Joshua Baker talks to On the Edge with Andrew Gold podcast about getting blown up by ISIS and investigating a woman who took her family to live with them in Syria for his I'm Not A Monster Podcast and Return to ISIS BBC Panorama documentary.
Joshua Links I'm not a Monster Podcast: https://podfollow.com/1540251892 https://www.instagram.com/joshbakerfilm https://www.twitter.com/joshbakerfilm Andrew Links
http://twitter.com/andrewgold_ok http://instagram.com/andrewgold_ok http://youtube.com/andrewgold1 http://patreon.com/andrewgold http://andrewgoldpodcast.com
It begins by explaining minute by minute what it was like for Joshua to be attacked and bombed by ISIS, fracturing his back in an explosion that destroyed that left nothing of an entire street. Then, we hear audio footage of a young American boy being taught to assemble and use a suicide bomb. The kid explains how he would lure American soldiers by asking for help, before pulling the string.
Now, I didn’t want to go into too much detail, because I want you to be able to listen to this full podcast without real spoilers, and to be able to then fully enjoy I’m Not a Monster afterwards. I was fascinated by Joshua from a journalistic point of view, because the one thing I always said was that I’ll do anything, and I’ve done stuff over the years in dangerous places – but I would never go near ISIS or anyone who might behead me. It’s just not worth the gain, so we talk a lot in this one about his experience literally being blown up by ISIS and surviving by the skin of his teeth – and then what it means to be doing this kind of journalism.
That said, we do talk a bit towards end about the characters in the series, so I’ll give you a little run down without any spoilers, all stuff you know from the beginning of episode one. Sam is an American mother who took her kids to Syria, and wants to come back. She claims she was tricked into going there by her husband Moussa, but Joshua doesn’t entirely trust her, as her story doesn’t always check out. Joshua does track down a woman called Tsuad who was bought as a slave by Sam and Moussa during their time in Syria – and Tsuad speaks nicely about Sam, so I ask Joshua about that at the end.
There is about nine minutes of bonus chat in this episode for patrons – get that on patreon.com/andrewgold. I’ll try to get Josh to come to my weekly Discord chat room event, they’ve been great so far – just find the link in the show notes.