Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors.

Today we have a story about an Australian journalist named James Bennett, who moved to India a few years ago to be a foreign correspondent.

Covering South Asia had been his dream for a long time.

But actually living in New Delhi turned out to be extremely taxing.

James is an outdoorsy guy. He's the kind of person who loves to go cycling, surfing, camping, fishing.

And so he knew that living in India's crowded capital was going to be hard.

What he didn't realize was how the experience would change his perspective on speaking up about

your problems. During his time in India, James tried to balance the hardships he was witnessing

with things people were griping about back home. And he got into some heated arguments about it,

arguments about whether you have the right to complain if other people are worse off.

Those arguments sometimes devolved into mansplaining sessions, as James will readily admit.

But they ultimately ended up

shifting his perspective on problem solving in a very fundamental way. I'll let James take it from here.

Testing, testing. Testing one, two, three. Okay, it's November 7, 2017.

Can't feel pretty rough.

I'm sitting in my New Delhi house with three air purifiers running.

I've just come back from a garden party which should have been a great day out

but yeah

after spending the morning outside in this smog

my throat is dry and scratchy

and there's a kind of metallic tang

that's stuck there in the back of my throat that just,

...