In December 2020, after the journalist Liz Bruenig witnessed an execution for the first time, she threw up on the pavement outside the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. 鈥淭he idea of execution promises catharsis,鈥� she wrote in The New York Times after the experience. 鈥淭he reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret.鈥�
That initial experience of witnessing the death of a man named Alfred Bourgeois led Liz to what has now become a yearslong journalistic project of covering capital punishment in America. Most of her writing on the subject has appeared in The Atlantic Magazine, where Liz is a staff writer. She was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for this work.
Host Mike Jordan Laskey has been a fan of Liz鈥檚 work since the beginning of her career, and I was excited to ask her about her reporting and other topics she has covered for the magazine, which include vaccinations and the relationship between Pope Leo XIV and the US government. In addition to being a renowned journalist, Liz is an adult convert to Catholicism, which she recently wrote about in another Atlantic article. If you haven鈥檛 come across her work before, this conversation will give you a good sense of the depth of her intellect and compassion.
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