Cloistered monasteries, neuropsychiatry, prisons, rock band rehearsal rooms. Being a journalist is the best excuse to get into sites that, otherwise, would be almost inaccessible. Once in the mid-nineties, I made a note about
hackers
. They were people who could both get keys to talk on the phone for free for months and go into the Buenos Aires zoo and steal animals to free them or design a computer virus. One day I asked one of them to show me what he was capable of. He said, "I came home at night." I was. He lured a guy into his network and in three steps he got into his computer. Once there, he asked me: "Shall I erase the disk?" Sometimes I do archeology in my archives. This is how I found the
hackers'
note
, with another about a leper colony, with a chronicle about a group of magicians who unmasked the tricks of pseudoscientists. I also found old proposals that nobody accepted. In the nineties I wanted to do an article about nurses and male nurses. Editors would say to me, "Who cares about that?" I also wanted to do another on geriatrics. They told me: "How boring." My arguments - without nurses the health system does not work, nursing homes are the symptom that we do not know what to do with the old - did not convince them. I guess it's normal. We tend to deal with "boring" things when they turn into drama. When nurses become essential, when old people die locked in places where, supposedly, they were to be preserved. Sometimes in interviews, colleagues ask, "How do you come up with the topics?"There is no sensible answer to explain why anyone is interested in child abuse, domestic workers, and poets. Perhaps a journalist has something of a dowser, those people who are dedicated to searching for underground water courses: someone who looks beyond the obvious. Or who cares in advance. I wonder now, for example, while talking about covid passports and vaccines not accepted by central countries, how that will affect artists, writers, etc., who are not vaccinated or are vaccinated with vaccines not accepted by those countries. . Will the Great Literary Festival of Equis País Central prefer to invite a Latin American, African or Asian person who has to do a long and expensive quarantine, or a person who lives in a Central Country,can enter without formalities or expenses and get to work immediately? And an art biennial, and a film festival? In what way could this selectivity affect the circulation of the work of peripheral creators, even established ones, not to mention emerging ones? In what ways could it affect not only markets, but the flow of literary, artistic, etc. conversation? There is talk of new possible pandemics. I do not believe that any government invests money in hypotheses. Years ago I proposed to make a note about suicide. They said no, but I tried to do some research. I looked for figures. There were none. I called the Suicide Helpline. I was attended by a woman with a soothing voice. I told him that I did not want to use the phone in case someone needed it, that I was a journalist and wanted to talk, when I could, about his work:how many people called, how the cases continued. She was cordial but hesitant, as if she didn't believe that I really wasn't someone who wanted to commit suicide. He told me that he could not give me information. I asked her how many people worked with her. "None," she said, "I'm alone." In June, the WHO released the World Suicide in 2019 study, with data prior to the pandemic. "More people die each year as a result of suicide than from HIV, malaria, breast cancer, or war and homicide," the document says. "We cannot, and must not, ignore suicide," said WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus. At the global level, the suicide rate decreased in the last 20 years, but in the Americas region it increased by 17%. There are no figures from 2019 onwards.You don't have to be astute to suspect that the mental health of the population is affected. In keeping with the times, the UN decided that this year will be the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables.