Episode 43

Ep43: The lens of history with photojournalist Greg Locke

We walk through life as one among a multitude, but what happens when you are tasked with standing in the eye of historical storms? In this episode, we explore what it truly means to bear witness to the darkest and sometimes, most profound, moments of the human experience.

Award-winning photojournalist Greg Locke joins the show to share his incredible journey spanning forty years of covering crime, business, politics, and war. From the surreal, celebratory chaos of the Berlin Wall coming down , to the savage heartbreak of the Bosnian War, Greg takes us behind the lens of the stories that shaped our modern world. He opens up about the moral weight of photographing grief , the absurdity of navigating lawless borders , and why we cannot simply turn away and ask, "Who cares?"

In This Episode, We Discuss:

  1. The Accidental Photojournalist: How serendipity and a restless desire to explore the world launched Greg's forty-year career.
  2. The Party at the End of the World: Arriving in Berlin the exact night the gates opened in 1989, and capturing the chaotic, history-making street parties.
  3. Greg's "Lost Years" in the Balkans: Navigating the brutal civil war in Sarajevo.
  4. The Philosophy of Bearing Witness: Why we must document human misery so the world doesn't forget.
  5. Close Calls and Absurd Realities: Surviving a terrifying encounter at a burning checkpoint in Sarajevo , and how Greg bribed a guard to get into Zaire.
  6. The Exodus: The story behind one of Greg's most powerful photographs

About Our Guest: Greg Locke is a veteran photojournalist with four decades of experience covering international affairs, conflict, and politics. His work has been featured in major publications including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun, Reuters, and Time Magazine and won numerous awards. He has spent extensive time documenting crises around the world from Africa to the Americas, and was the first photographer to be awarded the CAJ/CIDA fellowship for journalism in the area of foreign affairs and international development by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian International Development Agency.

Learn more about Greg Locke at https://greglocke.com

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About the Podcast

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Tales under the cat tree: Conversations on Imagination, Tech & Human Adventure
Hosted by tech leader and storyteller Duleepa Wijayawardhana, this podcast explores the intersections of technology, fiction, and human adventure. Words create the worlds we live in—join us for weekly conversations that spark your imagination.

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Duleepa Wijayawardhana

It started with late nights, glue sticks, and a university newspaper / radio.

That early obsession with how words reach people took me from student journalism to a career spanning the globe. I’ve gone from designing newspapers and having radio shows to building systems at BioWare (yes, the RPG legends), managing data at MySQL, and now leading tech at Supermetrics in Helsinki.

But at my core, I’m still that geek who believes writing is just code for the human mind.

While a computer chip executes code exactly, your imagination runs stories based on your own unique wiring. Tales under the cat tree is where we run those programs together. Whether we're exploring the fiction that inspires us or the tech that defines us, my goal is to spark your imagination and—most importantly—never make you go "meh."

Words create the worlds we live in. Let's explore them.