S17, Ep3 Alex Crawford: the legendary war correspondent on staying alive, motherhood and the resilience of hope

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day

Sony Music

Society & Culture

4.7 • 9.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you've ever watched a television news dispatch from a warzone, the chances are you've seen Alex Crawford in a flak jacket and helmet, doing a piece to camera punctuated by the whistle of bullets. For 30 years, she has been the special correspondent for Sky News and has covered conflicts in Libya, Syria and the Ukraine. She has scooped multiple Baftas and Emmys for her work, as well as being the only journalist to have won the Royal Television Society’s Journalist of the Year Award five times.Today, she joins me in an extraordinary interview to reveal how she does it. We talk about professional failures, imposter syndrome, what happened when she got taken hostage in Afghanistan, the challenge of keeping a sense of optimism about human nature and how she processes the trauma she witnesses. She talks frankly about being a mother-of-four and how this has led to her own personal conflicts while reporting on the global ones. And we discuss how ageism and sexism plays a part in how she's perceived in the notoriously fickle world of television.I adored this conversation and I adored this woman. An absolute legend.--How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email howtofailpod@gmail.com--Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHow To Fail @howtofailpodAlex Crawford @alexcrawfordsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Channel 4 is the home of your next TV obsession.
0:04.6	As the UK's biggest free streaming service, they have it all, they really do, you know,
0:09.6	from classic comedy box sets to shocking reality, gripping drama and mind-bending documentaries.
0:16.9	They make content that's different from the rest, and which represents a broad cross-section of society.
0:23.1	Channel 4 is the home of unfiltered entertainment.
0:26.5	It's altogether different telly made for you.
0:30.3	And happily, for me, there's so much I always want to watch on Channel 4,
0:35.6	whether it be a bit of Made in Chelsea or the entire box set of Derry Girls,
0:40.4	which is one of my favourite programmes of all time.
0:42.8	Regular listeners will know that I grew up in Derry, and it totally reflects my experience,
0:47.5	albeit through an utterly hilarious lens.
0:50.0	And there's also a three-part series that I can't wait to feast my eyes on,
0:54.1	called Dep vs. Heard.
0:56.4	It unpicks the court case that so many of us watched online and saw being absolutely everywhere
1:04.2	in various comment sections, the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
1:08.8	So this is the first place that collates all of that material in one simple format.
1:14.7	It allows you to see the story from all sides, a three-part series, Dep vs. Heard.
1:19.3	Can't wait to watch it, and I highly recommend that you do too.
1:24.0	Stream now on Channel 4.
1:41.4	Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day.
1:45.0	The podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right.
1:49.3	This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes, and understanding that why we fail
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