Playing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” on Deribas Street.

Two months ago, in December, it seemed like I was hearing the same story everyday about the war in Ukraine.

‘More Russian bombs have fallen on Ukraine’s largest cities, killing and wounding civilians while leaving tens of thousands without power and heat.’

Then video showing an apartment building with a burning black hole from a missile or drone, firemen with hoses, people standing on the street in winter clothing wondering what to do, where to go.

Then the story ends with the statement, ‘Peace talks are ongoing,’ like an Orwellian Groundhog’s Day.

So I went to Ukraine to talk to the civilians who have become targets in this war. I chose the city of Odesa because it’s the country’s last port on the Black Sea, and Putin has said he wants it—that Odesa has always been part of Russia, just like the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbass region, which he took in 2014.

It’s been four years since Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. During these four years the United States has given Ukraine 175 billion dollars, an average of 44 billion a year, in military and economic assistance. This year, 2026, the US cut the funding by 99 percent, down to 400 million, like we are saying ‘So long, best of luck.’

I expected people in Odesa to be upset with the United States, but I was wrong. The people I met there were still desperately wanting the United States to help end the war, not even close to believing they’ve been abandoned.

This story is about what it’s like to live in Odesa during war time.

(If you are looking at this on a podcast app, the donate button won’t work. Please go to homebrave.com.)

The Odesa National Opera and Ballet Theater

Here are some links to the people who talked to me for this story:

Elena Andreichykova

Ugo and Antonia Poletti

Natasha Dyba

Borys Khersonskyi

Roman Kapitonov

Alyona Synenko

Performance of “Carmen” by Georges Bizet

Thanks to Jenny Ament for helping me mix and edit this story.

The Odesa Steps, looking south to the Black Sea.

There used to be a statue of Catherine the Great here, but it was removed in 2022. Now the monument is a war memorial for fallen soldiers.

Store front on Deribas Street.

The City Park on Deribas Street

A mile outside the center of the city.

At the entrance to the Opera House

City Center

In a walkway under a busy street

Most stores and shops in Odesa have generators for emergency power.

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Charles Bowden, sgraffito by Alice Leora Briggs

Last time I said I was going to look for some creativity or inspiration, and so I went fishing for a week up in my favorite mountains, and it worked. I forgot all about the problems of the world and felt like a new man, happy to be alive, but then I came back down from the mountains and Charlie Kirk was shot at the university where I used to work, from the top of the building where I had an office I almost never went to. Back then, over a decade ago, lots of students at this school were carrying guns in their backpacks.

I asked one, “Why do you bring a gun to class?”

And he said, “To fight evil.”

And I said, “In school, we learn how to fight evil with words, not guns.”

He said nothing, but the look on his face was like he wanted to shoot me, like I was evil.

Charlie Kirk thought he was teaching students how to fight evil with words, this was his purpose in speaking at Utah Valley University, but a student (from another school) thought Kirk was spreading hatred—that Kirk was evil and needed to be killed.

It’s all very confusing and kind of scary. Now the flags around town are flying at half mast and people are saying Kirk is a Christian martyr, like Joan of Arc, and that democrats and liberals are evil.

I know I should be out talking to people about what is happening to our country, but I also know I don’t want to hear what they will say. Not yet. So I’m going to play a piece by Charles Bowden that seems to sum up what’s happening now, even though he wrote it 30 years ago, in a book called “Blood Orchid.” He called it a response or a riff on Imagine, the song by John Lennon.

Thanks for listening, thanks for donating, and thanks to Lisa Miller, Erica Heilman and Alice Leora Briggs.

I’m going to try to stay calm and ride out this wave of insanity.

This story is four interviews, with neighbors and friends, about the current political situation in the United States. I was feeling fairly frazzled and wanted to talk to other people about how they felt, so I started close to home.

The photo above is an original silk screen by Leia Bell, for sale at Ken Sanders’ Rare Books in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I plan to keep posting stories for a while, so if you’d like to donate please press this button:

My thoughts on our current situation.

Thanks for listening to these stories. This is the last one on the album. It’s three pieces from the same place—the Sonoran Desert, 60 miles southwest of Tucson, the border with Mexico. From an air conditioned car, the landscape looks beautiful and serene, but it’s actually one big open graveyard for people who died trying to walk into the United States.

In March of 2005, photojournalist Julian Cardona wrote to me saying there were 1000-3000 people crossing the line, everyday, near Sasabe, Sonora. He said I should come down and he’d help me with the story. So the first part of this trilogy is with Julian on the Mexican side—the people getting ready to cross.

The second and third part are with Charles Bowden on the U.S. side, where the land is a national wildlife refuge. I went there with Bowden a few days after being in Sasabe with Julian. Bowden lived nearby in Tucson and had been writing about the border for decades. He believed it was his moral responsibility as a writer to show people what was happening there. He was also on the board of directors for the wildlife refuge. That’s why the refuge security guard, Slyvester, agreed to talk to me, and it’s why he invited us to dinner with his wife and kids. This is the second part of the trilogy.

The third part happened that same night. After dinner, instead of going back to Tucson, Bowden and I drove south on a dirt road, across the refuge, to the barbed wire fence marking the border. The sky had a million stars, but it was so dark I couldn’t see the microphone in my own hand.

These stories aired in 2005 on NPR’s “Day to Day,” and then in 2006 on NPR’s “Hearing Voices” as part of a larger program that won a Peabody Award for reporting on the US/Mexico border in 2007.

I’d like to thank Alex Chadwick (of “Day to Day”) for telling me I should put Charles Bowden and Julian Cardona on the radio. And thanks to Barrett Golding (of “Hearing Voices”) for producing the show that won the big award.

Thanks for listening to these stories that aired on the radio, one time, a long time ago.

Finally, thanks very much to everyone who has donated to support this podcast. I depend on your donations to keep going. If you feel like helping out, please go to homebrave.com and look for the DONATE button.

As the war correspondent for a men’s fashion magazine in the late 1990’s, I was given one directive: There will be blood in the first paragraph!

This was a time of relative peace and calm, when it seemed the United States would rule the world for at least the next couple hundred years. My job was to go to places where people were still acting up, causing trouble, shooting and killing, and find someone who was bleeding—because this is what men (with money) in the late 1990’s wanted to read in between ads for underwear, wristwatches, and cologne.

I went to “some fucked up places” and wrote the stories, but I kept failing to follow the directive about blood. So my job was on shaky ground. Then 9/11 happened.

This story is about going to Afghanistan in November of 2001, the beginning of the war on terror. Esquire Magazine refused to send me, so I went on my own. The story I wrote, “Over There,” was published in Harper’s Magazine in 2002. This radio story, produced years later, is composed of excerpts from the print story. It was edited and mixed by Larry Massett, and was broadcast, in 2010, by the NPR program “Hearing Voices.”

I invite everyone to listen to these stories for free and then decide whether they are worthy of a donation. Thanks very much to everyone who has gone to homebrave.com and pressed the DONATE button.

This story changed my life. Until then, 1997, I’d always done stories about things where I live, what I call home. When J.J. Yore (producer of “The Savvy Traveler”) asked me to go to Cambodia, I didn’t even have a valid passport.

Then, when the story aired, one night in 1997, David Granger (editor of Esquire Magazine) heard it in his limousine on his way home from work in Manhattan. He listened then called me on the car phone. He said he wanted me to be Esquire’s war correspondent.

“Esquire has always had a war correspondent,” he said, “but now there are no wars going on, so we’re just going to send you to some really fucked-up places.”

It was like a door opened, and I stepped into a whole new world.

I invite everyone to listen to these stories for free and then decide whether they are worthy of a donation. Thanks very much to everyone who has gone to homebrave.com and pressed the DONATE button.

In the summer we would drive across the country to Squam Lake in New Hampshire. My wife’s parents had a house there in a quiet bay with a beach, with loons and moose. The lake was perfect for swimming.

Swim Lesson was produced in 1995, with (a lot of) help from Jay Allison of Transom.org.

I invite everyone to listen to these stories for free, and then decide whether they are worthy of a donation. If so, please go to homebrave.com and look for the DONATE button.

These are my thoughts after watching Trump’s speech last night:

Right now, in the United States, you’re either in Trump’s gang or you are not; and, if not, you’re getting your ass kicked, over and over, for fun and pleasure by people in the Trump gang. This is what’s happening. This is the show now—a WWF Smackdown of woke-ass liberals, and the rest of the world can go to hell.

Yesterday I thought I should stop what I’m doing and start talking to Trump supporters to ask them “what are you thinking?” But today I know what they are thinking—they want to kick my ass and laugh about it. There’s got to be a better plan.

This morning I thought about going to Ukraine, and maybe I will, but for now I am going to finish this “album” project because it has a beginning, middle, and end to it, and it would be wrong to stop in the middle. I’m sorry, I was blown off course for a bit by difficult circumstances, but I back at it now.

Finding Amnesia, produced and edited by Alix Spiegel and Ira Glass, aired on This American Life in 1997.

I invite everyone to listen to these stories for free and then decide whether they are worthy of a donation. If so, please go to homebrave.com and look for the DONATE button.

I am hesitant to post a 30-year-old story on this day before Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress, laying out his plans for our future. For Trump, the pedestal has never been higher, and I’m afraid he will declare that he has been chosen by God to be King of the World. This just doesn’t seem like the time to be looking back.

So I will post Working For The Friendly Man, but then I’m going to pause this “album” project for a while in order to produce stories about what’s happening now. I’ll put them in Season Three.

Thanks to everyone who has supported this project. I very much appreciate your help. If you would like to donate then please go to homebrave.com and look for the DONATE button.

Working For The Friendly Man, produced and edited by Alix Spiegel and Ira Glass, aired on “This American Life” in 1996. The introduction is by Ira Glass.