Melanie Marshall spent over 20 years as a BBC foreign news journalist and war correspondent, covering the most volatile conflict zones on the planet. This is part two of her conversation on No Ordinary Monday, and this is where she shares her No Ordinary Monday story.

Afghanistan. 2012. Melanie and her team are unembedded, crisscrossing the country in low profile vehicles, operating in 10-minute windows on the streets of Kandahar before the Taliban can mark their position. They have access most journalists never get. A general who writes poetry. A warlord who lets them join his morning workout.

But at the end of three weeks, the roads back to Kabul are so dangerous that even the NGOs won't travel them. What Melanie decides that day is something that still gives her a pit in her stomach.

After the story, the conversation goes somewhere just as compelling. Melanie talks about what two decades of witnessing war up close actually does to a person, why she still believes humanity is not doomed to its darkest impulses, and what she saw at a car bomb site in Syria that she will never forget. She also shares her practical advice for anyone who wants to break into foreign news today, including why a degree is not what you think it is, why your biggest competition is not who you think it is, and why an ethos matters more than a CV.

This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there.

Connect with Melanie:

WEBSITE: melaniemarshall.com

LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/in/melanie-marshall-237a641

YOUTUBE: ⁠youtube.com/@MDMarshall⁠

TIKTOK: @melaniemspeaks

X/Twitter: @mdmarshall

SUBSTACK: substack.com/@imrama

CREDITS

Guest: Melanie Marshall. Former BBC Foreign News Journalist and Producer, Hostile Environment Specialist, 20+ years covering conflict zones across Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia and beyond.

Host, Producer and Editor: Chris Baron

Music: Music_Unlimited and Saavane

Sound effects: Pixabay and FreeSound

Podcast Access: ⁠https://pods.link/noordinarymonday⁠

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Topics: foreign news journalism, BBC, war zone reporting, hostile environment journalism, conflict reporting, Afghanistan, Taliban, unembedded journalism, Kandahar, Kabul, buskashi, risk assessment, decision making under pressure, storytelling, press freedom, resilience, hope