259: How Asking Questions Can Be Your Guiding Light
“If I had not been willing to embrace my own ignorance to accept the fact that I have massive blind spots everywhere, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this.”
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Guest
Kirk Wallace Johnson is the author of The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, and To Be a Friend is Fatal: the Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind, which covers his efforts on behalf of Iraqi refugees as the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies.
Summary
Our conversations explored several important topics in Kirk’s life:
• Why Kirk became passionate about supporting Iraqis who helped America during the Iraqi war gain entry into the U.S. and how that experience led to creating the “List Project” and his first book, To Be a Friend Is Fatal.
• How he found solace in fly fishing, which led to meeting fly fishing guide Spencer Seim and his writing of The Feather Thief, the story of a million-dollar theft of rare dead birds from the British Museum.
• How a Bruce Springsteen song led Kirk to research a conflict between Vietnamese immigrants and the Ku Klux Klan along the Texas Gulf Coast and how Diane Wilson, an environmental activist, took on the corporations that were polluting the water.
• Why educational restrictions on certain content stand in the way of helping youth to develop critical thinking.
Links/References
Kirk on the “This American Life” podcast
• 499: Taking Names https://www.thisamericanlife.org/499/taking-names
• 607: Didn’t We Solve This One https://www.thisamericanlife.org/607/didnt-we-solve-this-one/act-two-1
• 654: The Feather Heist https://www.thisamericanlife.org/654/transcript
• 745: Getting Out https://www.thisamericanlife.org/745/transcript
My interview with the fly-fishing guide, Spencer Seim
https://www.queticocoaching.com/blog/2021/11/29/getting-unstuck-200-life-and-leadership-from-a-fly-fishing-guide
Show Credits
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"Getting Unstuck" theme music: Original composition of "Allegro ben ritmato e deciso" by George Gershwin. Arrangement and recording courtesy of Bruno Lecoeur.