There's a moment in Charlotte's story that stays with you. She's standing on a cliff in her twenties, invincible in the way young people are, and then she falls. The accident reshapes her, not into someone less brave, but into someone brave in different ways. It's the kind of turning point that makes you reconsider what courage actually means.

I caught up with Charlotte recently to talk about her new memoir, which spans 30 years of her life as a journalist across Asia and beyond. What struck me most wasn't the dramatic moments, though there are plenty. It was how she talks about the people she's met: the mother in Sichuan who shared her last handful of rice after an earthquake that killed 88,000 people. The Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who offered Coca-Cola from homes so flimsy you could blow them over. The Tiananmen mothers who've spent decades under surveillance, still signing petitions for accountability.

"People who have the least to give are often the most generous," she told me. And it's true, we see it everywhere if we're paying attention.

What's changed most, though, is the world she was reporting on. Charlotte spent years covering China as it opened up before the 2008 Olympics. There was optimism then. Space for conversation. Artists pushing boundaries. Online chat that took the censors time to catch up with in a country of 1.3 billion people. Now? The surveillance is so sophisticated and pervasive that driving through a city means being photographed every ten seconds. Facial recognition means you don't need a ticket to board a train, they know who you are the moment you step through the barrier.

The technology that's democratizing media in other parts of the world is being weaponized there to close it down.

This is where I think Charlotte's book matters most. Many of the people she interviewed, Tibetans, Uyghurs, dissidents, can't speak openly anymore. Their voices have been silenced. But she's put them on the record. That's what the book is really about: preserving the stories of people who no longer have a platform to tell them.

We talked about how independent media has transformed journalism, and what it's lost. Yes, there are more voices than ever. More perspectives. More access to interesting thinking. But there's a cost: it's expensive to have boots on the ground. To actually sit across from someone and understand not just what they're saying, but who they are. To see the full picture, not just a fragment.

"It's always people at the centre of every story," Charlotte said. And she's right. Even the political stories, the economic stories, they're all about people and how they're coping, what they're experiencing. Without that human connection, it's hard to relate. Hard to care.

What I found most moving was how she talked about the people who shaped her along the way. She didn't want to write the book at first. She's not comfortable talking about herself. But she realised that if she was going to tell stories about her work, the personal had to be part of it. Journalists spend their careers relying on others to tell their stories. It was her turn to be vulnerable.

She pushed herself beyond her comfort zone, as she has her whole life. Writing courses. Masterclass subscriptions. Reading everything. Experimenting. Failing. Trying again. At 53, she's still flexible, still curious, still willing to be a beginner.

"The brain is an amazing thing," she said. "You use it or you lose it."

That's the real lesson here. Not the cliff, not the accident, not even the extraordinary places she's been. It's the willingness to keep learning, keep growing, keep pushing into discomfort. Every second counts because we don't know how many we have. And the people we meet, the stories we hear, the generosity we witness, those shape us in ways we might not understand until years later.

Charlotte's book is a record of that. A testament to the people who mattered.

Buy here Every Second Counts by Charlotte Glenn or wherever you buy your books.