Dmitry Lajus on the TV

On 30 th of March Dmitry Lajus was invited to channel 78 of Saint-Petersburg television to perform a lecture in the program “Vneklassnoe chtenie” on live TV. The lecture “The fish we eat” turned out very interesting and educational, we recommend you to watch it! Dmitry also shared his impressions with us (see below in Russian).

How I spoke on TV

This is not very recent news, as it is about an event that happened in the end of March, at the very beginning of the quarantine, but, on the other hand, content like this ages quite slowly, so this delay is not very serious.

Around 20 th of March I’ve received a call from channel 78 of city TV, and I was offered to give a lecture with a theme of my choice for about 40 minutes. I have already _ on this channel before in May, when the demand for Saint-Petersburg’s fish brand grows sharply – mostly in the culinary sense of course, but also in the intellectual as well. So I agreed. I named my lecture “The fish we eat” – I thought that out of everything that I can tell, a theme like this will be the most interesting for a mass listener.

I have to say, I have quite underestimated the complications with this lecture. I thought that it will be almost the same as an university lecture, where I can fully control m demonstrational materials – the slides. Well, with a different audience. But everything turned out to be quite different. Firstly, a day before the translation (which was going to be on live TV) I was told that the 40 slides that I’ve sent were too much, too much time was needed to change them for the TV format (no idea what they are doing to them), so I have to leave only 10 before the work day ends (and it was already 4 p.m.). Also, I was told that slides will be managed by somebody else in the studio, and that I won’t be able to give any commands as it will ruin the immersion of the event. Just before the broadcast I’ve managed to meet up with the person who was supposed to manage the slides and tell him in what order they have to be shown. However, there were surprises that I’ve encountered during the broadcast itself.

The lecture was in three parts. In the first part I was getting used to the situation – it wasn’t easy, because I had no possibility to structure my performance with slides, and the person who was managing them was unfamiliar with the lecture’s subject, so he was showing them out of sync with the lecture’s contents. However, during the second part of the broadcast, just as I’ve adapted a little, turned out that the TV editors have changed the slides themselves. For example, before the broadcast I have sent this slide (1 st photo), dedicated to various factors of unsustainability of fishing (pay attention to the left upper part), and during the broadcast I saw this slide on the screen (2 nd photo).

The salmon that I was planning to show during the speech on poaching someone has replaced with perch, that is not really an object of poaching, but can be easily recognized by many (probably my slide seemed too naturalistic to the editors). And the roe remained red, salmon’s.

Of course no one told me about such a small thing, and after discovering the change on live TV, I was trying to figure out how I have to change the text, and will there be more surprises like this in the future. Fortunately, there were no more surprises. Well, not counting that in the end, because there were so many questions, I couldn’t tell more about smelt that probably caused the most interest. Well, the broadcast time is the most important thing after all.

And, of course, about three-spined stickleback. Naturally, when speaking about the fish that we eat, it’s not easy to speak about this fish as well. But I have managed. On 30:27 this name can be heard.

Such is the experience of performing on live TV. In short – you have to be prepared for any surprises!

Dmitry Lajus