Everest the hard way in 1975: leading the expedition that succeeded where so many people had tried and failed. That was the most complex mountaineering challenge I ever faced. I spent hours at night in a little tent thinking about what the next problem would be and how to solve it.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Keeping a relationship with the love of my life, for 16 years.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 February 2021 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 192 →Having three great daughters, having been on the radio for nearly 50 years and not being dead.
Making my mum proud.
Richard Feynman
Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.
Recorded
Excerpt from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine, 1985
source ↗
More from Emma Barnett
View profile →A fishmonger, then a surgeon.
A cure for endometriosis.
Our son. And ideas for Woman’s Hour, or businesses to start.
Very hard, meaningful kisses.
Not being able to have a baby for two and a half years. Lots of people say it made me a better person; I think it made me worse. You go to a very dark place with your friends because they are having kids, and you want to be happy for them but you’re not.
A wedding, in 2012.
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