How Buffy Saved a Baghdad Reporter

NPR correspondent Jamie Tarabay says that watching DVDs of the cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer series saved her life—psychologically—while reporting from Baghdad. “It can be a very lonesome gig,” Tarabay recalls, and watching the series’ vampire-fighting star “deal with her private war zone helped me deal with mine.”

“Buffy always reminded me that she was just a girl, like me … she lived on the hell mouth, I lived in Baghdad; she fought vampires with wooden stakes and, well, I always thought most media spokesmen were real blood-suckers.” (More Buffy the Vampire Slayer stories.)