“You have to want it more than anything else in your life,” wrote filmmaker Karin Muller when a redditor asked how one can get into the field of conflict journalism.

As the producer of numerous television series for PBS and National Geographic, Muller’s work has taken her into remote cultures around the world, places that few Westerners will ever see. She’s smuggled endangered animals out of Vietnam, roamed Rift Valley with East Africa’s Maasai warriors, trekked into the Himalayas with Tibetan nomadic yak herders and pitched a tent in Tahrir square during Egypt’s revolution. When she travels, she travels alone, and she’s been doing so for the past 20 years.

In a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session, she answered questions about her career, one that has obvious potential for danger (while covering the Morsi revolution, she was almost beaten to death by a mob when someone shouted that she was a spy).

“I am not married and never had children,” wrote Muller, 50, in her advice to the redditor. “I’ve never owned a house. I’ve lived in 30 places in the past 18 years. The longest relationship I’ve ever had is with my bicycle. I can’t even successfully raise arugula. You have to be willing to sacrifice all of that—and more—because you are competing with people like me and we are willing to make those sacrifices.”

Muller’s latest project is Egypt Undercover, is a television documentary. For three months, she lived and worked with Cairo’s garbage collectors, Nile fisherman, and camel traders, all with a goal of humanizing and demystifying the Arab world and the Muslim faith.

Some highlights from the AMA:

On what we DON’T see on TV

On what the revolutionary upheaval in the Arab world accomplished—and what it didn’t

On her thought-process in dangerous situations

On adapting to new environments

On what moves her the most

On what it’s like to return home

On the ups and downs of traveling alone

On why she loves doing what she does

On why she keeps doing it

See the full discussion with Muller in the original AMA.