uh I think you find that the the platforms in the format that suits you and your personality best. Um, I'm not wildly self-promotional as a person. Uh, it's very rare for me to be answering the questions and not asking them. Uh, it's not in my comfort zone. And I'm also a New Zealander, and I think we're kind of bred not to stick our own heads above the parapet, right? So our national sport is rugby. You score a try, you put your head down, you walk away, as opposed to football, even though the all-whites are playing at the moment and they've played over the weekend um in the uh the World Cup, you know. But football's not, or soccer as we call it, is not our national sport where, with no disrespect to the all whites, you know, you score a goal and go running around the place. Um and I think that speaks volumes to the New Zealand character. So I was reading a think piece the other day talking about the sort of the the pressures on journalists at the moment in terms of you, you know, once upon a time, if you were a radio journalist, you went and did your radio show, and then you had to that sort of shifted into you had to think not just about your content, but also about your brand. Um, and so you became, you know, sort of a personal branding person as as well as a radio presenter. And now you're also a content creator because, you know, it's on you to have a certain amount of followers and to be, you know, dicing and slicing your own content and popping it up. And um, and there's a lot of hours in the the day, but uh we're talking about several full-time jobs here. That's where AI actually helps because a lot of the tools that are coming out now take a lot of the pressure off if you are having to then become a full-time content creator, the you know, to to almost justify your position on the the radio.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Uh not only have you moved around in terms of the type of platform, but also in terms of scale, right? You've started with things which were like 10k circulation, then 20k, then 70k, then now you're kind of onto the masses with with radio for many, many years. As these numbers grow, the responsibility grows. A lot of things change. How do you how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_01 30:54

It does and it doesn't. So the responsibility doesn't change. Um, your audience?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Exactly. You're the audience, because ultimately now the impact you're having is on a much larger number of people. The number of the people who can decide to do things differently, act differently, pursue different things based on the insights or the impact or the messages they get from your from your you and your guests and the conversation is now much larger.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Oh, I I think, yeah, it doesn't dozen. So I think hopefully you're still behaving the same way in an interview, whether there are 10 people watching it or 10 million people watching it, right? So hopefully you are still asking fair questions, you're not trying to trip someone up, you are um, you know, just behaving well, um regardless of how big the audience size is. Um I do think though that you probably have a larger responsibility to the person that you are interviewing because the risk and exposure for them is greater.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

But when when is this your problem and when it's not? Because someone may say, ultimately, I'm here, I work for the audience. My job is to ask the questions. If you answer a response that exposes you, that's on you. You should know better.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

I'm really not a very good journalist, to be perfectly honest, Yusuf, because I'm not um I've never been particularly good at a lot of the stuff that comes with a lot of journalism. Um I've never been good at doorstepping, which is when you know something terrible or tragic happens to somebody and and you have to go and knock on their doors. And um I'm not really I don't really want to upset anybody or ruin their day. This is gonna end up being a a a yeah, I'm killing all of my pu future um employment prospects with this podcast. It it isn't. I'm not really interested in um gotcha sort of journalism. And it it doesn't suit me. Um it really doesn't suit me. I don't have the personality for it, I get too anxious. So it's one of the reasons that I quite like what I do, which I see as almost the role of an interpreter or a translator, to find out for people what's going on, what does it mean for them, etc. etc. And if I think someone is you know evading an answer, I will push them a little bit, you know, I will I will ask them again. Um but I don't yeah, I don't I don't it's actually very admirable.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

You're you're not willing to sacrifice your guest and throw him under the bus just to kind of get the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

I yeah, I it's it doesn't sit with me. It's one of the reasons I like business journalism, and it's one of the reasons that I like working here. And you know how the UAE is coming up with its sort of uh civility, what is it, the civil civility code at the moment. It's you know. Um we find on the radio from our listeners that that civility is kind of expected. So you have to we have to work to time, right? So at the end of a certain time, we have to go to a commercial break. And so you have to cut people off. And people are told before the interview, you know, look, if we go over time, you know, Brandy will cut you off and wrap up and don't take it badly and all the rest. So they know before they start. Um but and we try and let people know with verbal prompts as well. So I will say to you, you know, I've got 40 seconds left with you, Yusuf, or last question, or very quickly, or something to let you know that there needs to be a short answer. Um But if we cut people off, even though they know we're going to and we have to wrap up to get to the commercial outbreak, we get people messaging in saying that was rude, don't do that. The audience doesn't like it. They the audience likes us to teach, to treat our guests with respect. And if we are a little bit because, you know, we've got seven-minute interviews. And in most other countries, you would get banged straight into the hard first question. And here there is very much a culture of people saying, thanks, Brandy, it's lovely to be with you. I'd just like to thank you for this opportunity, da-da-da. And in my head, I am thinking that is 30 seconds of my seven minutes. And there's quite a lot I want to ask you. Um, but again, if we try and rush people through that, it doesn't sit well with either the guest or the audience. It's just it's not in the DNA. I feel like that was a terrible answer. It's a great one. Which is ironic given what I do for a living.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

I think it's a very honest answer that you have. And I think this is exactly like our show is all about like money and ethics. And trying to It doesn't make me a good person. I think it makes you have a certain integrity code, which you believe in, and that you are willing to stick to this code, even if it's at the expense of a certain numbers. And I think that because no one is in a position to judge what's right and wrong. I think what's admirable is that you have a certain code or a certain set of principles that you believe in. Someone else may or may not believe in, but once you've decided to believe in them, then you've decided to put them ahead of the numbers and make sure that you stick by them. And I think that's what's admirable. It doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with what you outlined now, but I always will agree with the fact that you've decided that you prioritize this once you've set it as your quote.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Now you see, you're making me sound like a really good person who's doing this for noble and ethical reasons. Um I'm I'm I'm doing it because it makes me more comfortable with myself. Um, I have had um various bouts of anxiety and stuff during my life, and I don't want to feel anxious about what I do on a day-to-day basis. Um it, I mean, it feels actually, if anything, quite selfish. Um because it makes me more comfortable with what I'm doing for a living. Um, one of the reasons that I don't write um nonfiction, for example, um, and I moved out of writing for print, um, is because I worry too much about it. And I've been approached um quite a lot and quite recently by non-fiction publishers who've got quite an interest in what's happening in in Dubai for one reason or another, who know that I can write and want me to write for them. And at the moment, it it would add a level of stress that I don't want or need right now. So one of the reasons I write fiction, you just make it up.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

I do think though there's no contradiction between being a good person and doing things for yourself. Because if you are a genuinely good person, then doing, let's say, things which don't fit that code will upset you. And that's actually a sign that, again, this internal friction means you are sticking to the code. So the fact that you are trying to feel good and that kind of certain things does not make you feel good, it means it's because you would otherwise blame yourself, which means that your internal conscious is very much awake and hence it's kind of almost internally punishing you if you take a different route, which again goes back to the same point. So I don't think there's a contradiction between the two.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

That's interesting. I I just see it as I know what works for me, and I know what my skill set is, and I would rather do something that feels like it's more in my wheelhouse than to do something that I wouldn't be very good at, you know. Um and I'd do kind of half-rate. And I'm aware that people think I asked half questions, by the way. Um because, you know, we uh talk to a lot of PR people and and and all the rest of it. Um but I I don't think they're nasty or calculated questions. And actually, if you listen to a lot of international media organizations, I don't think they're that tough either.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

No, and I love the fact that you your first description of them was fair as opposed to easy or tough, because I think easy and tough is like subjective and they're supposed to be tough. But as you said, the question is is the fair question or not. I think that's the most more appropriate description.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah, I mean, I you've I also just think when I'm interviewing people, you've got people from massive multinational organizations that have got PR teams and media trainers, you know, and all this money's been put into helping them navigate a situation like this. And then, you know, we're also interviewing entrepreneurs and startups and people who haven't gone through that, you know? Um, and so that's what I mean by fairness. You know, you're speaking to someone who's putting their neck on the line, they don't need to speak to you, they don't have to speak to you. They're choosing to do so. And there is, you know, a great personal risk that that comes with that. Um so you're not out to make anyone look bad. And by the way, that doesn't help the listener either. Do you know what I mean? Other than a vicarious maybe thrill from some sectors, but that doesn't help the listener. It doesn't help the listener learn anything, it doesn't help the listener make their mind up about anything. Um it's yeah, it's just I don't I don't feel like that's the point of any of it. But I am aware that, you know, some people have had a lot more help in crafting a narrative than others. I mean, the irony is for us, the better interviews are usually the people that have not been media trained to the nth degree, right? Because when you go into a studio and you've got your talking points and you've got your, you know, company messaging and da-da-da-da-da, and you've got three PR people sitting in the green room who are all like, you know, those are not our good conversations. Our good conversations are with people who just talk to us.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

And on that diversity of guests, right? You've had central bank governors, you've had like Knoppen nominees, you've had uh ministers, you've had uh best-selling authors, founders, executives, etc. How do you see that diversity? How do you find these interviews? You've done thousands of these.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

What do you mean by how do I find the diversity?

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Like when you're sitting with a government official versus sitting with a private individual versus sitting with an artist, how does the dynamic change? How does what you take away from the conversation change? Is how do you how do you believe the pressures of specific positions reflect on people in interviews versus maybe people who are more artistic, who are more creative, who are coming in without necessarily this PR machine and this kind of massive corporate machine behind them? Do you see them more comfortable? Do you see them more creative in the interviews itself? Do you think that massive machine ends up being limiting for the guests?

SPEAKER_01 42:28

I don't know if it's limiting for them. I think that's really individual, right? Because you see some people coping exceptionally well with it. You see people in very high positions that know that they are in a position that, you know, they they don't have to worry about that machine. Um so I think that very much comes down to personality. But I think our job is to make people as comfortable as possible. And that again is for the listener, right? Um, because I'm gonna get a better conversation up with you if you feel safe. Um, and again, that's gonna be the best thing that could possibly happen for the people who are listening. Um, and then if I wanted to be cold and calculated about it, then you know, if our listenership is good, then that's good for, I don't know, ad sales and the commercial team and the future of radio to bring it right around. But it's that you're gonna get more out of people who feel safe and who feel comfortable. And we've got this really small period of time, like this five minutes in which to build it. And I've interviewed people weirdly, I've interviewed two people who were deaf, who had quite serious hearing impairment within a really short time of each other. Um, and the first This one didn't tell me before we went live, which I mean to be fair, okay, they didn't have to, but obviously, you know, we went live and I kind of moved the microphone, and therefore they couldn't see my lips anymore. And, you know, I could see them sort of moving when we were talking. And it wasn't until afterwards that that they said, um, oh, by the way, I, you know, I I can't hear out of my right, I can't remember what it was, but they said, you know, basically that that they had issues with with hearing. Um and the second guest, which again was in a really short space of time, bizarrely, I could see before we started that they were moving. And so I was actually able to say to them, Do you need to see my lips when when we're talking? And they were like, Oh, yeah, I do. And so I was able to position it enough that they could do that without it, you know, affecting the sound quality. Um, but you could argue that I failed for that first interview because they didn't feel comfortable enough to tell me.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

Now, you did interview a lot of powerful people, right? Ministers, CEOs, people in positions of power. A couple of things. One is some people in that case may end up being uh seen as a little bit of like cheerleaders for growth, for the story, etc. So how do you keep your independence? How do you keep your objective voice in challenging them and without kind of being intimidated by that position of power they're in?

SPEAKER_01 45:22

I think again, um one of the really good things about uh my background in being a New Zealander is that we're not very good at standing on ceremony. Um New Zealand's small, most of our politicians you've either been to school with or you know their mum, right? So um, I mean, literally, you watch the news and you recognize people. Um it's I can remember when I was in print um really early on, and I would have been in my early 20s, and the then New Zealand Prime Minister, funny enough, whom I didn't go to school with and I didn't know her mum, um, but she was coming over here, and I, because I was the Keewee, was being sent out to interview her. And um, Helen Clark. And my boss at the time said, Oh, I'll come with you, I'll come with you. And I said, you know, okay. Um, you know, what bosses are like, they like to meet powerful people. And he said to me, What do I call her? He said, you know, she's not royal, is she? So it's not like you know, your majesty. I was like, certainly not, you know, New Zealand Labour politician. And he said, Well, you know, do it, do I call her Her Excellency? And I was again like, no, no, no, again, not really the vibe for a Kiwi Labour politician. Um, and he said, Oh, well, do I call her Mrs. Clark? And I was like, that's really not, I wouldn't go there. Um, that's not that's that's not what I would open with. Um and then he said, Well, what are you gonna call it? And I just said, Um, I'm gonna call her Helen. And he was horrified to the point that he was like, You can't do that. And I was like, No, I am, I'm gonna call her Helen, like that's what anyone from New Zealand would call it. And he was just like, You can't. I was like, Well, I am, to the point that I think he was like, I'm not gonna send you. Um, and I ended up having um Helen Clark on a panel, uh, I think to do with UNDP or something, years later. And I had a coffee with her afterwards, and I told her the story, and she laughed. Um, and she said, Oh, you you should have have said to him, um, I'm just gonna call her Auntie Helen, which is part of New Zealand's nickname for it.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

So it's just ingrined in the culture.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Yeah, we don't we don't really put people on pedestals um just because you're you know the CEO of something. Uh you know, in New Zealand, you've got a lot of politicians that still go home and you know, milk the cows. So I think that helps. I I think having that as a as a base is helpful.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

I mean liking the New Zealand culture in this interview, so like I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

I know, they should be paying me that. Like I am a spokesperson for the for the New Zealand psyche.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Non-self-promotional, down to earth, like what uh what more do you want from a culture and a character? So it sounds like a pretty uh pretty good character. Again, I'd want to understand from you at some point what built that character, but maybe that's for another uh discussion.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Yeah, I think it's I mean, it it's always said that the other side of that in New Zealand can be tall poppy syndrome. You know, and I left New Zealand at 17, so it's actually really interesting to me that I'm referencing so much of that in this interview because I've lived in the UAE for longer than I've lived in New Zealand, for longer than I lived in New Zealand. I left New Zealand at 17 years old. I've been here for 26 and a half years.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

Are you nostalgic?

SPEAKER_01 48:56

For New Zealand? Um I I'm I'm I'm proud and pleased of where I come from. But I live here. Do you know what I mean? I live here. I spent my twenties here. I feel like I grew up here.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Having two homes is amazing. It's always better than one.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Yeah, and you know, I'm I'm lucky. I've got a a great passport that is easy to travel with. And one of the things that Dubai actually did for me is that, you know, I mean, I came out of um New Zealand quite arrogantly naive. And I moved here and I worked with a lot of people whose passports weren't quite so easy to, you know, to move to move around with. Um, and you realize really quickly what a privilege that is.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

One of the other things you do very well is humanizing the guest and the and the company and breaking it down into very simple questions and answers. And I guess that's part of how you see yourself as an interpreter and translator to bring it to the to the audience. How do you make sure, because a lot of, again, these guests that you have is complex topics, industries, etc. How do you make sure the average person in her car on in the morning is really able to understand and see that person as a human, not as another cold corporate?

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Um, because I'm an average human. Um, I didn't, I mean, I did a bit of economics as as part of my degree, but I didn't, you know, study economics. I haven't walked into this with, you know, a fancy PPE degree from, you know, a lovely red brick university. So I didn't come from a finance background. And I've learnt a lot on the job, and I've gone and, you know, patched up bits and I've done study and and and things to to fill the gaps where I felt that I didn't have enough understanding. But ultimately, you know, this isn't my background. Um, and so I ask the questions that I think someone who doesn't have a business background, because deep down I don't, um, you know, um, art student and novel writer, um, that yeah, I've still got, even though I I I have gone on to to study a lot, you know, and and try and um get myself up with the things that I needed to know. I'm not from that world. Um, I'm not naturally a sort of a you know, a graphs person. And so I think that helps.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

Definitely. Um one of also the things you do you do well is kind of you also not only do the one-on-one interviews, but you also moderate like panels, debates, etc. How does the dynamic change once you move away from being just a host with a guest to now having multiple guests, they're potentially debating, they're disagreeing with each other. How does your role change? How do you be fair between the different points of views being being outlined?

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Um that's that's interesting because a lot of so I do do a lot of panels in moderation and I enjoy them. Um I personally think I went into an events company recently to do a workshop sort of for them that I called joking, not joking, um, how to run events that don't suck. Because we've all sat in the audience full panels that don't need to happen.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Do you know what I mean, though?

SPEAKER_00 52:37

100%.

SPEAKER_01 52:38

There are panels and you look at the topic and you think no one actually really needs to be discussing this, let alone for an hour. Um and you know that there is like a sponsor on the panel, and I it I don't know, and that people have been when people phone me and say, we're gonna give you the talking points and the questions in advance for this panel, because you know, the panelists will know them, da-da-da. I generally say, I'm not your woman. Go and hire someone else. Um partly because I think that's a really boring conversation, and you can tell when people have prepped like that. Um and partly because I'm lucky enough to be in the position that I can say, do you know what, that's not something I'm gonna have fun doing, but you know, here are three numbers of people you can call. Um I really like it when anyone throwing an event or a panel asks me what I think would make a good discussion, which I've I've done quite a bit before, and I I really enjoy those ones. Um, but in terms of the dynamics, I mean, I see your your job as the moderator, A, to make everyone feel safe and comfortable again, because anyone who doesn't isn't going to be good on stage. So the first thing is to trust you, right? And I generally say on the on the setup call with the panelists beforehand, you've got nothing to worry about. My job here is to make you sound good. Like my job here is not to trip you up and make you look stupid on stage. My job is to get the absolute best out of you and to make you sound good. Um, so it's a it's a trust-based thing to to start with. Um and then your job is also to get everyone talking, no one too little and no one too much. Because there's often, you know, one or two big characters that can dominate a panel if you if you let them.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

You've now taken this to the next level by being an accredited mediator. So no longer are you only, let's say, hosting a panel of multiple people who may or may have opposing views to discuss them on like journalists business issues, but now you're getting into a place where you are interviewing or moderating between people who actually do have an issue, potentially a conflict, that you're trying to resolve. How different is it in this case when you start asking questions and speaking to people where you're trying to solve a problem, trying to get people together, how different it is and how are you transitioning into that skill set?

SPEAKER_01 54:56

Well, I'm still transitioning, right. So I've only just started um at any kind of mediator training. I'm not, you know, doing it um professionally. I was interested because it was sold to me by a a barrister um who said, I think you should go and have a look at this because I think you really enjoy it. Um because you know, you're a novelist, you like uh, you know, stories and conflict, and if you're mediating, there is obviously a conflict. Um and they said, and you know, because of the journalism, it's a similar skill set. And so I went off and and did the accreditation here, and it was fascinating. Um it was fascinating partly, and this is where I think it's really useful, because what you're looking to do is to find a completely well, actually, you're not looking to find a solution at all. You're looking to guide the two parties to have so that they are in a position where they can find a solution. Because your job as a mediator is not to come up with the answer. Your job is just to create an environment in which two parties find their answer, right? Um, so you are merely the facilitator to that process. Um, but the whole reason that people are in the rooms is because the traditional answer doesn't work. So if you've got two people who've got a contract and they need to go and mediate an answer, it's because the terms of the contract, for whatever reason, don't fit. Um, and so the creativity in there, that as Tony Blair would have said, there's got to be a third way, um, is what's really cool about it.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

We went from, let's say, generally as society, from saying, okay, if you have a disagreement, let's say some form of traditional community arbitrator to say, okay, this is the fair solution, let's say this mediation when people find the solution. We went, let's say, from mentoring, where you go to someone who says, I think should do one, two, three, to coaching, where it's now asking the right questions to lead you to an answer. That kind of societal transformation of going from finding kind of answers to kind of going on the self-pursuit or collective pursuit of trying to find new answers. Do you see it as a healthy transition? Do you see it as a transition where now we're spending much more time maybe rediscovering things that maybe previous generations would have just had clearer answers to?

SPEAKER_01 57:23

I feel like we're all using ChatGPT and Claude for our mentoring and our answers. Um, I'm not sure if that's the answer or not.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

I guess I guess just in a way, it's just this whole thing, and maybe I want to also link it back to the point when you said you you've had an anxiety at some at some points. We'd love to understand how you came out of this. Because again, we're now in a time where there's so much discussion about like mental wellness, right? And about like how do you get out of situations like this? And again, you have so many points of view now, right? So historically, whereas it used to be that okay, you find your answers in religion and you find your answers in family, etc. Now you find your answers in uh mental and in therapy and in kind of again making self-discovery and going on kind of pursuit of answers. So, how did you navigate your way out of out of out of anxiety? Um, and someone today who going through something like this, how would you look at it?

SPEAKER_01 58:16

I, by accident, did the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do. Okay. Um, I did the exact opposite of exposure therapy. I stopped doing the stuff that made me anxious. So um, writing um for newspapers and things made me overthink what I had put down, was it wrong, what if it was wrong, da-da-da-da-da. Um, which I had when I was editing my novel as well, actually. So this idea that what I'd written was out there and couldn't be changed was horrible. And I edited and proofread that thing like it was a piece of journalism. And my agent was constantly on the phone saying, This is fiction, Brandy. It doesn't matter whether this is exactly right or exactly wrong. And then I would say to her, Yes, but I have tracked down the politician that passed that law in 1973, and I'd actually just phoned them. Um, and so I was approaching it like a journalist, and she was just like, it's a novel, let it go. Um and I think and I drove her crazy. But I I stopped doing the stuff that triggered that in me. And I stopped doing it by accident. So one of the things that radio has really given me, um, and this is one of the reasons that I love it, is that you go in, you do it, and you go home. And if you mess up on air and if you make a mistake, you have got no choice but to keep going. And if you start thinking about what you or I mean, if you do make a mistake, you obviously correct it on air and say, um, I'm really sorry. I just said that you save made three billion dollars last year, and he didn't. Um, he made five, and then you move on, right? But um, so you correct, don't get me wrong, you correct the mistake, but you can't sit there and dwell in it for the next however long because you will ruin the stuff that you have to stay in the moment. It's almost like enforced mindfulness. You have got no option to sit and dwell and overthink. You just have to keep moving forward and it's in real time. Um and that was the best thing that possibly could have happened for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:42

Have you had difficult situations on air where you felt, okay, this wasn't great, but oh I go home sometimes and I think I should have asked X or I should have asked Y or you know, I didn't like the way that went.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

Um But the really lovely thing with radio is that it's done. Um I was chatting to a um literally yesterday I had coffee with a business journalist who works in print. Um and we were just we had coffee and we were just having a gossip. And he was talking to me about how he's got what he calls the five stages of grievance when someone phones you um to say that they that about to say what you've got wrong with a print article, but it's very often just what they don't like. And people mix those two things up all the time. Um and he said the first stage of a grievance is that someone phones you and says, I didn't say that, you've misquoted me. And I said to him, radio. That there isn't that because you know, you've we can hear you, you've come on and said it. And then he said, the second stage of a grievance is that they say you've taken it out of context. And I just said, radio. We've listened to the the whole conversation. And he said, and the third stage of a grievance is, well, it's the language barrier, you know, you didn't understand really what they said, or they didn't really understand what you asked. And I said, Well, again, radio. You know, um, we've had a conversation, everyone's heard it. Um, if uh there was a language barrier, then really that's the responsible of the responsibility of the the PR or whoever else has arranged this interview to figure that. And they said, and the fourth stage is that they say, Okay, but can you take it down? And I said, Well, again, radio, it's out there. And I thought, gosh, this is I love radio. Um, and then he said, in the fifth stage is someone says to you, if you don't take that down, I'll lose my job. Um, and I said, Well, again, um, you know, uh radio, the the story is done. I I just I like the fact that I I do it and at 10 o'clock in the morning, um, it's done. And don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean um that it is entirely touch wood, um, you know, trouble free um in terms of you know, worrying, did I say the right thing, did I say the wrong thing, did I, you know. But it's a it's a different type of mental freedom. Um and it just suits me. It just suits me.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

Is there still like one interview after at least plus years that you still recall whether for good or bad reasons that you say, oh wow, this was quite an interview?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

Um I I find over the years that the ones that you think are gonna be awesome, right? Like the the big names, um the Donald Trumps, um the Tiger Woods aren't aren't necessarily the most interesting or revealing interviews that you do. Um so the ones that might be the most important aren't necessarily the most interesting. Uh if I think about an interview that I have thought about the one that I've probably thought about the longest since was an interview that I did in print. Um gosh, a really long time ago. I'm not that great with dates, but it was after the uh Taliban left Afghanistan. And if I was working in print, it would have had to have been sort of about twenty three, twenty-four years ago, I think. No one fact-checked me. I'm really, really not good with with dates.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

That makes sense. I thought it was 2001.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:11

And a friend of mine worked for a a tech company that was going over on a trip up from memory, and the memory is hazy. Um, they were donating a load of tech, and she got me on the trip. And so I went with her. And I can remember during it and we were in Kabul and we were going into a lot of ministries and things, that we spoke to this teenager whose family had had moved back because a lot of diaspora that had been in Pakistan and a load of other countries came back to Afghanistan after the the Taliban left at that time. And he had a job with one of these ministries, um, basically doing IT training and Helping them because of course there was this whole missing chunk of time in which people hadn't been using, you know, computers and everything, right? And because he'd been, you know, studying outside, he was computer literate in a way that the generation above him weren't. Um, and I can remember he was actually earning more than like his parents. Um, and I just remember thinking that it was so awesome that you had this generation of kids, because you know, they were um in their teens and early 20s, who were helping fill in that gap for their country. Um and I've thought about him particularly, because for some reason I spoke to him in a garden, and I don't remember why we were sitting in a garden. I think we're in the garden of a guest house. Um, but I can remember doing this interview with him about the ministry and things that he was working with. And I've thought about him um since after things have have changed in Afghanistan. And I have wondered what's happened to to him and to his cohort.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:10

Do you miss being on the front line as a journalist?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:14

Oh, I've never been on the front line.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:15

In a way.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

No, I haven't. I mean, okay, I've just said yes, Afghanistan and Kabul. I went in to talk to people about computers. That's not on the front lines. No one's wearing, no one's wearing it, no one's wearing it. I was an IT journalist.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:28

But being in Kabul is a bit different than being No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

Stop it. That's not being that is not being on the front line. That is going in and talking to people about the internet.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

Okay, fair enough. What's uh what's one question you wish you would have been asking more often over these 20 years?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:44

I don't know if there's a question that I would have been asking more often. I know that the best questions are the simplest questions, right? Um so uh you have to avoid the trap of asking clever questions. Um and it's quite hard because you want to sound clever, right? You want to sound like someone who's who's read the annual report. Um and it's a trap. Because the best questions are the simple questions. Um I can think one of the best questions I've ever asked, I remember thinking at the time, um that probably sounded really stupid, also quite rude, was just saying to someone, why would you do that? But the simple questions are the best questions. And, you know, I hope that as things get faster and as AI takes more of a role in, you know, newsrooms and and wherever, that we don't start relying on AI to write our questions and everything for us. Um because and I've done it as a as an experiment and and stuff to see, you know, and I use AI myself. I use it as a sort of trusted colleague to bounce things off, and it often comes up with ideas that I hadn't thought of or angles that I hadn't thought of. But if you go in with a list of AI questions, you and you haven't read the quarterly report or whatever it is, um, you don't have the follow-up and you don't have the backup, and you can't challenge somebody on what they've said. It's really one-dimensional. You know, you you can't say, but hang on, you also, you're, you know, da-da-da. Um you can only ask that question. But no, the best questions are the simple and the obvious questions. My job is to ask the questions that you would ask yourself if you were sitting in my seat. So I want whoever, I'm pointing out the window here because there are cars driving. I want whoever is driving in their cars. To me, where you've got it right is when someone who's listening to an interview and is driving along is thinking, yeah, but, you know, what about da-da-da? And then at the same time, I say, yeah, but what about da-da-da? I want to be asking the questions that you are naturally thinking in your head as a result of this conversation. You know, I'm there as a proxy for the audience. Um, and if I'm asking the things that you are thinking as the obvious question rather than the clever question, um, then that's actually the job.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:30

How am I doing so far? Asking the obvious questions people care about or trying to be too clever?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:34

Uh, you're not trying to be too clever. You're fine. You're absolutely fine. Um I'm doing the thing that doesn't make me comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

You're doing credible, but I'm the one still learning. You talked about uh AI. Now, with AI also comes a lot of misinformation online. How are you dealing with this? Because obviously, as you are getting sources, as you are reviewing literature, this misinformation is popping up everywhere. How are you navigating it?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:59

You just, I mean, you just need to question and check everything, right? So from that point of view, AI is not the quick solution. Um I tend to use it for bouncing ideas off where I am using it rather than um and I worry that I'm not using it enough, right? Like you know that whole if you don't use AI, AI is not gonna take your job, but someone who can use AI will take your job. I mean, that worries me. Um But I don't I mean, you anything that comes out of it, you need to be checking. I don't want to be sitting on air, you know, saying to you, well, after you guys had a $30 billion loss last year, and for you to be like, Brandy, we didn't like that would be a bad moment, Yusuf. That would not be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:47

Going back to to writing, uh, some people say in order to write, you have to first read a ton of things to be able to write. Yes, you do. What are you reading?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:57

Everything. Um, you do. Um, I I don't believe you can write without reading. Um, because that innate sense of what a sentence should sound like, what its rhythms should should sound like, um, that comes through reading. And I have a um novelist friend whom I, you know, we bounce a lot of ideas off and we keep each other honest. And he writes to me and tells me his word count every day. And then a kind of an accountability buddy sort of way. Um and I was I was I was saying to him this morning, I was what's happening? I'm talking with my thumbs, and said, Oh, I'm, you know, reading this novel at the moment and I'm I I don't think it's great, I'm not loving it. And he sort of said, Well, put it down. I was like, uh no, because I'm learning from what I don't think, and it's subjective, right? What I don't think is working. Um, I'm learning, why is this bothering me? Like, why am I reading this and it's irritating me? Um, why do I not want to can continue reading this book? Um, and I learn from that. So you learn from the bad stuff. I say bad stuff again, subjective, but you learn from the stuff you don't like as much as you learn from the stuff that you do like. Um, and I read, I'm lucky I read really fast, um, but I read a lot. Like there are, I came back from a crime writing festival in Canada the other week with like 20 books in my suitcase. And I'd told myself that I wouldn't buy any physical books. I'd only just like stick stuff on Kindle because I end up always having to check in an extra bag whenever I leave anywhere. Um, but I still do it because I like a physical book. I like to write in the margins.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:37

What makes a good book and a good novel?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:39

What makes a good book and a good novel? Um one that you keep wanting to get back to, and one that you keep thinking about afterwards, and you're a bit disappointed when it finishes. If you're if you're gut if if you're gutted when it finishes, and if I'm jealous of the person who wrote it, and if I think, oh, I wish I'd written that, or I wish I'd come up with that idea, or whatever else, then that's the the litmus test for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:09

What do you think of open endings?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:11

No. No, no, no. I don't want the problem, okay. So open endings, a little bit of ambiguity around a motivation or something is fine. Reading a novel and getting to the end and not being entirely sure what happened, not fine. Like you've got a job as an author and it is to wrap that up. Um getting to the end of a book and seeing that it's clearly been left open for book number two, three, four, five, or six, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

What do you think of turning novels into movies?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:44

Oh, yeah, great. Um uh absolutely fantastic. It's a stream of revenue for the for the writer. What's your uh favorite novel My favorite novel of all times is Belcanto by Anne Patchett, which is about a group of dinner guests in an unnamed South American country. Um it's like a diplomatic party where a businessman has been invited because they're hoping that there'll be like a investment or a factory. I can't remember, I haven't read it for a wee while, but you know, a deal done as a result. And so they fly in his favorite opera singer to try and get him to come to this dinner to in the hope that, you know, there'll be this um sort of you know favorable business deal or factory built or, you know, whatever it happens to be, sort of, you know, soft diplomacy. And there's a um the the dinner party gets sort of taken over by rebels who take everybody hostage. And it's a masterpiece because you see the the rebels come in and they're obviously living alongside the hostages, and it's sort of a siege situation, but everyone's really humanized because um Anne Patchard is one of the world's greatest living novelists. And you start getting really invested in everybody, regardless of which side they're on. And you want what is best for everybody, regardless of whether they're one of the hostages or whether they're one of the hostage takers. And every time I read it, she manages to pull off this absolute magic that you forget that at some point the situation has to come to a head. And it has to be bad for someone on one of those sides. Like, even though you end up loving both the hostages and the hostage takers, it can't end well for everybody. And so you, as the reader, are gonna end up heartbroken. And I forget it every time I read it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:59

Very interesting. A lot of times when I ask people about their favourite novels, they will pick uh Russian literature, so Crime and Punishment.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

Who are you hanging out with? Crime and Punishment.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:09

They're clearly far more intellectual than I am. Is that what is that what makes it special, the level of uh intellectualism in literature?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:19

What about uh Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:23

Uh I have never read a Game of Thrones novel.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:25

Have you watched the series at least? Why?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:27

Too scary. Wolves, I watched like the first episode, or maybe to the second episode, and a baby wolf died, and I was like, I can't watch this. And my sister was like, if you can't handle a wolf dying, you are not gonna handle Game of Thrones. And she was right.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:41

Fair enough. Brandy, someone who listened to our episode today wants to start writing from scratch. They've always had a dream to write, they've put it aside, they have some uncompleted work they never really got to. How do they start? How do they become a professional writer? How do they finally publish the novel they've always wanted to?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:59

You just have to start. Um, it's and I speak as someone who is not writing as much as I should be. And everything that I do, whether I take an online course or I go over to a writing conference, I've got another one lined up, I'm gonna go to Scotland in September. Um, my agent just looks at me and says, that is a displacement activity. And she's right. Um, the only thing that is gonna get you to write a book, is to sit down and write a book. And trust me, I come up with all sorts of fancy ways to do. I read, I write notes, I organize a perfect, you know, I hop on planes, I speak to other writers. Um the only thing that's gonna write a book, unfortunately, is sitting down and writing a book.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

Someone who wants to be journalist or a host or an anchor, how can they start that career in today's world?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:01

I started 25 years ago where it was quite um linear. I went and did a a journalism degree and then I got a job. Um Does the path still look like that today? I'm not sure. Radio is also a little bit different, right? Um we take people from from different um walks of life. If I was doing my study again today, though, I would do it very differently from what I did.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:36

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:37

Um I did a journalism degree because I thought that's what you had to do. Um if I was doing it again, I would probably go and do a degree that gave me a level of expertise in something else, like an economics degree or or what have you. Um and then I would, you can do sort of six months, you can do short journalism courses that teach you the stuff that you need to know. Like, you know, I say shorthand that's going to date me, but in the UK, you learn shorthand so that you can do court reporting and stuff because you're not allowed to record. Um, so you, you know, you learn uh how not to get sued, and you learn about, you know, defamation laws, and you, you know, you learn all the journalist stuff. Um, but you can do that in quite a short course after you do something else. Um and I would probably do something that gave me a broader, wider background first.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:33

Do you think that's what the future looks like? Less generalist journalists interviewing people from multiple domains and more specialists from an industry who then kind of learn how to do journalism and then they only interview people in their specific domain?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:49

If I think of some of the best business journalists I know, um Manus Cranny was a, I think I'm right in saying he was a broker and not a trader. Um, but he was um, you know, in the finance world before he um became a journalist. And so he's got that brilliant background. Um Jumana, who is on Bloomberg here now, um, also came from, I think she, I think I'm right in saying that she came from investment banking. Um so I'm kind of the anomaly, which is probably why I operate the way that I do in the areas um that I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:30

On finance uh specifically, so a big part of also what you do is ultimately directly or indirectly is more financial awareness. And we've had, for example, uh Abdallah Abu Sheikh, the founder of Mal on the show, and he talked about the importance of people being more financially aware, managing their own person finances, creating this financial literacy. When you compare now to like 20, 25 years ago, do you think people are now more financially literate aware, able to kind of manage better their money?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:58

I think just because there's a huge amount of information out there. So two things. Um, just because there's a huge amount of information out there doesn't mean that it's any easier to access what you need, right? And in fact, you could argue that it's louder and harder. Um also, just because you know what you should be doing doesn't mean that you're doing it, right? Like we all know that we should eat more vegetables and eat less processed food and go to the gym. Um I'm not a size 10. It doesn't mean that we're doing it. And so I don't just it's being able to find the information and probably not too much of it that speaks to you. And that is to get back to the you know, translator-interpreter side of things. Um that is, I think, the gap that that we fill is that I hope on a daily basis, we make something that feels like it's you know, for other people, for financey people, accessible to you whether or not you are a business-y person. So we have found in crises that the listenership of of business radio goes up because all of a sudden everyone thinks they should be paying attention. Um but I just hope that we have that accessibility. If I and I think we do. So my colleague, um, my old co-host Malcolm Taylor died just before COVID. And he'd done the show for a really long time, and people uh loved him uh because he was really human. And at his funeral, the um the the minister after, you know, we'd we'd got got up and spoken, right? Like, you know, so you had um various bosses and radio people standing up and and giving tribute to to Malks. And then the minister asked if there was anyone in the congregation of the funeral who would like to get up and say a few words about Malcolm. And the first person who got up and spoke um was a senior vice president or an executive vice president of um quite a big organization. And spoke very well. Um and then the second person who got up and spoke, um, and it's gonna sound like I'm making this up, but it is a true story, and you can ask anybody who was at that funeral, and that funeral was packed. Um and the second person who got up and spoke was um a woman who was wearing a a cardigan, and I think the cardigan was was pink, actually, um, and it was fluffy. And she got up and said quite nervously, um, she said, I uh am not a public speaker, and I am, you know, not the vice president of of anything. But I um and she said, you know, I'm a housewife and I've been listening to the business breakfast for I forget how many years. And she said, you know, I'm I'm not a business executive, but um I've listened to Malcolm every morning and everything that I know about you know business is because of him. And it was the most I mean the people who had spoken were all professional speakers or you know um business people who do this for a living and she brought the entire room I mean there was not I'm gonna cry now actually there was not a dry eye when she had finished. It was the most impactful thing that anyone had said that day. And um and and it it's you know, and it was and it was what he did, which was explain the world to someone who thought that they didn't really understand that bit of the world, but made it understandable. Um and yeah, and when that woman stood up and said, you know, look, I'm not a public speaker or whatever, she wiped the she just stole, I mean, I say stole the show, it was a funeral. But it was the one moment that I and I think everybody else who was in that room will remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:27

How was it the moment for you to receive the call that he passed away after having been with him every morning on the show for so many years?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:35

I took the call while we were actually broadcasting in an ad break. Um, which you're not actually supposed to do. Um but I thought that the person calling was calling to say to me, Hey, just to let you know, you know, Malx is better, he's out of hospital. And I I didn't expect them to be calling to say that he had. Passed away. And you go into autopilot because in two minutes' time you've got to go back on air. And we very quickly, you know, took the show off air. And I think we put, you know, some best of repeat material on so that everyone could um, you know, process it more than anything else. Uh but yeah, I I I took a call, I shouldn't have called, took an a in an air break, basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:31

How did that change you?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:33

I would love to be able to honestly say that it's, you know, made me think about the preciousness and m importance of using everyday fully. Um do you know sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:48

Take your time.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:55

That is um if it's has it changed me? Um it it probably has and did, in ways that would probably take me a little bit longer than your podcast to sit down and think about, because I've never actually thought about that particular question. Um But the first do the first one that actually does come to mind, if anything, comes immediately, would be um to Malx had a lot of holiday banks when he died. Um because he was looking towards a retirement that wasn't actually that far away. And so he had been like storing up his holiday dates to be paid out for them rather than to take them. Um, because he'd you know set down a retirement date, and he and I had actually sat down and done some of the retirement, you know, numbers and finance stuff. Um it sounds trite to say use your holiday, but what I actually mean by that is um don't wait to do the good stuff. You know? Um I'm booking holiday at the moment, and I think the one lesson from that is you can save up all the I mean, and don't get me wrong, Malx did do some fabulous travel and he took some awesome holidays. I seem to remember him renting a convertible in Sicily for some reason. Um, so he wasn't all work and no play, don't get me wrong. But it it did just make me think, and it it still does, is that you know, you could you can make all these plans right. Um, but you also need to make sure that you are really living now.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:07

It's been really precious to have you on this podcast, uh Brandy. It's been a really, really pleasure. A bit intimidating, I have to say, to be interviewing one of the best interviewers.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:15

A bit a bit intimidating for you. I don't answer questions. I have not enjoyed this.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:25

At least give me something for the benefit of the podcast so that other guests are not scared.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:30

No, that's just that's just me. I don't um I would I would rather be on your side of the mic.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:34

It's been incredible to have you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:36

Thank you for asking me.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:37

Thank you.