On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Michelle Obama says she's reinventing herself. I don't know if my ambition

has ever fully been able to actualize itself. I think I'm now at a stage in my life where all my

choices are mine. I'm Rachel Martin. Listen to Wildcard for a conversation about balancing family and

personal growth with Michelle Obama. This is fresh air. I'm David Bean, Cooley. If there was ever a life

designed to teach one how to face death, mine was it. Rod Nordland wrote that while facing death

from a glioblastoma, a lethal brain tumor.

Life expectancy is between one and one and a half years, but with experimental treatments, he survived for six more years.

He died last week at age 75.

Nordland was used to facing mortality from decades as a war correspondent for the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In 1979, Nordland was part of the reporting team that covered the Three Mile Island accident, including visiting the site of contamination, a risk he was willing to take.

That coverage won a Pulitzer Prize for the Inquirer.

While there were wars and conflicts in Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon,

Syria, Congo, Cambodia, he was there. Nordland wrote about his life as a war correspondent

and as a patient and how both extremes

affected his relationships and family life. His 2024 memoir, Waiting for the Monsoon, is a reference to

his first seizure while he was in India filling in for the New Delhi Bureau Chief of the New York

Times. That seizure led to his diagnosis in 2019.

A recent review of waiting for the monsoon in The Guardian said, quote,

This is a gripping memoir of a consummate foreign reporter and an inspiring journal of self-discovery

when the cold breath of mortality is on the neck, unquote.

We're going to listen back to Terry's interview with Nordland from last year when his memoir was

first published.

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