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.)

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

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

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]]>Scott Carrierfalse54Ten Days In OdesafullTen Days In Odesascarrier@xmission.com (Scott Carrier)I didn’t know anyone when I got here, but Odesa is famous for its writers and artists, my kind of people. So I searched the web, looking for stories, written in English, by Odesa authors. Then I wrote to them, asking if they would be up for an interview.I didn’t know anyone when I got here, but Odesa is famous for its writers and artists, my kind of people. So I searched the web, looking for stories, written in English, by Odesa authors. Then I wrote to them, asking if they would be up for an interview.travel,stories,interviews,scott,carrier,this,american,life,home,brave,nprWed, 17 Sep 2025 14:28:23 +0000https://homebrave.com/home-of-the-brave//imagine-154dd0f40e4b084e8da72e7db:54e74bfee4b05860a4652c80:68cab88eaa68bc4840cc4f66

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.

My thoughts on our current situation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything changed, for me, when Ira Glass started “This American Life” in 1996. I’d been working odd jobs, trying to support my family, and pretty much failing. Then Ira called and asked that I contribute stories for his new show. He wanted me to write about the odd jobs I’d been taking. So I went back to the beginning, just after I quit my “real” job.

The Test, produced and edited by Alix Spiegel and Ira Glass, aired on This American Life in 1996.

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.

At that time, I had a family, a wife and three young kids. So I took a “real” job as a reporter for the local NPR station. For the first time, we had a regular paycheck, family health insurance, and a retirement account. I, however, just could not fit into the system, and I quit after only five months, without having a backup plan.

I did odd jobs, anything to get by, and in the meantime I worked on our house, trying to make it a better place to live. I also started recording things around my house—the city ambience, my kids, friends who came by. It was a tough time, and yet so easy in many ways compared to now.

The Dry Wall aired on the NPR program “Soundprint” in 1993. I think. It aired nationally, somewhere, because Ira Glass heard it and told me he liked it.

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.

The Death of Ruth Tuck aired nationally on a short-lived “radio art” series (the name I’ve also forgotten) in 1986. I know Joe Frank heard it in Los Angeles, because he called and said he thought it was real. I said, no, it’s a play.

Thanks very much to Kenny Larsen for coming up with Ruth and her family.

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.

This story began as a series of stories produced for “Weekend All Things Considered” over the summer of 1991. I’d spend a week or so on the river then come home and send a story to WATC, and then go back and float another section of the river, come home and send another story, and so on. Here they are all together, with music by Pat King (recorded in my house).

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.

The Wasatch Mountains, just east of Salt Lake City, are known for having the best snow in the world for powder skiing. Powder is the kind of snow that flies over your head as you ski through it. The snow flakes are big and dry—they take up space but weigh almost nothing, so skiing through them can feel like flying.

When we were kids we learned to ski by riding the lifts at the resorts, but after high school, in our twenties, we realized we didn’t need the chair lifts—we could hike up and ski down the mountain, pretty much any mountain, on cross-country skis. We had the whole Wasatch range to ourselves.

This was a beautiful, but dangerous thing. We knew how to ski, very well, but we were just learning about the mountains, and what can happen in the mountains.

One day in April, 1979, seven young men went backcountry skiing in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Late in the day, after hiking up and skiing multiple shots, one of the slopes avalanched and swept away three of the skiers. One ended up on top of the debris, freaked out but uninjured. Another was buried for 20 minutes, but was dug out by his friends. The third, Greg McIntyre, was buried and didn’t make it out alive.

Years later, I interviewed five of the six survivors, asking them to tell me the story from beginning to end.

The Avalanche aired on “All Things Considered” in the winter of 1987.

Thanks to Dwight Butler, Dave Carter, Chris Larson, Alan Murphy and Larry Olsen.

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

I think of this story as a cultural history of the Great Salt Lake Desert, the big landscape just west of my home in Salt Lake City. It used to be covered by an inland sea the size of Lake Michigan, but the climate changed and the water evaporated, leaving only salt.

The introduction is from “Roughing It,” by Mark Twain. He crossed this desert in a stagecoach in 1861.

The West Desert, edited by Art Silverman and Larry Massett, was broadcast in 1989 on “The Wild Room,” a weekly show out of WBEZ in Chicago, hosted by Gary Covino and Ira Glass.

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

The Neighborhood was inspired by Suburbia, a photo-essay book by Bill Owens. The photos are of Owens’ neighbors in a suburb of Livermore, California, during the late sixties and early seventies. They pose in their garages, bedrooms, backyards… with their stuff— their tools and toys, the accoutrements of suburban lifestyle. With each photo there is a short quote from the person in the photo. This combination, the photo with the quote, is somewhat magical. It’s like you can hear the people talking, like you are there, in the moment.

The story aired in 1988 on the NPR program “Soundprint” (now defunct).

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.

Forty years ago, 1985, I was sitting in Art Silverman’s office at NPR in Washington, D.C. Art was a producer for All Things Considered. I was an independent producer, mainly for Weekend All Things Considered. We were working on something, I don’t remember what, and NPR Science Editor Anne Gudenkauf came by to talk to Art.

“Hey, tell Anne your idea for a science story,” Art said to me.

So I said, “My brother, Dave, is a graduate student in vertebrate morphology at the University of Utah, and he has a theory that human beings evolved as endurance predators, able to hunt without weapons by chasing large mammals until they collapse from heat exhaustion. This summer we’re going to test his theory by trying to run down a pronghorn antelope in Wyoming.”

I thought it was a good pitch, but as I spoke I saw Gudenkauf’s eyes cross and when I was done she turned and walked out of Art’s office without comment. It seemed I had insulted her intelligence.

A year later, Running After Antelope aired on All Things Considered and NPR started using it in training sessions as an example for how to produce a science story. Many people scoffed at my brother’s theory, back in the beginning, but now it’s become an accepted theory of human evolution.

Larry Massett edited the story and wrote the introduction, read by Noah Adams.

The music comes from Dire Straits (Why Worry) and Talking Heads (Television Man).

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’ve been wanting to say this for a long time.

A couple days ago I watched a story on Al Jazeera English about how the Israeli military is using small drones mounted with machine guns to kill civilians in Gaza. These drones are 3-5 feet wide, with four or more propellers. They’re called quadcopters. They move like hummingbirds or bumblebees—hovering and darting. They can go inside buildings and tunnels, or chase someone down the street. Besides guns they carry cameras, loudspeakers and bombs. The Al Jazeera story claimed the Israelis are busy building new prototypes and testing them on the trapped civilians in Gaza.

I did a search under 'Israeli Quadcopters' and saw that NPR did a story on November 20th about a British doctor speaking in the House of Commons about operating on Palestinian children who had been shot by quadcopters in Gaza. So I went to the UK Parliament website and found the video of the doctor’s testimony, and I’m going to play the whole thing, because I think the whole thing needs to be heard. 

The doctor’s name is Nizam Mamode, 62 years old. In the video, he’s sitting in front of a microphone before 10 members of the Committee for International Development. All the members ask a question, so it’s long interview, over 40 minutes, and it’s not easy to listen to. I had to take breaks and come back to it. Some parts are rather horrifying. It begins with an introduction by committee chairman Sarah Champion.

Link to the video.

My take on what happened in the election.

A short essay on what I know about fascism.

I wrote this after I got back home the other night, but it took a few days to get it posted. I had a good trip, thanks very much for your support.

This interview with Dr. Alam gives a very good historical context for the war now going on in Lebanon. I feel lucky to have met him. Here are the links to the book he recommended for more in depth study:

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi

The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe

Four more interviews with people on the street in Beirut.

An interview with Yehya Youness, owner of Electrip, an electric scooter company in Beirut.

I’m going to take a break for a few months, or at least until the pandemic is over. Thank you very much for your support. This podcast has been the best thing in my life, professionally, and I couldn’t have done it without you. I hope to be back soon with more stories.

Many Trump supporters I spoke with before the election said there would be violence after the election, and now here we are. I missed last Wednesday’s insurrection, but my friend photo-journalist Alan Chin was there. So I called him.

You may remember Alan from a previous episode. I met him in 2001 in Afghanistan. We worked together there and he went on to cover the war in Iraq. He’s covered a lot of war zones. His photos are published in the New York Times and Newsweek. I’ve always been amazed by his spot-on verbal descriptions and accounts, his command of history, and his confidence in the role of photo-journalism.

This is a very good report of what it was like at the U.S. Capitol last week.

All photos by Alan Chin.

Following the river was a good idea, especially across the Great Plains, because it’s really easy to get lost out there. The view is the same in all directions—rolling hills of dry grass that resemble giant waves on the open ocean. It seemed I would never find my way across them. I was lost at sea. But the river knows where it’s going, downhill to the sea, and it has cottonwood trees and green meadows along its shore. Animals and birds live along the river. People come to hang out and fish. Following the river kept me sane and grounded.

The music is from Neil Young’s soundtrack to “Deadman,” a film by Jim Jarmusch. I highly recommend it.

Back in the beginning of September, two months before the election, I set out on a trip driving across the country talking to people about the candidates and the issues. I collected a lot of interviews and I think now is the time to play them, at length.

Most of the interviews are with Trump supporters and some of the things they say may trigger you. You don’t have to listen. You may feel the time for listening is over.

This is the first of three parts.

The music is from Neil Young’s soundtrack to “Deadman,” a film by Jim Jarmusch. I highly recommend it.

I went to New Orleans but didn’t interview anyone because I thought things were getting too sketchy with the spreading virus. So I drove home. And I’m sort of beat. It was an exhausting trip. But I recorded a lot of good interviews, maybe the best ever. Thanks very much for supporting this series.

I’ve been driving around talking to people in the Mississippi Delta, small towns like Clarksdale, Sumner, Greenwood, and Elaine. I heard a lot of stories that I should have known already. People were very friendly.

The Missouri River meets the Mississippi River a few miles north of St. Louis. The river is like a half mile wide at this point with tug boats pushing long barges to oil refineries and railroad shipping yards. I was in St. Louis the first couple days after the Breonna Taylor decision came down in Louisville. I went to Ferguson where Michael Brown was killed by police in 2014 and no charges were brought. But it was difficult to find people who would talk to me.

After following the Missouri across the low plains, I have come to a better understanding of Trump supporters.

I’m following the Missouri River now, heading south down through the Dakotas. I stopped at Standing Rock and talked to some people about the protest four years ago.

I’ve been following some roads through deeply red voting districts in Wyoming and Montana. I thought I would not enjoy talking to Trump supporters, but I was wrong.

I’m starting a new series of reports from a long trip across the country. I think we used to have a cultural divide, now we have a cultural war.

I went fishing in some beautiful mountains I first visited in 1968 when I was a Boy Scout. When I was older, we took our kids there so they could see it as well. It’s still very beautiful, but things have changed due to global warming.

My thinking has been off, my approach has been wrong, I need to go fishing for a while.

I worked with photographer Alan Chin covering the beginning of the war in Afghanistan in November of 2001, but then I didn’t see him again until recently, at his apartment in New York City. I wanted to know what he’d learned from being a war correspondent.

Here are a some links to look at more of his work:

www.instagram.com/alanschin/

@alanschin on Twitter

www.muckrack.com/alan-chin

Trump’s threats to go to war with Iran made me feel powerless and lonely because I’m afraid there’s nothing to stop it. I tried to produce an anti-war story, but then realized this one by Joe is much better.

Link to Joe’s website

Link to the original broadcast on Unfictional

This is maybe what you’d call a pilot episode for a series that would be separate from Home of the Brave. I don’t have a title for it yet, but it would involve traveling around the world by taxi, or ride share, or just hiring drivers who can function as guides and translators. I think this is the best way to travel, but it’s expensive, so the series would need a big sponsor. Western Sound, a new podcast company in Los Angeles, sponsored this test run of the idea.

Here are some links to the music used in this story:

Ray Charles, Sweet Sixteen Bars from the album The Best of Ray Charles, Atlantic SD 1543

Greg Allen Jones, Monticello Rose and Boll Weevil from the album Crossing the Willamette

The Mountain Goats, Love, Love, Love from the album The Sunset Tree