Kassia and Simon interview Patrick Kingsley, a correspondent with the New York Times.

Patrick previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian, based in Cairo and Istanbul. His first book, How To Be Danish (2012), was an exploration of contemporary Danish society. His second book, The New Odyssey (2016), chronicled the European refugee crisis, and was one of NPR's books of the year. Now based in London, Patrick is also a past winner of the annual foreign reporting award at the British Journalism Awards.

We spoke about how foreign correspondency works — the intricacies of fixers, bureau chiefs and deadlines, Patrick's motivation to go abroad, some of his major pieces for the Guardian, his earlier experiences of student journalism and how he has combined his newspaper reporting and book writing.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/sep/06/gap-year-thailand-full-moon-party

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/22/cairo-prison-abu-zabaal-deaths-37-prisoners

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/hashems-journey-a-lesson-in-humility-and-heroism

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/world/middleeast/the-jihadi-who-turned-to-jesus.html?_r=0

You can find us online at alwaystakenotes.com, on Twitter @takenotesalways, and on Facebook at facebook.com/alwaystakenotes. Always Take Notes is presented by Kassia St Clair and Simon Akam, and produced by Olivia Crellin, Ed Kiernan and Elizabeth Davies. Ed Kiernan edited this episode. Zahra Hankir is our communities editor and deals with all things social media. Our music is by Jessica Dannheisser and our logo was designed by James Edgar.