From WBZ Chicago, it's this American life.

Our glasses off this week.

I'm Sean Cole.

So there's this guy who's been on our show a few times now, Kirk Johnson.

He's this extraordinary person.

In his early 20s, he went to Iraq and ran rebuilding projects in Fallujah for USAID after

the invasion.

He saw that Iraqis who worked for the US military were being threatened and killed because of

it and weren't getting asylum in the US and he was outraged.

So he single-handedly launched a campaign which changed US law on this and for years

after he championed these cases, saving thousands of people's lives.

It was beyond difficult, an extraordinary stressful job and so to decompress, Kirk took up fly

fishing, which is where today's story actually starts.

It has nothing to do with Iraq or refugees.

It begins on a river in New Mexico.

Fly fishing, just in case you don't know, you're using this special lure that looks like

an insect.

That's the fly, floats on the water.

Kirk makes his own flies out of things like rabbit fur.

So taking parts of one kind of animal, using it to imitate another kind in order to catch

a third kind.

So Kirk's on the river with this guide, a guy named Spencer Sime, this is back in 2011.

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