I tell stories to keep people alive. And sometimes, those stories remind us why we’re alive in the first place.

I’m a journalist, conflict reporter, and storyteller. My work involves war zones, displaced communities, and spaces most people only encounter through headlines or stereotypes. I’m less interested in breaking news than I am in what happens after the news outlets are gone; how people keep living, moving, laughing, and surviving when the cameras usually leave.

Like I said above, I believe stories can keep people alive. Not metaphorically, but literally. Stories preserve dignity, interrupt indifference, hell…they’re how we even explain history. Stories remind us that people are not problems to be solved, but lives to be honored.

That belief has taken me into spaces often labeled fringe and unholy, like sitting with Death Doulas, interviewing freedom fighters in Syria, or spending a week in the Appalachian mountains with snake-handling preachers. Other times, it’s put me in hard, but necessary places, like interviewing the Grand Wizard of the KKK, or sleeping in a bomb shelter in Israel.

Whether I’m filming, editing, or recording an interview, my goal is the same: to find the voices that have something to say to let us know how the world really works.