The 9 year old as punishment journalist Sebastian Younger remembers his final story from the frontlines of war and Josh Axelrod a former professional card player tells our 1st story Josh spent years as a card counter with a team of blackjack players but the story you're about to hear takes place well after that when Josh found himself alone in a tiny rundown casino desperately waiting for 2 lucky ladies he told the story and I'm off night called Sense and Sensibility stories about currency Here's Josh Axelrod. Thanks. Tidy Ok. 2 months ago. I was at a casino in southern Washington state feeling ill. I driven down from Seattle where I live now from a sort of visiting Portland Oregon and so I've driven down to see him. But I'd also brought along $10000.00 in cash with me because you never know and I stopped in this casino on the way and gamble a little bit and then went to Portland hung out with him spent the night and I was back in the casino and I was hung over and ill in part because I was in a casino and casinos are a little bit sad. And small casinos in impoverished rural areas are a little bit extra set. And I was also concerned about my own gambling in my relationship to what I was doing at that moment I used to play blackjack for a living I was a card counter which is Card counting is a legitimate. Mathematically valid method for winning at the casino game blackjack and I I used to do that for a living and then and then my life took an unexpected course and so I'm sitting at this table thinking about these things and suddenly the man next to me is dealt a hand he gets a 20 as his hand but it's not an ordinary 20 it's made up of 2 queens of hearts screen of hearts on top of another Queen of Hearts and as soon as I saw that hand hit the table I thought maybe. Everything's going to be alright now I see count cards for a living and I was taught to do that by a group of friends mentors who were some extraordinary people very brilliant very poised and prosperous and sort of beautiful in a way and they incorporated me into a Blackjack team that they had been operating for some time and taught me how to go into casinos and win money and my job was to go in and win and take the money out of the casino which you take in cash you take it and you stuff it into your pockets you stuff it into money belts you put it in your breast pocket of your shirt or jacket and you walk out with it and you feel physically and handsome with that happens and so. It's like a part of your body and you bring it back to your teammates we share our winnings and so you distribute a $5000.00 strap here a $10000.00 strap there and everybody gathers around ecstatic and it's almost like they're feeding off your own flesh and after earning my living that way for several years I sold a book about the experience of memoir and I sat down to write it but I thought that I should procrastinate 1st and so I played. Circling a little bit of poker on the Internet which is poker is a game like blackjack that one can win if one acquires a certain skill set that I had never happened to acquire so I sleep with her badly and I managed to lose a couple $1000.00 and I became upset that I lost a couple $1000.00 and so I proceeded to lose $10000.00 out of anger and that made me really furious and I spent the next year. Sitting at the computer in a pathological stupor just pressing this button. Going Broke. By the end of the year I'd vaporised 50 grand I was in debt and I was surrounded by these extraordinary mentors that I used to have around me but by the piece these other people who were strangers whose last names I didn't even know who had these haunted I was in these woebegone expressions in a Gamblers Anonymous. And I was suddenly peers with the exact sort of people that I used to pride myself and sort of feather my ego by see regarding myself as the very opposite of and that's how I finished my poker career and sometime after that I finished my book it was published and then I got a job as a freelance job but still they paid me they sent me a check every couple weeks which I found off putting at 1st until I learned that those are fungible as well and I decided to close the door on gambling. Blackjack poker it didn't matter what form that part of my life was now over I fell in love and I moved to Seattle to be with this woman and you know Seattle's is a different is a little bit different from New York the city it is a city where nobody is trying to accomplish anything. And so it was. It was a good place for the state of mind that I was entering I simply. Walk and contemplate evergreen trees or on the on the rare occasions when I was a clear day contemplate the mountains or the sound and I was every day the certain time I was practicing a form of bits but as Dick meditations I would sit for an hour in a state of economy and one day during the time that I usually reserve for a quantity I wanted into a casino because in in Washington they have what they call mini casinos these small independently operated places with low betting limits and they have blackjack and a couple other games and I knew from my card counting days that small independent operations are often. Sources of unusual value for card counters they have special vulnerabilities in their games from time to time they have some procedural. Errors or extravagances that can be beneficial and so I was going around I started playing a little bit of blackjack. And I want to little bit of money and when you win a little bit of money the next logical step is to win. In a large amount of money. And the amount of money I had in mind it would be good as a goal was $50000.00 the money that I lost playing online poker I should make myself whole and this idea both thrilled me but it gave me a little bit of trepidation because when you're a skilled gambler when you're a card counter a competent poker player or what have you if you lose money it's absolutely consistent with your own rational self interests to play that much harder and that much longer in an effort to win back what you have lost because you will the long run will be good too but if you're a pathological gamblers just a normal losing gambler the worst idea you can possibly have is the idea that you must be made whole because the hole will continue to grow and this is the very source of the pathological spiral that had absorbed my entire identity just a couple of years earlier so I was a little unsure of where I stood but. To be honest but. I started playing I was the one thing I was sure of was that the value of the play that I was putting down was not very high because I didn't have access to a large team bankroll which is what you really need to make a reasonable amount of money at blackjack with a small amount of capital my personal money that I had I was earning something equivalent at least theoretically to a minimum wage in a casino I was actually I got a little bit lucky so I want to bit more than I was playing and then my friend old friend Todd flew out to Portland and I drove down to visit him and I stopped in this casino on the way to check it out was a new place had just opened a couple months earlier and they happen to have a shuffle that was imperfect it was interesting it didn't sufficiently randomized the car so I sat down and I attacked the shuffle the 1st day I got there lost a couple G.'s which is normal string and Black went to Portland Oregon and saw Todd and you know we ordered around the drinks and he said How are you doing what are you been up to and I said well you know I'm good you know a little this little that I've been playing a little bit of blackjack and I could tell that this question was sort of forming. In his in his ma and he was wondering I knew it was wondering you know what blackjack how like what does this mean and what context like with a team with other people are you on your own so I just preempted the entire thing and I said you know on my own my own bankroll my own money just a little bit of play and he was silent. And I felt so angry at him. And threw him at everybody else who he was representing all my friends the people who loved me my mom and dad these all these people who I was you know I had basically been keeping a pretty quiet I was playing a little cards on the side. And the thing is that there is a dark side and a light side in gambling and I had thoroughly explored both sides I knew the difference. But the difficult thing about advantaged family or gambling with a hedge is that the situations that emerge when you're doing that and the search circumstances that come up in the stories that you come back with are so far out and extravagant and frankly incredible that if you admit to any vulnerability or any uncertainty about what it is that you are doing in a casino. Nobody will believe that you have an edge they won't see you as this thing that you're representing yourself as they will see you as the stone cold opposite of that. As I talk about it more I ordered the next round we drank the next day I was hung over back in the casino and a shuffle as I say I was not random it's what you call a sequence of all shuffle and in a sequential shuffle everything you see comes back to you again it's essentially a shuffle where it is possible to identify with a reasonable degree of certainty the exact moment specific individual cards are going to appear it's a little bit different from ordinary card counting it's very cool and this game had an additional feature was which is that besides just being ordinary blackjack game they had a side bet attached to the blackjack game called the lucky ladies and the Lucky Lady side but you placed it right next to your blackjack bet and if you were dealt a Queen of Hearts on top of another queen of hearts the bet would payoff at 100 to one and when I saw that I knew immediately this makes sense what you want to do in this game is to sequence the late sequence the queens of hearts there are only 6 of them in the deck but they're very very viable and some of the previous day and a half I've been betting for queens of hearts and I caught a few but they did nothing ever lined up in this way to win the jackpot but I was there was confident had a significant edge doing this and suddenly at this moment the man next to me was actually dealt the hand of hand screen of cards on top of another Queen of Hearts and what that means is that there's a good likelihood that those 2 cards are going to appear within a reasonable proximity of each other again after the shuffle and so I sequence them I burned an image into my head sequencing as a monic technique and use visual demonic to associate people from your life with each card and put them in a scene to remember the order and so I burned this image in as the dealer was shuffling and I was alone in the small casino in a remote place but I wasn't entirely alone because in front of me in my mind were these images of the people that I use when sequencing and they were all my old black jet colic so I saw the. These prosperous astute kind of brilliant people that I had always held in such law floating past me and I also I was not alone in a literal sense because next to me at the table was this other guy who'd been in the casino all morning this was a Wednesday morning for hours gambling and he had that same glazed look that the people I used to sit across the table from a Gamblers Anonymous meetings happened and the dealer finish shuffling and started to deal and I saw the cards come out that indicated the queens were in theory do and I placed 2 bets table maximum at this place it was $300.00 on 2 consecutive lucky lady squares and sure enough the 1st round of one queen of heart was dealt on one of my bets which had happened a number of times before I'd never want to be thing from it so I didn't get too excited the dealer kept going around and on the 2nd round on top of my Queen of hearts she put another Queen of Hearts and then she stopped and she looked at the table and she called over the pit boss and he came and he looked at the table and when they eventually figured out was something I already knew which is that $100.00 times a $300.00 wager pays $30000.00 and around the time they figured that out I absorbed the notion that I had in fact just won that amount and in fact in the turn of a single card on one hand had gone within crying distance of this 50 $1000.00 nut I was trying to recover. Eventually. Somewhat begrudgingly. They paid me cash me out I took away I took every $100.00 bill that they had in that casinos a small place I also took every $50.00 bill. And a lot of the twenty's I. And I took this wallet and just stuffed it down my pants that I was physically it's expanded in this weird particular away sort of like in the old days but I turned around I wasn't in Las Vegas I was in this holy shit this small place where there were 25 or 30 people all staring at me customers of the casino people who worked there were going around and everybody there knew exactly what I had just won and they'd see me at the cashier they knew I was getting paid in cash and so I moved briskly for the exit and briskly across the parking lot and I started the engine my car drove out made a series of strategic u. Turns to ensure I wasn't being followed and then I got on the Interstate 5 north toward Seattle through the woods in the dark of night it was 5 pm but it's the Pacific Northwest so. And I felt expanded in this way as I said but also I felt this team willing the sense of paranoia verging on terror and I kept looking back in the rearview mirror examining the headlights in the distance trying to intuit if any of the cars back there look menacing and I kept asking myself again and again is everything going to be all right. Thank you 6. Of the. That is Josh x. And Johnson is the author of repeat until mix of rockets and fairly dark memoir of his life as a professional card counting blackjack player Catherine Burns the Matar to. Stic director sat down to talk to Josh about his history with the moth Here's Catherine remembering the 1st time she heard him tell a story at a party it was totally silent with everybody turned to you holding their attention telling this unbelievably riveting story and thinking that's it this party is actually what we want them off to be and he has to do this at the Players Club in front of $250.00 people instead of 25 and then blessid you know bless your heart you did agree to do that and did it and were brilliant. Well I think part of part of the whatever might happen with with card counting stories specifically in a room has a lot to do with the nature of the stories themselves because people when they're hearing them are I think struck with the possibility that they just can't decide if the person is in fact a lunatic who thinks that he goes around winning at casinos and has paranoid delusions of being chased by casino personnel or in fact a deft you know genuine professional so you say you had been telling stories like this to groups of friends dinner parties for years and years clearly but what was it like the 1st time you actually stepped on the stage with the purpose of telling a story to a crowd of strangers It was harrowing It's like a disembodied experience you're there in the spotlight is on you you're not really aware of your limbs or the rest of your your body in the normal way that you would be when Josh Axelrod was on a no play list at casinos he was appearing on the off stage under an assumed name Levy Aaron Blair I did it under a pseudonym in part because my name at that time still had some value the sort of value of card counters real name tends to deteriorate over time as humans become increasingly aware of it but also because it's long been obvious to me that a card counter if you legally changed his name should change it to 3 or more 1st names presents a piece of id to a person in a casino he can claim that any one of the names is actually the 1st name and you know depending on how familiar the casino personnel is with that particular form of id they're often you know they see I.D.'s from all over the country they're often confused so that you can create from one legal name multiple aliases based on a genuine id. To hear the rest of this interview and a young girl's efforts to. Reduce . Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts presented by p.r. X. . Support for k.q.e.d. Comes from your brain a center for the celebrating its 25th anniversary with its 8th incarnation of Bay Area now a survey exhibition featuring 25 local artists designers and architects now on view . Org and San Jose International Airport as j.c. Offers the Bay Area nonstop service to Carlsbad in San Diego north county starting November 1st. That's info at fly s.j.c. Dot com Coming up tonight on snap judgment another edition of the annual Halloween series spooked with creepy crawly stories tonight where you never know what you might be hiding inside those walls spiders mice or much much worse snap judgment tonight at 11. This is the Moth Radio Hour from p.r. X. I'm sorry ask to join us this next story was told in Burlington Vermont at a touring mof show reproduced with Ph International and Vermont Public Radio the film was building and here's Jamaica live a man. Well I was hoping I would have an accident and I wouldn't be able to come up here but I try as I might nothing what. The t. Didn't spill. I am. Like most people in the world I had a mother and. She had a sister and they were very. Unlike each other and or so they quarrelled all the time. My mother lived in Antigua and her sister where I was born and. And grew up and her sister lived in Dominique where she was born and where she grew up they quarreled. By letters they wrote to each other. Letters that they would seal up in an envelope and post and the letters would be taken on a boat that would make weekly stops on the island of the Leeward Islands I think Leeward and Windward Island. And the letters. Would that they sent to each other was written in English proper English but the language they spoke the spoken language was French packed. The letters. I never knew what the quarrel was about because when the we received the letter in English they received each other's letters in English they then would respond to the letters verbal e in French fact wa so I couldn't understand French part well and I was never shown the letters but only I knew certainly from my mother's side the reaction of the lettuce. This was incredibly interesting to me everything my mother did was interesting to me I adored her but mostly what I adored about hers that she adored me. So I liked to see her angry or it was interesting to me to see her angry and speaking in this language which I had no interest in learning at all. Because in any case it wasn't a proper language it was just broken language or so we were towed. Eventually. Well as I say I was very I had or this person eventually when I was around 9 years of age I should say. My mother. Became pregnant I don't know how this happened. She I did have a stepfather her husband but still this pregnancy was a mystery to me and I had nothing to do with it I wanted nothing to do with it I quite In fact I think ignored it. And so it was a surprise to me that she gave birth to a boy son her. Other child. My parents tried very hard to you know make me like him and would tell me to hold him and so on and. And must have done. A number of things that were not kind to him. Because one day when we asked me to hold him he slipped out of my arms and fell on his head. They were very angry at that I think because they made me eat my supper all by myself outside. That was the 1st punishment then the 2nd punishment was I was sent to live with my mother's sister my aunt. Because I didn't like my brother they said and I was. Packed up put on a boat with my little valise with my little things in it. I was put on a boat it so happened to be the very boat on which the angry letters went back and forth. And it's quite possible that I was a letter myself was. To. I when I arrived in Dominique a. Domenica incidentally is named because Christopher Columbus discovered it on a Sunday so it's named Dominique or he had by that time run out of. Names he liked better. In any case when I got to this island it was very strange My mother had told me about her growing up you know various things but I thought that they only had these things only happen to my mother the. Carrying a sneaker on knowing lead to her on her head for many miles this sort of thing would only happen to my mother or her description of fish that flew in out of the water this would only happen to her but it turns out that Dominic it was just as she described it and which is why she fled from it it rained. It rained all the time. The beaches had no sand they had little black pebbles because the island is volcanic formed from an old volcano. And the skies were not gray there was water everywhere where is Antigua as you well know because you've been there on your holiday it never rains it has beautiful beaches a blue sea and an especially blue sky. And so Domenico was the opposite of this place that I had just been banished from. And worse my aunt was there to meet me on. The jetty somehow I was taken to her house and where my grandparents also lived in my home Dominick and there I met my aunt who was the complete opposite of my mother for one thing she had read here and great eyes and that's when I 1st came to realize that my mother was something called a Richardson. They have that mark red hair and gray eyes and also my aunt seemed incredibly. Course to me she didn't have my mother graceful way my mother incidentally had long black hair she took after the carrier side of her mother her family and she was very graceful and very. Even though we were very poor she had very butch while ways we ate with napkins and knife and fork and and spoke properly and still and my aunt was the opposite of that and I naturally you know missed my mother very much and couldn't understand my banishment. I began to write to my mother. Things that were not true I would say that my aunt had mistreated me had denied me food had made me go without sleep all sorts of things that were not true. And then I would fold the letters up and take them to with me out of the yard on my way to school. Which was 5 miles away from my house in a village called Mass sac really massacre but that has a whole other story which I'll save for another time in any case I would put the letters under a stone just outside the gate I never posted them I had no way of posting them and they were always the same you know d.m. Me I miss you so much and I am very badly treated they give me new food they treat me like a dog all of it completely on sure. But then I would fold them up and put them. Under the stone and then walk off to school who apparently one day my aunt saw me do this without my knowing she saw me secrete these pieces of paper on dearest own and she let me go off to school but she retrieved them and when I returned that afternoon from school the letters were on the table. And there was this lead here degree I'd woman in flames. At me angry at me and I think I cry and said I was sorry and so on and. But you know any case it didn't matter she packed up my things and the next time the boat arrived it was called the m.v. Rip and the next time it arrived she put me on it and sent me back to my mother which is just what I wanted I wanted to go back to my mother and so I arrived in Antigua and waiting for me at the on the pier was. My mother and I was very happy to see her. Except that yes she had another child. And so even though my letters had gotten me back. To my mother's side in every way I was further away from her than before. Thank you Carol thank you Chris that is now the list Jamaica thank. Kinkaid short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review and The New York where her novel Lucy was originally serialized her 1st book at the bottom of the river was nominated for the Pen Faulkner I write for fiction she lives and teaches in Vermont she said that the letters she describes in a story complaining of imaginary abuses were possibly the 1st fiction she ever wrote in Jamaica as mother gave birth to 3 sons making her the oldest of 4 and giving her in effect one 4th of the mother she once had she never regained the sense of closeness with her mother and that's a theme she explores in many of her novels to make a said if I hadn't become a writer I don't know what would have happened to me that is a kind of self reskilling coming up next a journalist tries for years to uncover the truth about our until suddenly he understands it all too well. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by p.r. X. . Support for k.q.e.d. Comes from European sleep works the store that bases its design and materials and research factors affecting sleep including comfort and support humidity levels and ease of breathing details online about their mattresses embedding at sleep work stock come and Fresh Works cloud software built for the end user not management Fresh Works is used by more than 150000 companies around the world for their c.r.m. More it Fresh Works dot com. Next time on The New Yorker Radio Hour Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame gets a crash course in fact checking does the restaurants have guacamole fantastic is brunch served 7 days a week. That's that's great news for the accuracy of this one for me Daniel Radcliffe of The New Yorker next time on the New York Radio Hour. Tonight at midnight. This is the Moth Radio Hour from p.r. X. I'm sorry assed ingenious from the mob. Our next and final story is told by Sebastian Younger Sebastian had been a war reporter for more than 20 years but this was his 1st time on stage at the ma ma stories are personal in fact stories told on the off stage are most times the most important most defining stories from a person's life here's Sebastian I'm crafting a story you know I do a lot of public speaking and I'm used to sort of talking and explaining how things work and then I start to understand that that's not what the boss says you're really doing is telling a story that allows people. To understand something more deeply the story that you're about to hear includes images of war and it's not suitable for children it was told at a mosque night called eyewitness stories from the frontline here Sebastian. I 1st went to war when I was 31. I grew up in a wealthy suburb I spent my twenty's writing short stories and trying to wait tables. And I got to 30 and I guess the best way to say it is I didn't feel like a man I didn't feel like I was a man and I thought war would be exciting and intense and that it would transform me in some way. And so I got a backpack and I put a sleeping bag in it and said no books and pens and a few $1000.00 I went to Bosnia during the Civil War to Sarajevo to try to learn to be a war reporter. And war was all those things that I thought it would be I mean the thing about war is it does not disappoint. But it's also way more than you bargained for. For example this is the 1st time I saw a dead body. It wasn't a fighter. Most of the people die in wars or civilians and it was in Kosovo during the Civil War It was the girls was 1617 years old and I was imagine that she was probably really beautiful she'd been. Taken by Serb paramilitary forces. And they took her up to a field above a town called Su Ereka and they did whatever they did to her and then they cut her throat and when I saw her it was a couple weeks later of summer it was hot. And since the only way you could tell she was a girl or really even the only way you could tell she was human was that you could still see the red fingernail polish on her fingernails. And that girl stay with me for a while she was more than I bargained for. I remember the 1st time I got ready to die. Prepared myself to die I was in Sierra Leone during the Civil War and I'd been out of the front lines and it was. Getting pretty bad out there and I kept trying to get back to Freetown and I got in a jeep with a few of us here alone and soldiers who really weren't good for much and when not a couple of journalists and we were driving down this empty road back towards Freetown and these rebels step stepped out of the jungle in front of us with their guns leveled at us and we came to a stop and we just stared straight ahead while they argued about whether to kill us . And 6. I tried to get ready I was hollow I was numb. And I didn't have any grand thoughts I just kept thinking I hope this doesn't hurt that's all I thought and the guns were pointed at us and you never see a gun like this but I could see the little black hole that the book comes out of you know one point a guy rack his gun and started to shoot and another guy grabbed the barrel and jerked it up I knew was like that for 15 minutes while all these little black holes are staring at us and I thought there's eternity inside those holes and they're so small the thickness of a pencil. And eternity's in there and I couldn't look at them I couldn't bring myself to look at them for some reason they didn't kill us. And we drove back to Freetown and. I kept going back for more I kept going to war wars. I felt like there was something. Something I needed to understand about war that I didn't understand yet and I kept looking for it. Kept going back I remember the 1st time I froze in combat. You go to war you think you think you're going to be brave. If you don't think that you probably don't go to war and sometimes you are brave but then other times you're not. And so this time I was out at a small American outpost in Afghanistan outpost called restruck 020 men position up on this ridge they're getting attacked all the time and this day was really quiet hot day nothing was going on I was leaning against some sandbags and some dirt flew in the side of my face. And what you have to understand about bullets is that they go much faster than the speed of sound so someone shoots at you so much shoots at you from 500 meters 500 meters. The 1st thing that happens is you you ask yourself Am I getting shot at because the sound the bullets make when they go past you is pretty subtle and then the gunfire arrives a moment later. Yes I am getting shot at and then it everything goes crazy Well the bullet. The bullet a bullet hit 2 inches from the side of my head and kicked dirt in my face and that's what I had felt. What's the angle of the v.a. Shot at 500 meters that gives you 2 inches to the right you know what's the math on that angle. You don't even want to think about it. And then it's all you can think about. While I was paralyzed bows were coming in hitting the ground hitting the sandbags smacking into everything I was paralyzed I was behind some sandbags in our gear was right right over there just a few feet away cameras bulletproof vests. Were getting attacked from 3 sides there coming up into the wire it's really bad and we can't get to our gear there's too much gunfire and I'm paralyzed and the guy I was working with Tim Hetherington photographer we're on assignment out there he finally jumps across that gap and he grabs stuff it throws my camera to me and throws my bulletproof vest he grabs his stuff is storing ammo to soldiers as the soldiers are pinned down too and he gets back and I have my camera in my hand and I start shooting I start working you know fine I'm not scared anymore. Tim. Tim was an amazing photographer and obviously very very brave. Braver than me. But he was also really kind of thoughtful about war and a member at one point he said to me you know war might be the only situation where young men. Are free to love each other unreservedly without it being mistaken for something else. That was Tim and that's why we were working together we decided to make a documentary. About this little outpost we were going to call it was trouble and we were going to spend as much of the deployment as possible at this in this little spot. On this ridge in eastern Afghanistan so we were going to alternate trips and I tore my Killie's on this trip. So I had to go home to kind of heal up so Tim took the next trip. He was on a combat operation a week long combat operation up up in the mountains on foot very bad seem a lot a lot of guys got killed a lot of American soldiers got killed or wounded at one point the American positions got overrun and they dragged off a wounded American soldier at night in the middle of a firefight they got him back but it was bad out there way worse than anyone back home really knew you know and in the middle of all that see him broke his leg is a 10000 feet up on the of his guard with a broken leg and the platoon is moving down the mountain all night long. And the medic examines his foot and says well it's broken and we can't get a metal back in we have to be off this mountain by Donna we're going to get hammered. Here's 2 Advil. And Sim due to new day. If you're not prepared to walk all night on a broken leg for the for the sake of 30 men you shouldn't be out there and he did it I don't know how he did it he got down off that mountain. So we finished up our deployment. And that's how we start to think about our deployment. And nothing you know the rest of it was Ok The worst was in the beginning actually and. And we started making our film are a struggle and it's. And if the the film did really well it started it started with this scene. That was very took me a long time to be able to watch it actually I would always close my eyes when I came. To the scene where I'm riding in a Humvee. Because I took the next trip after Tim broke his leg. And. Now riding in a Humvee and all the sudden everything goes orange and black and the Humvee got blown up. It went off under the engine block though instead of under us. So we left. And that whole rest of the day I was just on this crazy jagged high I mean there's nothing like not getting killed to crank you up. It's incredible and that night I just sank a spiral down and this black hole wars a lot of things it's incredibly exciting and I hate to put it that way but I'm not up here to lie to you it's really exciting. And it's really scary and it's really intense and it's really meaningful but it's also incredibly sad. And sadness is a kind of delicate emotion that's easily. Easily trampled by other feelings and that night I got in touch with the sadness of the whole thing. Politics aside just the fact that people are doing this to each other it crushed me and that sadness lasted exactly until the next time we got shot at and I was back in the game. But I had the camera rolling when we got blown up. And that bit of footage I could not bring myself to watch because when I tried to watch it my heart rate went to $180.00 which can do it but we put that in the beginning of the movie. And the movie came out and it did really well and. Tim and I were just on this amazing ride you know it was incredible. But the Arab world is in flames now right this is a little more than a year ago the Arab Spring just this incredible incredibly important up people in the world intimidate I were dying to get back to work to get back out there you know we're journalists we decided to go to Libya to cover the civil war in Libya and the last minute I couldn't go and Tim went on his own. And on April 28th last year. I got the news on the Internet on Twitter actually which is a way I hope I never get bad news again. That my good friend Kim had been killed in the city of Misrata in 81 millimeter mortar it come in and hit a group of fighters and journalists in Misrata and chip in killed and wounded a bunch of them until was hit in the growing and he bled out in the back of a pickup truck. Back of a rebel pickup truck bracing for the Misrata hospital. And I felt nothing I was hollow again just like in that Jeep in Sierra Leone when I was waiting to see if I was going to die completely hollow I felt bad that I didn't feel bad I was at shock and then I realized later I was in shock and. You know spares you for a little while the things are going to have to feel later. In the middle of that that awful day I got an e-mail from a Vietnam vet that I met in Texas and Tim and met him too and he really liked restruck Oh and he's been through a lot of bad stuff and he read my book in Tim's book in he just liked our work and he sent me an e-mail and he said. Sebastian I'm so sorry about him but I have to tell you something. It might sound callous but I got to tell you. You guys with your books in your movie you came very close to understanding the truth about war. But you didn't get all the way. The core reality of war isn't that you might get killed out there. It's that you're guaranteed to lose your brothers. And in some ways you guys didn't understand the 1st thing about war and now Sebastian you've lost a brother and you understand everything there is to know about it. And he was right. It wasn't calloused So the truth is you can't be callous. And says Now I know the truth about war. And never going back again. Thank you thank Sebastian Sebastian is the author of That's another nonfiction. With Tim Hetherington co-directed the documentary down the stretch which won the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award after the math a venti had this to say about telling a story you're really trying to stay in the usual emotional I threw away hard core story and really stay in the experience and the stories that I told are very they're all very very upsetting to me I usually sort of keep them. In different places in my head I don't think about them all the same time sure keep them apart and this is the 1st time that I've taken those stories and put them all together it was your emotional it was very hard I in reaction to his friend Tim Hetherington is death Sebastian started a nonprofit called reporters instructed in saving colleagues which trains freelance journalists and battlefield medicine for more information and the link see the Month dot org. To share any of the stories you've heard on this our go to. Where you can stream the stories for free and send a link to your friends and family and while you're there you can pick just your own story or learn all about all of our other programs visit the mosques website org Here's a pitch we lacked I was having a problem with my son my boyfriend and I after a fairly does not bring drag tracks I wanted to punch him in the face of them and leave things to time he came to visit me and my home city where I broke up with him . About a week later I got a call saying that he was in that I knew because he got hit by a car I didn't see him for another month after that where we went out to dinner you know friend do and he greeted me by kissing me on the mouth and I was like Ok well maybe I'll do that but they're active and they're you know trying to be friendly and we're talking about the x. . Remember anything recent including when he came to visit me and my. Including any conversation we had in that. Dated him once I broke up with him. Remember your story. Record it right on our site or call. It 7779. The best pitches are. All around the country. All of the stories. Are. The best of the mom that's it for the Moth Radio Hour we hope you'll join us next and that's the story. Other Music in this hour from the Smokin Joe Kubert band Louis Armstrong and the little band The Maltese produced for radio by me Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts with help from victim Eric this hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the National Endowment for the Arts and the John d. And Catherine Jean MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful most Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange r x dot org for more about our podcast or information on pitching your own story and everything else go to our website dumb all dot of. Support for k.q.e.d. Comes from golden voice presenting Mystery Science Theater 3000 life at both the Warfield on November 7th and at City National Civic in San Jose on Nov 8th details unticketed at Golden Voice dot com and European sleep marks the store that bases its design and materials on research factors affecting sleep including comfort and support humidity levels and ease of breathing details online about their mattresses and bedding at sleep work stop calm. Tonight mostly cloudy overnight with temperatures in the fifty's Oakland expecting an overnight low of 5853 in Napa and tomorrow will have some patchy morning fog and a little bit gray in the morning turning into a mostly sunny day cooler temperatures ranging from the mid sixty's at the ocean to the mid seventy's inland. K.q.e.d. San Francisco k.q.e.d. I North Highlands Sacramento good evening the time now is 11 11 pm. They say that the NY Times imitation of Peter prompts but those who know better. Know better but darkness the shadow of the morning the new fear that bump in the night and it sounds almost like footsteps is the same. The bail is broken. Is believed and it's finally here snap judgments electrify hollowing series continues. Ted creepy crawly. Real people real stories of the paranormal right after this short break we'll break but stay. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Jim Hark the man accused of killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday will face multiple murder and hate crime charges and p.r.s. Quil Lawrence reports the suspect was wounded but is in stable condition there. Are a. Group of Jews from a neighboring congregation prayed at the end of the street where police still had cordoned off the crime scene at the Tree of Life congregation Jason Cooper was at a synagogue nearby on Saturday morning which went into lockdown when news of the shooting spread but takes one person with you know 11 crazy person with the right yeah equipment and they get it.