The War Photographer

11/16/20 • 56 min

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.

Previous Episode

The 'Balance and Burnout' Deep Dive

The data shows that you, dear listener, want to hear more from Kent and Onnie! So this week, the pod takes a detour from our typical interview and goes deep on the topic of Balance and Burnout.
Join us as we walk through what our days/weeks actually look like, our perspectives on the topic of balance and burnout, and how we try to avoid it (only sometimes successfully)!
Relevant articles on Balance/Burnout

How Millennials became the Burnout Generation
Workism
Work as identity, burnout as lifestyle (Ezra Klein podcast)

Next Episode

The Nonprofit Founder, Entrepreneur, and Author

Our guest this week - Nicole Serena Silver - is now 13 years into her career exploring purposeful, passion-filled work. She's written a book (@vekitapd), started a nonprofit (@grow_myfuture), led workshops for Fortune 100 companies, and founded a company all focused on equipping people to ask hard questions about who they are and what they want out of their life. She was kind enough to join us on the #podcast this week to share some of what she's learned over the years.
This our 36th and final episode of 2020. We will be taking a quick break to enjoy the holidays! See you in 2021.