A strange thing happened when I took all caffeine off my menu last week; people noticed.

Outside of the comments and kudos I received on my blog, For the Love of Beans!, a tweet also came from student journalist Liam Mannix who scored a two-week job at ABC Radio Adelaide, filling in for their program manager who is on leave.

Overseeing the talent needed to fill Carole Whitelock’s 1pm-4pm afternoon show, Mannix contacted me over Twitter to be interviewed about my week without coffee. I of course, agreed. On Tuesday morning Mannix called offering me a slot and I waited impatiently for my interview with Whitelock later that afternoon.

I got a little heads up before it took place, but not much. I was told they wanted to talk about my reasons for giving up caffeine. I had based the experiment on a study at the University of Bristol in the UK which found that caffeine doesn’t make you alert, it just brings us back to normal.

In preparation, I re-read my blog and the study then waited for the call. Mannix was first on the phone, it was brief; he told me to wait a few minutes and then I would be live on air. My heart was pounding and face flushed; I was nervous, afraid I would choke.

Yet when Whitlock asked me my first question it was like I was having a chat over the phone with a friend. The audio clip is about seven minutes long and appears courtesy of ABC Local Radio in Adelaide, 891AM.

Meghan Lodwick is a Master of Global Communications student at La Trobe University. You can catch up on Meghan’s coffee-free-week or read more of coffee-related writings at her blog, For the Love of Beans!