After reading and hearing mostly negative news out of Pakistan, Aisha Chowdhry wanted to know what was really happening on the ground. She bought a camera and tripod, and traveled to Lahore, with Google as her only guide to shooting video.

Born in Pakistan and fluent in Urdu, she had an urge to tell man-on-the-street stories through a documentary film. Pakistan: Inside the Tinder Box, the end result of more than 100 interviews she made over four weeks in 2009, shows the “smiles and tears of ordinary folksâ€"students, teachers, slum dwellers and musiciansâ€"struggling with terrorism.â€?

“I had wanted to be in journalism when I was younger," Chowdhry said. "I would stand in front of the mirror and pretend like I was anchoring the news, but I knew nothing of what journalism really was.�

In this podcast, she tells It's All Journalism producers Anna Miars and Michael O'Connell about her work as a stringer for Reuters, covering Pakistan and American troops in Afghanistan.

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