Jonathan Tepper grew up in Madrid where his parents started a rehab center for heroin addicts during the AIDS epidemic. The addicts became family. Many died. Jonathan also lost his younger brother in a tragic accident and later lost his mother.
In this conversation, Jonathan and I reflect on suffering, empathy, books, homeschooling, missionary life, and the difference between religion as ideology and faith lived out through love.
It’s also a conversation about literature and memory. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Fellini, Cinema Paradiso, and the stories that help us survive grief.
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LINKS
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Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction
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Jonathan Tepper is the author of several acclaimed financial books, including The Myth of Capitalism. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned degrees in History and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MLitt from the University of Oxford. Born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico as a young child, Jonathan came of age in Madrid's San Blas neighborhood, where his parents ran one of the country's first drug rehabilitation centers. Shooting Up is his first memoir, offering a deeply personal view of life at the intersection of faith, addiction, and resilience. He and his wife Stacey have a two-year-old who is a human hurricane of curiosity and keeps them busy. Jonathan returns to Madrid as often as he can.