Episode Five: The Man From Occupied Territory (Israel)

As a young journalist, Wakefield was inspired by Hemingway’s notion that you have to face death to be a writer. “I wanted to put myself at risk,” Wakefield says in this interview, “test my courage and integrity” and so he “jumped at the first opportunity to get himself shot at.” In this episode, Wakefield talks about fishing and being shot at in the Sea of Galilee, about his time living in a kibbutz and working as a shepherd in the Negev Desert, about hitchhiking in Israel, and interviewing Golda Meier. He describes an elaborate meal in the middle of the desert with Bedouins, and eating the notes he’d made when he was in danger of being imprisoned as a spy.