On the 24th November, Meteorology PhD researcher Sammie Buzzard was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. Here are her thoughts on her appearance on Radio 4’s most popular programme:
“Late in the afternoon, just as I was hoping to finish for the day, I received a call from the University’s Press Office. They needed someone with knowledge about Antarctic sea ice to talk about a colleague’s work on the ‘Today Programme’ the very next day.
At first I was worried about talking about work that wasn’t my own; I deal with land ice and I didn’t know the details of the study. However, the Press Office assured me that I only needed to give an overview, and thanks to giving the Graduate School’s Fairbrother Lecture earlier this year, I felt confident enough that I would be able to answer general questions about the polar regions.
I had been warned by the Press Office that it would be an early start; I was due to speak at 6:50am. That’s fine, I thought, no-one will know if I’m still in my pyjamas, it’s the radio, I’ll be phoning in.
Shortly after I received a phone call, “they need you to come into the studio, a taxi will come at 5:30”. So much for pyjamas then, but at least a face to face interview would be far easier than over the phone.
Given that I had relatively little time to prepare, I was only really able to read the paper that my colleague had published and review my notes for the Fairbrother Lecture – luckily I had already been prepared for a lot of questions about sea ice so most of the background information was already there.
Arriving at the BBC in what felt like the middle of the night was very odd, to get to the radio area you walk past the main news room you’re used to seeing on the TV, it was quite intimidating. Yet as soon as I was in the studio the presenters were very friendly and put me straight at ease.
The interview itself went by in a flash. Thankfully the questions were quite reasonable (this is never a guarantee when talking about things related to climate change!) and it was a really great experience. Then it was back to Reading on the train and into the office even earlier than I would have made it in on a normal day!”
If you would like to listen, the interview is still available on iPlayer at around 52:30 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084jqx6