Detours Podcast Blackbeard Media

Damon Tabor is a freelance magazine writer and documentary film producer whose work has focused on drug trafficking, black markets, conflict, and the environment. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Outside, Men's Journal and other publications. His article "Border of Madness" for Rolling Stone was optioned for the Academy Award-nominated 2015 documentary "Cartel Land." He is currently working on a book and two film projects.
















































“I find the dark infinitely captivating.”

Emma Beals is an investigative journalist and producer from New Zealand who has focused on the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and the rise of ISIS since 2012. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Vice News, Raconteur Magazine, USA Today, Al Jazeera, and many other outlets. She is the 2017 James W. Foley World Press Freedom honoree and a nominee for the 2017 James Beard Foundation Awards in food reporting. She co-founded the Frontline Freelance Register and the ACOS Alliance, both of which strive to improve safety for freelance journalists working in conflict. 
















































““I get a gut feeling about countries,
and Syria just grabbed me.””

Ben Anderson is a filmmaker and writer who has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Brazil, Congo, Cambodia and beyond, with a focus on conflict, environmental devastation and pariah regimes. His full-length documentaries include This is What What Winning Looks Like and Battle for Marjah, which later became a book, No Worse Enemy: The Inside Story of the Chaotic Struggle for Afghanistan. His war dispatches have been published in The Guardian Magazine and GQ UK. These days Ben travels relentlessly as a senior producer and correspondent for VICE on HBO. 
















































“Be in the right place for long enough
to record what actually happens.
”

Azam Ahmed is Mexico, Central America and Caribbean bureau chief for The New York Times. While based in Afghanistan from 2012 to 2015, he wrote distinctive human interest stories at a time of waning foreign coverage. His reporting culminated in a New York Times Magazine feature about an Afghan police unit on the front lines of the fight against the Taliban. Before joining the Times, he wrote for Dow Jones newswires and the Chicago Tribune. He has also crossed over into fiction, publishing a short story in Granta. 
















































“The red line I see is fact or not fact.”

Andrew Quilty is an Australian freelance photographer who has been based in Afghanistan since late 2013. His clients include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Time and Harper’s. In 2016, he won a George Polk Award for his coverage of a deadly U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders clinic in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. He has also been named Australia’s freelance journalist of the year. Follow him on Instagram @andrewquilty.
















































“The more this conflict spirals downhill, it makes me think more and more carefully about how worthwhile taking risks to document it is.”

Veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson talks about growing up in a family of nomads, finding his voice as a writer, and the changing risks of global reporting over beers at his bar in New York City.