The Conversation’s senior editor had pulled the piece at the last minute, claiming it was “too polemical”. Unfortunately, the senior editor didn’t elaborate on their judgement (or contact me directly), so I can only guess that they were uncomfortable with my direct language and reference to the “generally supine media” – concerns all too easily hidden behind the façade of “too polemical”.

He breaks off, looking anxious. “But I didn’t tell their stories, because I thought they were a better way of persuading people of an argument. It’s a book of stories about people, because I think stories are a fundamentally better way of thinking about the world.”

For that matter, he admits, “It’s struck me that, actually, polemic very rarely changes people’s minds about anything.” He says so as a former columnist? “A recovering former columnist, yes.” He laughs. “It’s not just that polemic doesn’t change people’s minds. It says nothing about the texture of lived experience. People are complex and nuanced, they don’t live polemically.”

To be just a bit polemic, your first instinct was not to do that. And you probably wouldn't think of that in your unit tests either (the holy grail of dynamic langs). So someday it would blow up at runtime, and THEN you'd add that safeguard.