Episode 117: Lauren Wolfe

Lauren Wolfe is an award winning journalist who covers sexual violence in conflict. She's the director of the Women Under Siege project, which is a journalistic endeavor founded by Gloria Steinem as part of the Women's Media Center to investigate how rape and gender based violence are used as tools of conflict.

About a week before we spoke Lauren wrote an article in the Guardian about a Congolese militia that terrorized a small town in the eastern part of the country by systematically raping babies and toddlers. A day after the publication of this article, the militia leader was arrested. We kick off discussing that story. Lauren has spent the better part of her career in journalism reporting on trauma and she is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy. Among other stories, she covered 9-11 and its aftermath for the New York Times and Lauren opens up in a pretty profound way about she feels so compelled to cover violence and trauma. This is a pretty heavy episode, though not without moments of humor. But it was a real honor to speak with her.