Endurance seems to be the theme today here at Media Buzz. Our latest installment follows renowned journalist Mike O’Connor as he attempts to uncover the reasons why, every so often, his comfortable small-town life in Texas would be violently uprooted, and his family would flee across the border into Mexico. They would leave with only a few hours’ notice, and would jump from suburbia to extreme poverty, oftentimes within a span of two or three days. The O’Connors never knew what lay ahead of them, only that they must remain anonymous. Despite their parents’ insistence otherwise, the children knew something was up.

Now, some thirty years later, the O’Connor parents are dead, and Mike has attempted to unfurl the mysteries and secrets that surrounded his childhood. What he finds is a bizarre mix of schemes, petty crime and McCarthyism that might garner him a Most Unusual Childhood Award. O’Connor sat down with Diane Rehm to discuss said childhood and how he began unraveling the family story. Listen to the full interview here.