TEDxCannes 2015

The chilling aftershock of a brush with death

In April 2003, just as American troops began rolling into Baghdad, a shell smashed into the building author and war correspondent Jean-Paul Mari was reporting from. There he had a face-to-face encounter with death, beginning his acquaintance with a phantom that has haunted those who have risked their lives on battlefields since ancient times. "What is this thing that can kill you without leaving any visible scars?" Mari asks. We know it as post-traumatic stress disorder -- or, as Mari describes it, an experience with the void of death. In this probing talk, he searches for answers to questions about mortality and psychosis and in the aftermath of horror and trauma.