Great piece. I love the way you’ve used structure as well as other narrative techniques to hook the reader. I’m not sure if the focus of the story slightly shifts around the middle, and perhaps you need to introduce that ‘bigger picture’ earlier if that’s going to be the point of the article (rather than merely an interview), but that’s a small point.

Some nice embedding and linking. Consider some shorter paragraphs too — it will help with pacing.

Remember there’s a space before and after a dash.