Clarissa Ward is the chief international correspondent for CNN. Along with field producer Brent Swails and photojournalists William Bonnett and Scott McWhinnie, Ward won the 2022 George Polk Award for her real-time coverage of the rapid rise of the Taliban as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer.

“I used to come back from war zones and feel completely disconnected from my life—disconnected from my friends, from my family. I would look down on people about the conversations they were having about silly things. I would feel kind of numb and miserable. And then I realized that if you want to be able to keep doing this work, you have to choose to embrace the privileges that you've been given. And you have to choose joy and choose love and be kind to yourself and have a glass of wine and go dancing or run up a mountain—whatever it is that does it for you, embrace it. That is part of the tax you pay for surviving these things: You've got to continue to love life.”

This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.

Alzo Slade is a correspondent for VICE News and host of the podcast Cheat.

“Human beings, we are the same, right? Like when you come out of the womb, you need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to pee, you need to shit, and when it comes to emotional needs, you need to feel loved. You need to feel there's compassion, you know? You need to feel significant and of value. And when it comes to like the feeling of significance and feeling valued, I think that's where we start to get into trouble because the same things that you hold of value, I may not in the same way. […] And so if I can engage you and recognize the perspective from which you come, and at least give you an entry level or a human level of respect from the beginning, then the departure point for our engagement is a proper one, as opposed to an antagonistic one.”