Where Did It All Go Right?

Where Did It All Go Right? is an interview podcast about how careers get built: the training, the early jobs, the backing from family and the moment a working life became real. Ali Jones talks with guests from fields that seldom share a lineup. They include Snarky Puppy pianist and composer Bill Laurance, author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, former NFL player and broadcaster Jason Bell, rower Helen Glover, photographer Dina Litovsky and Cassian Harrison, Controller of BBC4. What connects them is one question. How did they get here? Conversations tend to start from something human, such as tiredness, family backing or confidence, and then go back to childhood, schooling and first jobs. Guests get long turns, and the details are specific. Laurance describes leaving university in Leeds and making a point of playing in salsa, reggae, jazz, soul, pop and classical groups, simply to understand what made each genre work. It was during that stretch, he says, that he met Michael League through a mutual friend. Glover recalls running to training around five in the morning, getting through a school workday, rowing again into the evening and then doing the marking, all while working toward a final trial for the British rowing team. Bell remembers an NFL friend asking about his exit plan when his playing was going well, and says his preparation for life after football began right then. Millwood Hargrave talks about a family of readers and self-confessed history geeks, where a father reading Beowulf aloud on holiday counted as perfectly normal. The interviewing voice is warm, admiring and lightly amused. Jones often frames a question with a little empathy or a frank personal reaction, then steps back and listens. Discussing Litovsky's bachelorette party project, Jones confesses that the prospect of one would be terrifying, and Litovsky answers that never really having had one was exactly what made the subject interesting. Small talk makes it in too, including a chilly exchange about the heating before the Bell interview gets going. Some conversations have a clear sense of place: Laurance speaks from Berlin in the middle of a solo tour, Millwood Hargrave just before maternity leave, and Harrison in an Oxford college during the Literary Festival. Harrison describes running a channel as building a story that viewers can follow across a year, and admits that after a day of thinking about television he is not always keen to watch more. Closing moments often point back to earlier guests from the same field, so a music conversation leads to other musicians and a sports one to other sporting voices. It is a good fit for anyone curious about how careers in music, books, sport, photography and television actually come together, stamina and support included.