Guyon Espiner: Tough interviews and Type 1 Diabetes

Author, journalist, and broadcaster Guyon Espiner swaps notes with Anika on tough interviews, living with diabetes, and life in general.

Guyon Espiner is one of New Zealand's best-known broadcasters.

Recently his non-fiction book The Drinking Game was long-listed for an Ockham Award and he's about to launch a new podcast called 30 with Guyon Espiner.

Watch the video version of the episode here

"I love interviewing people. It's so much more than just a list of questions, isn't it? You're thinking about how am I going to tell this person's story? I love that about interviewing. And I love the surprises and I love the connection with people."

Dinner table debates

"I was the youngest of three boys. The older two were pretty loud and did their thing. But my dad used to host these dinner table debates, so it was quite serious. Like he had a topic of conversation. It'd be about politics or the Springbok Tour or our anti-nuclear movement or something, probably from the age of 8, 9, 10, certainly through those years and a bit older. And that's where I developed this interest in politics and I guess the media and just stuff that was going on in the world. You had to have your facts straight."

"just wanted us to engage and debate and talk about the world. And I think because he worked a lot and was really busy and didn't engage with us for some of that time. The dinner time in those days was the time where you had your korero, you had your wananga, basically."

Writing and Politics

"Sport was a huge thing for me, and it was cricket and soccer for me in those days. But then my first big memory of what my future might look like was... we had a short story writing competition. I was 15 and I still remember the English teacher, who was pretty hard-ass, we were all a bit scared of her. She slammed mine down on the desk and said 'You could be a writer'."

"I've never forgotten that. And my whole career has been based on writing. I still am a writer, whether it's writing for radio or television or a book or a script or whatever. And I am a writer, and I place a lot of that back to that point where someone said to me, 'I've got faith in you, you could do this', and someone you respected and trusted their judgment. And so from quite an early age, mid-teens, I was going to be a writer. At first, I was going to be the next Stephen King or something, but eventually that rolled into journalism…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details