Please click here to 'Follow' the show - it really helps get the show to a wider audience (which I really thank you for!).

David Abel was standing on the finish line of the Boston Marathon when the first bomb went off, fifteen steps away. He filed the story, kept filming, and spent the next year inside one of the most private and devastating human stories the city had ever witnessed — the Richard family, who lost an eight-year-old boy, a seven-year-old daughter's leg, a mother's eye. Later he was deported from Cuba for writing the truth. Later still, he made a film about lobster fishermen and right
whales on the edge of extinction. And then a man got swallowed by a whale — and Abel made a feature film about that too.

David is an award-winning journalist at the Boston Globe, a professor of journalism at Boston University, and a documentary filmmaker whose work has been broadcast on PBS, BBC World News, and the Discovery Channel. His films have won a Jackson Wild Award — the Oscars of nature filmmaking —
a national Emmy nomination, and an audience choice award at the New Hampshire Film Festival. He is one of the most quietly extraordinary storytellers working today, and this conversation covers the full sweep: Havana, the marathon finish line, a whale's mouth, and the North Atlantic right whale's race against extinction.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction — David Abel, journalist & documentary filmmaker
01:38 From philosophy to journalism — the reporter with elbow patches who changed everything
04:02 Milan Kundera, a question as a bridge, and the decision to become a journalist
06:45 Mexico City, the Zapatistas, and learning the ropes of reporting
08:22 Cuba: six months reporting under Castro — and the night state security came knocking
11:59 Deported in a Soviet Lada — filing the story with a wiped computer
13:54 The Miami Herald byline that blew his cover
17:58 Life on the Boston Marathon finish line when the bombs went off
22:25 The Richard family — a year inside the most devastating story in Boston
24:49 Losing an eight-year-old boy, a leg, an eye — and how a family chose to give back
28:07 How telling that story became a way of healing — and led to his first feature film
32:56 Entangled: the North Atlantic right whale and the conflict with the lobster industry
35:59 Vertical buoy lines, entanglement, and an industry caught between commerce and conservation
38:24 Death threats, a rebuttal film, and $82 million in new federal funding
43:41 In the Whale: lobster diver Michael Packard swallowed by a humpback for a full minute
46:57 Inundation District: Boston built a new neighbourhood at sea level. Against its own advice.
51:01 What's next — finishing the films and a children's book about saving a sea turtle
55:37 Call to Adventure: swim in a waterfall — Salto Baiguate, Dominican Republic
58:06 Pay It Forward: a Boston community 5K, and a plea not to be complacent about climate change

What You'll Learn:
• What it was like to be expelled from Cuba by state security — and how writing for the Miami   Herald was what gave him away
• How standing on the Boston Marathon finish line on the day of the bombings reshaped his entire  career and led to his first feature film
• Why the UN report on losing a million species sent him looking for one whale to tell the story of   all of them — and what entanglement in lobster-fishing gear is doing to North Atlantic right whales
• What happened when a commercial lobster diver was engulfed inside the mouth of a humpback whale for nearly a minute — and how he came back from that
• The story of Inundation District: how Boston built an entire new urban neighbourhood on landfill  at sea level, after its own climate scientists warned it not to
• Why $82 million in new federal funding for right whale protection may be — in part — the direct
  result of Abel's reporting and filmmaking

DAVID ABEL | Journalist, Filmmaker & Professor of Journalism
Website: davidsabel.com
Boston Globe: bostonglobe.com/about/staff-list/staff/david-abel
Boston University profile: bu.edu/com/profile/david-abel
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/david-abel-02905011
Films: Entangled (nature filmmaking, Jackson Wild Award); In the Whale; 

ABOUT DAVID ABEL
David Abel is an award-winning reporter, documentary filmmaker, and professor of the practice in journalism at Boston University. A longtime staff writer at the  Boston Globe, he and his colleagues won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for their coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings — coverage he helped produce while standing on the finish line when the bombs went off.
He has covered war in the Balkans, unrest in Latin America (including a deportation from Cuba for his reporting on Castro's government), national security in Washington, and for more than a decade has focused on climate change and conservation in New England. His documentary Entangled —
about the entanglement of North Atlantic right whales in lobster-fishing gear — won a Jackson Wild Award and was nominated for a national Emmy. His film In the Whale tells the story of lobster diver Michael Packard, who was engulfed in the mouth of a humpback whale and survived. He is
also working on a children's picture book, Lost and Found, inspired by his son's discovery of a cold-stunned sea turtle on a Cape Cod beach.


For full show notes and links, visit: adventurediaries.com/go

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Thanks For Listening.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment and subscribe for more exciting content.

Please visit AdventureDiaries.com/GO  For more authentic stories of Adventure Exploration and the natural world

The Adventure Diaries Podcast also covers a broad spectrum OF topics withIN the fields of Adventure, Exploration, Micro-adventure, Survival, Mental Resilience, Conservation, Scotland, Hiking, Solo Travel, Cycling, Nature, Storytelling, Mountaineering