A Palestinian Journalist Escapes Death in Gaza

Summary

Podcast Summary: "A Palestinian Journalist Escapes Death in Gaza"

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Mohammad Mawish, Palestinian journalist
Date: August 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour features an interview with Mohammad Mawish, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza City who narrowly survived an Israeli airstrike in December 2023. The conversation explores his personal story of survival, the risks and trauma faced by Palestinian journalists, the broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the ongoing psychological toll on both civilians and mental health workers. Central to the episode is Mawish's recent reporting for The New Yorker on mental health professionals navigating their own trauma while supporting a suffering population.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Life in Gaza Before and After October 7, 2023

• Mawish’s Background:
  • Born and raised in Gaza City; studied literature, became passionate about writing and journalism.
  • Taught literature at Islamic University of Gaza, describing it as “a very beautiful time in my life.” (01:34)
• Daily Reality:
  • Describes Gaza as not simply a “hotbed of militancy,” but as a place with a “determination to live” despite the blockade and severe restrictions.
  • Personal connection: Lost an uncle and an aunt who were unable to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
  • Never allowed to visit Jaffa, ancestral hometown.

    “I'm coming from a place of Jaffa, and I have never been allowed to set foot there.” — Mohammad Mawish (02:22)

2. Displacement and Generational Trauma

• Family displaced from Jaffa in 1948, from Ashkelon in 1967, and finally settled in Gaza—personal story echoes the multi-generational Palestinian experience of displacement. (03:35)

3. October 7, 2023 and Immediate Aftermath

• Describes the attack’s onset:

  “It felt like the whole earth swallowed us whole.” — Mohammad Mawish (04:18)

• Instinct was to protect family, but also compelled to report, initially as a freelance journalist before Al Jazeera English enlisted him. (05:21)

4. Risks of Journalism in Gaza

• Only Palestinian journalists reporting, as foreign press are barred.
• Increasing sense that journalists are deliberate targets:
  • Abandoned his press vest because it marked him as a target, not as protection. (06:20)

  “It did not provide me with the protection that I was hoping to get...it turned into a red target mark.” — Mohammad Mawish (06:41)

• Recounts receiving direct threats via phone and social media from individuals identifying as Israeli military officers ordering him to stop reporting. (07:18)

5. The Airstrike on December 6, 2023

• After a week reporting from Al-Shifa Hospital, returned home seeking rest.
• Received anonymous call warning: evacuate, your house will be bombed in 20 minutes.
  • Didn’t tell his family, thinking it was a scare tactic; decided to simply stop reporting for two weeks.
• House was bombed the next morning; four killed (two neighbors, two extended family members). He, his wife, child, parents and sister survived, though all were trapped under the rubble and seriously injured. (07:50–12:08)

  “In a matter of seconds, I started screaming… Nobody returned my screams. And I thought... that's it. Everybody's dead.” — Mohammad Mawish (09:37)
  “I feel like I'm carrying the guilt of everyone that's been impacted by that strike.” — Mohammad Mawish (12:08)

• Young son, only two and a half, remains severely traumatized.

  “He's triggered… when he sees a helicopter, even a civil plane. He's terrified.” — Mohammad Mawish (12:33)

6. Decision to Leave Gaza

• Returned to reporting a few days after the attack—even after warnings and trauma.
• Once the threats resumed, felt forced to choose “keeping my story or my life,” and decided to leave Gaza. (13:18)

7. Reflections on October 7 and Hamas’s Calculations

• Host raises the moral complexity: IDF responsibility for airstrike, but also Hamas’s willingness to accept large Palestinian casualties for political purposes.
• Mawish: Local shock at the October 7 attack—no broad awareness or approval among most Gazans.

  “For Palestinians inside of Gaza, it was a sense… I remember feeling a sense of shock among the people when it all first started.” — Mohammad Mawish (17:32)

  • Political clues something might happen, but nobody knew what or when. (17:46)

8. The Scope of Destruction and Ongoing Crisis

• Catastrophic scale: nearly all residential buildings in Gaza damaged or destroyed.

  “You could see the entire area, miles and miles ahead, flattened… In entire neighborhoods and blocks, there is no single building that has not been touched by the bombings.” — Mohammad Mawish (19:13)

  • Reports up to 92% of housing damaged or flattened. (20:07)
• Widespread starvation, with fatal incidents as civilians seek food. Mawish and young son suffered severe malnutrition; he recounts desperate efforts to secure food amid humanitarian aid collapse.

  “We were only rationing what we had, including some b of bread. We had contaminated water. We had to, you know, make bread out of animal feed and barley… We were not living. We were only just trying to make every day.” — Mohammad Mawish (21:33)

9. Covering Gaza’s Psychological Trauma

• Focus of recent New Yorker piece: Mental health professionals in Gaza, both helping and suffering.
  • “Mental health is often the most overlooked part of war. We are counting the bodies… but the minds that carry the trauma.” — Mohammad Mawish (22:29)
  • Therapy is almost impossible since providers are themselves traumatized and have lost family, colleagues, clinics.
  • Trauma is continuous, not “post”—cases like a 14-year-old girl alone after family is killed, show the widespread and chronic nature of psychological suffering.

  “It is widespread because there is no post for the trauma there… They’re not having any safe place to turn to or any security.” — Mohammad Mawish (24:44)

10. Hopes for Return and the Legacy of Displacement

• Longs to return to Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashkelon, but feels the pain of being “from a bunch of places, but we belong nowhere.” (25:59)

  “It's part of the emotional toll... to keep thinking of those voices and those places and those people... we have lost... But it's very difficult to keep on doing that.” — Mohammad Mawish (26:16)

  • Writing is both a burden and a means of hope.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gaza Before the War:

  “People waking up every day facing the worst version of the same challenges and just trying to overcome.” — Mohammad Mawish (02:22)

• On Displacement:

  “We belong nowhere.” — Mohammad Mawish (25:59)

• On Targeting Journalists:

  “I started receiving threatening calls and messages on my own personal number and social media.” — Mohammad Mawish (06:41) “It was either I get to keep my story or my life.” — Mohammad Mawish (13:18)

• On Generational Trauma:

  “It's the same reason that brings me down is writing. It's the same reason that brings me up sometimes and keeps me holding and pushing forward for someday a change.” — Mohammad Mawish (26:47)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:11–01:27: Introduction, context of journalist targeting in Gaza
• 01:34–03:27: Mawish’s background, experience of life and movement restrictions in Gaza
• 04:11–05:52: Recounting October 7th and the start of the war
• 06:20–07:48: On being targeted as a journalist and threats from Israeli military
• 07:50–12:32: Personal account of the airstrike, survival, trauma
• 13:13–13:45: Return to reporting and decision to leave Gaza
• 17:01–18:26: Mawish reflects on Hamas’s actions, shock among Gaza population
• 19:00–21:33: Humanitarian disaster—destruction, food, water, survival
• 22:29–25:54: Reporting on widespread psychological trauma in Gaza
• 25:59–27:00: Hopes for return, emotional toll of displacement

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Concluding Remarks

The episode provides a harrowing, first-person perspective on the dangers faced by Palestinian journalists, the devastation wrought upon Gaza’s people, and the multi-layered trauma—physical, psychological, and generational—suffered during and after the war. Mohammad Mawish’s testimony illuminates the persistent courage required to report under threat of death, the impossibility of true healing amid ongoing violence, and the heavy legacy of exile. The conversation is deeply personal, candid, and laced with both grief and a persistent, if faint, thread of hope.

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For further reading, Mawish’s article “Treating Gaza’s Collective Trauma” is available on newyorker.com.

Transcript

[Narrator/Producer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The war in Gaza has been among many other humanitarian disasters deadly for journalists. Foreign reporters have almost no access to Gaza, so nearly all the reporting on the war's impact comes from Palestinian journalists on the ground. Israeli officials often accuse them of lying about what's happening, or they even accuse them of being terrorists. A week ago, the IDF struck a tent where Al Jazeera journalists were working, killing seven people. One of them, Israel said, was a Hamas operative, which Al Jazeera denied. Close to 200 members of the press have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. A young journalist named Mohammad Mawish was very nearly among them. After surviving an Israeli strike, Mahuish left Gaza, but he still reports on what's happening there.

[Interviewer/Host]

He just wrote for the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

About mental health workers who are treating a deeply traumatized population while they themselves, of course, are suffering all the devastation of this long and terrible war. I spoke the other day with Mohammad Mawish.

[Interviewer/Host]

Tell me a little bit about your life on October 6, 2023.

[Mohammad Mawish]

I was born and raised in Gaza City and I grew up there. I studied literature. I had my passion towards writing and journalism since I was a freshman in college. And I started reading more. It was basically firstly literature stuff, reading poetry, studying it. And then I had the chance, which was a very, very job to do. But it was a very beautiful time in my life that I got to teach some of it after I graduated at the Islamic University of Gaza.

[Interviewer/Host]

And how did you experience in Gaza City? The, you know, some people would call it an open air prison, but in any case and in any language, life was not ordinary there by any stretch of the imagination. How did you experience that?

[Mohammad Mawish]

Gaza is not the hotbed of militancy that everybody thinks it is. It was for those who managed to Visit Gaza before October 7th. They saw an insistence on living. They saw people waking up every day facing the worst version of the same challenges and just trying to overcome like there was some level of unemployment, the blockade that was crossing all the way ends into Gaza, restricting movement from in and outside of Gaza. And personally speaking, I lost an uncle and an aunt to a disease. They were not permitted exit to access treatment outside of Gaza. And I have been trying to be vocal about the situation that I was living, even myself, personally speaking, and just trying to communicate with the world that Gaza should be at least allowed the freedoms and the basics of life. One of them is the freedom of movement. I'm coming from a place of Jaffa, and I have never been allowed to set foot there.

[Interviewer/Host]

Jaffa being a town south of Tel Aviv that was primarily Palestinian. And then after 1948, that all changed.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Yes, my grandparents come from Yaffa, and so they were among the people who had to flee their houses and villages in the 1948. And then they settled in Ashkelon, where my parents were born. And then in 1967, my parentskalon, the port city. Yes, Inside of Israel right now.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right. And north of Gaza.

[Mohammad Mawish]

And so they were among the people who had to Flee Ashkelon in 1967 and settle into Gaza as refugees where I was born. And I have come to experience my own displacement in 2024, when I had to leave after working as a journalist.

[Interviewer/Host]

Before we get to your displacement out of Gaza, tell me what October 7th was like.

[Mohammad Mawish]

It was a very disruptive, very unexpected day. It started with the usual. I was just getting ready to engage with some writing work throughout the day, when all of a sudden the sky started to light. It was rockets from every corner. And I asked my family not to go outside. We were just trying to understand and absorb what was happening. And I switched on the news, and it was basically the announcements of these rockets being fired from Gaza. And then the retaliation came from Israel. And it felt like the whole earth swallowed us whole. At that moment. We were navigating a very uncertain and a very terrifying situation. I tried to secure my family inside the house. I made sure everybody in, and I wanted out to report and see what was happening.

[Interviewer/Host]

And who were you reporting for at that time?

[Mohammad Mawish]

At that moment when it all first started, I was a freelance reporter. I received a call from Al Jazeera English later that morning to start reporting for Al Jazeera. And so for the first few hours I was on my own, just trying to grasp and just get a full understanding, although it was a very impossible job to do, of what was happening. And I started writing and filing breaking news around the clock, starting from day one, before being dismissed, dispatched into the field as a full time journalist throughout the war.

[Interviewer/Host]

Sooner or later, it became clear that Palestinian journalists in Gaza, and really there are only Palestinian journalists in Gaza because the doors, the gates have not opened for anyone else to come in, felt that they were being targeted, deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. And what is your sense of that?

[Mohammad Mawish]

I have had my very personal experience navigating the risks and the danger of being a Journalist on the ground. At some point, I had to abandon my press vest, a bulletproof vest that said press on like exactly the one that had a press on, because it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Became in a sense, a target or it was no longer safer rather than.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Exactly. It did not provide me with the protection that I was hoping to get. Wearing that and running across the city to meet survivors and first responders and witnesses and people just, you know, being pulled from under the rubble, it gave me a sense of security at first, but then it turned into a red target mark. I started receiving threatening calls and messages on my own personal number and social media, text messaging, urging and warning me to stop reporting and stop writing and stop my journalism work.

[Interviewer/Host]

And who would they say they were calling?

[Mohammad Mawish]

They were identifying themselves as officers of the Israeli military, directly part of the idf. Exactly. Yes. They were saying names. They were identifying themselves at the beginning of the call, and they were explicitly and very formally asked me to stop reporting. It escalated after late October 2023, until December 6, 2023, when the House was targeted as a result of your house was targeted. Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

Tell me about that.

[Mohammad Mawish]

I had been away for around a week, reporting from Ashifa Hospital in Gaza City, when I decided after that week to go home and reunite with my family, to check on them and have a moment of rest. On December 6, 2023, after 15 minutes of stepping inside the house, I received a call that was from a no caller id, basically a private number who I had to respond to because it was a scary gesture to get that sort of phone calls during this time. And he identified himself as an officer of the military and the idf. And he warned me to get outside of the house and evacuate immediately because in 20 minutes the house is going to be bombed. I did not tell anyone in the house about the call. I thought it was an attempt to shut me down, to scare me, to stop me from my work. And I made a promise internally between me and myself that I'm not going to be reporting for the next two weeks. I'm going to stick inside the house and I'm not going to go out, meet people, speak, do any bylines. I put down the phone on my side and I started watching the clock. In 25 minutes, nothing happened. So I thought maybe that was it. Nothing happened. So he's just scaring me. And I was really exhausted. I remember that day, and I fell asleep. I was just waking up the next day in the morning. It was around 7:30 in the morning. In a millisecond, the entire house collapsed. We didn't hear anything. We only felt the rubble and the weight of the ceiling and the roof being crushed against our bodies. In a matter of seconds, I started screaming. All the smoke and a fog, very dark fog of smoke and stones clouded in the air. And I started screaming the names of my family, including my son, who was two and a half at the time. Nobody returned my calls. Nobody returned my screams. And I thought, at that moment, that's it. Everybody's dead. Shortly after that, I remember nothing. I passed out. I woke up a few hours later. I remember it was around close to three hours when we were being pulled out from under the rubble by rescue teams and neighbors. And I only heard the screams of people saying, they're alive. I couldn't talk. I couldn't move my body. Seven of my fingers and my two hands were broken. I remember my back. I wasn't able to, you know, move my back. I remember my left arm was broken. And I. I can't remember exactly the scenes of the surrounding area, but I remember my son. His face was covered in blood and he was unconscious. And I started asking the people rescuing us and helping us, where is my parents? Where are my family? Everyone tried to calm me down and just tell me, they're fine, they're good. You're gonna see them later.

[Interviewer/Host]

Assured you they were alive.

[Mohammad Mawish]

That's what they said. But I did not rest assured because I couldn't see them. My parents were last to be rescued, so by the time, by when I was rescued, they were still inside. A few hours later, I was at the hospital at the emergency gates, just trying to receive, you know, what was available of the medical treatment back then.

[Interviewer/Host]

Mohammed, forgive me. Who was alive and who had died.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Two neighbors died. One of them was actually on the third floor. One of them was passing by the building the moment it happened.

[Interviewer/Host]

And among your family?

[Mohammad Mawish]

Among my family, we had two people from. One of them from my father's side of the family and one from my mother's side of the family. So in total, it was four people who were killed in the attack, although I was the targeted one. And I made it out. And I don't know if it was luck or fate that made me survive this.

[Interviewer/Host]

So your wife, your child, and your parents?

[Mohammad Mawish]

Yes, my wife, my child, my parents, and my one sister. We made it out. But I. In all honesty, David, I feel like I'm carrying the guilt of everyone who's been impacted by that strike. That very same incident has plugged into my son's head a very traumatizing incident, a very traumatizing memory that he still remembers, although he was a very, very young kid.

[Interviewer/Host]

I remember keenly.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Yes, he's triggered even these days when he sees a helicopter, even a civil plane. He's terrified of any sudden sounds or a sudden closure or a shut of a door next to him. He starts running to me and he just in terror remembers what it was like to be trapped inside of the house and just not having the awareness of what was going on. But I got back to reporting after I was feeling a little bit better. It was only a few days after the attack and I started filing stories.

[Interviewer/Host]

You started filing stories after being warned that your house was going to be lost.

[Mohammad Mawish]

And it was much more scarier to get back to it in the second time because once my name started to go up and online again, I started receiving the same kind of threats again. And then I started considering leaving Gaza after it was clear to me it was either I get to keep my story or my life.

[David Remnick]

I'm speaking with Mohammad Mahouish. He recently reported on Gaza for the New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and we'll continue in a moment.

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[Mohammad Mawish]

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[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm speaking with Mohammad Maweesh, a journalist born and raised in Gaza City. Ma' Wish has covered the war in Gaza both in English and in Arabic for a number of outlets, and most recently for the New Yorker. He fled Gaza last year after his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, an attack that left four people dead. We'll continue our conversation now.

[Interviewer/Host]

This is a hard question. There's no doubt who dropped the bomb and attacked at the same time. Hamas committed the act it did on October 7. And Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, had said numerous Times that if 20,000, 30,000, 100,000 people have to die, and he meant Palestinians, of course, then so be it, toward the political ends that he was looking for. When you look back at that decision by Hamas, what is your sense of it?

[Mohammad Mawish]

The political and military ideology of the Hamas movement in Gaza, it was basically to engage in constant armed resistance with Israel. And they made the decision to do this full scale, unexpected attack on southern parts of Israel on October 7th that was basically a surprise not only for.

[Interviewer/Host]

Israelis, but for you too.

[Mohammad Mawish]

For Palestinians inside of Gaza, it was a sense. I remember feeling a sense of shock among the people when it all first started.

[Interviewer/Host]

Did you have a good sense of what it was?

[Mohammad Mawish]

At first, no. But there were signs, politically speaking, before October 7th inside of Gaza that something might happen, but we didn't know what it was. We felt something was coming. I remember Yahya Sinwar in one of his public engagements with the people, explicitly saying and hinting towards a military engagement with Israel, but nobody paid attention. There were also people inside of Gaza who were monitoring the political developments and the dynamics inside of Gaza. But none of these people were able to anticipate the move that was ahead.

[Interviewer/Host]

I hope you'll write a great deal more for the New Yorker, but I also feel deeply for you in the sense of it must be very difficult.

[David Remnick]

For a young person with a very.

[Interviewer/Host]

Young family to imagine in a future. No matter how. It's very painful, no matter how adept you are at a new place, it's unimaginable.

[Mohammad Mawish]

It's very painful to look at the pictures and the footage that's coming out of Gaza at the moment, because I know exactly what it feels to be reporting from inside of those places. And I have been there, if not every part of Gaza, at least the biggest majority of it. And I remember reporting from places, from the ground, not only my neighborhood, but also other parts of Gaza City and the north, where I was standing in places. And you could see the entire area, miles and miles ahead, flattened. I mean, people are escaping the bombardments by erecting tents on top of the rubble because there is basically no places left. I could see that in entire neighborhoods and blocks, there is no single building that has not been touched by the bombings. And we have seen some numbers and statistics on that as well. That said, around 92% or something around that figure. Of the residential compounds in Gaza are.

[Interviewer/Host]

Either damaged or flattened.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Yes. Yeah, exactly. And so people are just navigating the situation by just holding fragments of what is still there and of what they have lost by trying to look forward. But at the same time, the ongoing challenges and the fear and terror and the lack of food and the shortages of the medical needs, it's very massive. It's very painful for people to keep living with that.

[Interviewer/Host]

You're on WhatsApp every day. To friends and colleagues, family. How has the humanitarian aid situation changed even in the last couple of weeks? Well over a thousand Palestinians have been killed seeking food.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Exactly. And these people are starving. They're looking for a bag of flour, a parcel of aid. It happened to me when I was inside. I remember it happened in March 2024, if you remember, the floor massacre that happened around the Nabulsi roundabout in Gaz. I remember being there because I had been diagnosed with malnutrition with my young kid at that moment. And I have been there to the site because I knew that there were a number of truckloads of food coming in.

[Interviewer/Host]

You were diagnosed with malnutrition. So relatively soon after October 7th.

[Mohammad Mawish]

By December, in March 2024, I had a kidney problem at the moment. But we were not hospitalized. There were no capacity. We were only rationing what we had, including some b of bread. We had contaminated water. We had to, you know, make bread out of animal feed and barley. Unfortunately, that was only what was available. We had to survive through the day. We were not living. We were only just trying to make. Every day, from the moment we wake up, make it to the evening Muhammad.

[Interviewer/Host]

There'S a thousand things we could talk about. I want to concentrate for a moment on the subject of your piece for newyorker.com we've talked about physical hunger, but we haven't talked at length about psychological trauma. Tell me how you reported this piece and what your main discoveries were after all this time.

[Mohammad Mawish]

You're right. Mental health is often the most overlooked part of war. Right? Like we are counting the bodies we fell in the rubble, but the minds that carry the trauma. I wanted to speak about this, to see and capture the psychological ruckus that is being caused. On a daily basis, nonstop, I was hearing from therapists who lost entire families, loved ones and colleagues and their clinics that they were still trying to show up and help others. One of the therapists that I talked to for my story lost family members early in the war, including his house, including their clinic, including friends and colleagues of his. And they kept trying to heal others and showing up to them with the least amount of resources and supplies possible. They were telling me, we cannot wait for the war to stop to start healing, or for ourselves to heal, to start healing others. So I understood they were trying to heal by helping others heal. And so even from where I am right now, outside of Gaza, I work closely with survivors and I'm in touch with aid workers and mental health professionals. And so it took weeks of phone calls just to understand really well, or at least part of it, what it really means and does to someone's mind to be inflicted to this kind of horror on a daily basis for two years, nonstop, and not having the space to heal or to grieve or just have enough time to process what's happening. In one of my interviews in the story, one of the therapists told me about a frequent case that they have been seeing over the past few weeks. It is a girl who's no longer than 14. So she's basically a child who went out for a few moments to grab something from outside the shelter. It was a house. And this young girl went outside the house to, you know, get something. And she came back to see the entire house was leveled, it was bombed, and her entire family was gone. And now she's seeing the therapist, and she's only asking for her family back. Therapists around her trying to offer some comfort and some spiritual engagement and some, you know, practical drawing games and healing and therapy sessions for her. But she has been reporting a very, very difficult psychological toll. She's living in despair. She's desperate. She's experiencing very severe symptoms of a continuous traumatic stress disorder, which is the case, we could safely say, across Gaza. It is widespread because there is no post for the trauma there. It is something that people have had to live with over the past two years and they're not having any safe place to turn to or any security. And so these people are trying to, you know, live with the fear and not get rid of it because there is no way to escape what is happening at the moment.

[Interviewer/Host]

Do you expect to return there one day?

[Mohammad Mawish]

Well, I have the hope to return to Gaza at some point and also have the chance to visit where my grandparents lived one day in Iafa and also where my parents had a place in Ashkelon. It's, you know, part of the legacy that we're from a bunch of places, but we belong nowhere. It's part of the emotional toll that it takes on me as a Palestinian journalist and writer to keep thinking of those voices and those places and those people or those family members that we have lost, the friends and colleagues who trusted me as a writer with their stories and voices to keep moving forward. But it's very difficult to keep on doing that. David it's the same reason that brings me down is writing. It's the same reason that brings me up sometimes and keeps me holding and pushing forward for someday a change to, you know, look at a glimmer, a glimpse of hope along the line.

[Interviewer/Host]

Mohammed, thank you so much.

[Mohammad Mawish]

Thank you so much for having me, David. It was an honor.

[David Remnick]

You can read Mohammad Mawish's article Treating Gaza's Collective Trauma at newyorker.com and of course, you can also subscribe to the new [e-mail] as well. I'm David Remnick and that's our program for today. Thanks for joining us. See you next time.

[Narrator/Producer]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Bottin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.

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