I remember when I found his death certificate, definitely in the house that I was born in before we moved, so I was 11 years old or younger, when I found this and I just read through the detail and it's like a very clinical report of devastating violence.

What a bullet does to a body, like what a round does to a body and just the organ failure.

I think that was probably traumatic.

It's again, it's not a typical part of being raised

and even when a lot of children experienced violence to read about it in such a way about a person that you knew.

I don't recommend it, honestly, but I think it had an effect on me and I think it made very real.

What I was also seeing on the news and out my front window, like DC was an increasingly dangerous place.

And the drug thing only got worse from, you know, 84 to the early 90s. We became the

murder capital while I lived there. Hey there it's Light Watkins. I'm your host of at the end of the tunnel and if

this happens to be your first time listening to this show here's what you're in

for. I interview luminaries, artists, philanthropists, athletes, creatives, basically anyone who's gone above and beyond to be the change they wish to see in the world.

Sometimes they start movements or they create films or they write books that inspire people.

And in the case of this week's guest, Baratune Thurston is a writer slash activist slash comedian slash podcaster and he's also a media personality.

So Baratune grew up in one of the rougher areas of Washington DC with a mom who was very much

into activism for social justice.

Put it like this, she had him reading books

on the apartheid at eight years old.

And in addition to social justice,

he was also exposed to camping and photography and jazz and then after college

baritone started down a conventional career path working in business strategy

consulting but then he was bitten by the comedy bug and he started moonlighting as a comedian where he would find late night open mics in whichever cities he happened to be traveling in for work.

This led to him becoming a full-time comedian. Then he started

...