Max Arbes speaks with Tom Junod, a writer at large for Esquire Magazine. In May of this year, following the April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico, Junod traveled to Lousiana and the coast to collect the stories of the 11 men killed on the rig that night. This research, and these conversations, would continue for months and would eventually be chronicled in his Esquire story titled 11 Lives. And that was the immediate tragedy of the oil spill. It was the loss of these 11 lives. But in the days, and the weeks, and then the months that followed, their tragedy and their family’s tragedy was overshadowed and then completely eclipsed by the environmental devastation wrought by the spill.

CWVA - Tom Junod - 11 Lives