What do you do when you're 21 years-old, on a break from school, and desperate to prove to yourself (and everyone else) what you're made of? Easy. You forge a press pass, borrow a friend's camera, catch a flight to Budapest, and beg/plead/lie your way onto a UN flight to Sarajevo during the height of the Bosnian War. At least that's what you do if you're Thomas Hurst, this week's guest on the Dream Job. 

When it comes to meaningful work, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more noble (or naively ambitious) purpose than ending all armed conflict around the world. But that's what 21 year-old Thomas Hurst committed himself to after witnessing the atrocities of war first-hand in Bosnia in 1992. His weapon of choice? A used Nikon camera. He thought if he could show people the horror and savagery that he was witnessing firsthand, that humanity would lose their appetite for war. He worked twenty years in pursuit of that mission, and - while he didn't quite achieve that end - he did skillfully capture the brutality and humanity of places most of us only know from the news: Kosovo, Haiti, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and more. 

Join us as we talk about Thomas's non-traditional path into photojournalism, what it's like to be looking at his dream job from the "other side," and that time he almost died in the Rwandan jungle. 

• Thomas's Website
• Bosnian Wars (wikipedia)
• Rwandan Genocide (wikipedia)