Tommy Andres on The Eye of the Fighter

Tommy Andres is an audio journalist whose work has spanned This American Life, CNN, and Marketplace, where he spent years as a senior producer. More recently, he’s focused on deeply reported, limited-run narratives, including Third Squad After Afghanistan, which was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and won an Edward R. Murrow Award. He also served as executive producer on We Came to the Forest.

In this episode, Andres talks to Matthew about The Eyes of the Fighter, a two-part story he hosted and produced for Sports Explains the World. It begins with a home invasion in the middle of the night and turns inward, as Andres tries to understand how Jermaine Thompson, a former wrestler and amateur MMA fighter, ended up inside his Atlanta home. The search takes him through wrestling gyms, MMA, and a spiral of addiction and pain. He also reflects on what it’s like to report on your own life, how body-camera footage challenged his memory of what happened, and the discomfort of turning someone else’s lowest moment into a story.

“Did he fully know this was going to turn into a real thing? That’s a scary place to be,” Andres says. “Because you start asking yourself: did I help this guy or did I hurt this guy? The whole point of the piece is I’m rooting for him. And then you wonder if you just used him to get a story. That extractive feeling makes me uncomfortable.”

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