A note before we start the episode.

Today's story contains graphic descriptions of an animal attack.

Listener discretion is advised.

Aishkumar, I personally would be known in the Adventures of Tintin by Captain Haddock as a land lover, but what is your relationship to the ocean?

Oh, that's so funny. So I grew up in Chennai, South India. It's a big city by the ocean. So we drove to the ocean, the beach is a lot. We would break into songs on our way there. It's one of the only places that I don't feel anxiety.

The waves really calm me. So I have I have a long lasting relationship with the

ocean, one could say. I can appreciate that, but more an observation from afar than up close and

personal or here today though because you wrote an intimate portrait of

another person who did have an up close and personal experience with the

ocean Ali Truitt a young woman from Connecticut who had her life

drastically changed in an instant. What was it like for you to write about Ali's story?

It was incredibly difficult. I don't want to make this about me because it really is about Ali,

but from a reporting perspective, it required a level of deep empathy and composure when you hear it really, really difficult and heartbreaking

information.

I remember sort of staring at the wall for a few minutes after every call because it was just

a lot of information to process.

Especially when I was writing the moments of the attack and the immediate aftermath,

I had to really pace like my room because I felt so queasy for some reason.

A shark appeared seemingly out of nowhere and

started aggressively ramming us and bumping us from underneath and attacking us.

And I kept thinking if I'm feeling this way, what the hell did Ali feel in the water?

Why did it feel important to report on this story? Not to say the char architects don't happen every day to various people,

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