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BBC Sounds

Josh Baker enters a dangerous world of fear, greed and betrayal as he sets out to uncover the truth behind one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time - the abduction of American journalist Austin Tice.

Josh - creator of two of the BBC's most award-winning and widely listened-to investigative podcasts, I'm Not a Monster and The Shamima Begum Story - returns for his most ambitious chapter yet, in a major new series from BBC Radio 4 and NPR's Embedded.

This is not the retelling of a closed case. It is a real-time investigation into a disappearance that has remained unsolved for more than a decade, conducted in close contact with Austin's family.

What started out as a personal effort to help a mother find her son has turned into a multi-year journalistic investigation stretching from the corridors of power in Washington DC to the depths of the Syrian security state.

Austin Tice is a journalist, law student and former Marine officer, who vanished in Syria in 2012. Since then, competing stories have emerged about his fate. In some, he is alive - held in a cell and waiting to be rescued. In others, he was smuggled out of Syria and hidden away. In the darkest versions, he died long ago.

His disappearance has reached the highest levels of power - from presidents to popes - yet remarkably little is known about what happened to him.

Investigative journalists Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat begin following Austin's trail long before the fall of the Syrian regime. Then everything changes. The regime collapses, and the black box of Syria's intelligence state opens. Sources step forward, unprecedented leaks arrive and doors to secret bases that had been sealed for years open. Josh and Sara speak to spies, search secret prisons and track down alleged war criminals in hiding, uncovering information that has never been made public and making discoveries that generate international headlines. The audience follows every breakthrough as the investigation closes in on those who may know the truth - while Syria is transformed and powerful interests compete to shape what happens next.

Some claim Austin was working for the CIA. Others say he was simply a young journalist trying to make his name in war reporting.

His fate has become entangled in secret negotiations and geopolitical power struggles that are still unfolding. At the centre of it all is his mother, Debra Tice, who has never stopped searching for her son.

There are people who know exactly what happened to Austin.

Some of them do not want the truth to come out.

So where is Austin Tice?

I'm Not a Monster

Josh and Sara piece together Austin’s final route into Damascus. They find the farm where he celebrated his 31st birthday - the last place his mother spoke to him. 

Then comes an unprecedented discovery. For years, the story was that Austin was taken at a checkpoint. But what Josh and Sara uncover suggests something far more deliberate. And at the centre of Austin’s disappearance is one man.

Archive: BBC; CNN; Fox.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker
Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat
Series producer: Simon Maybin
Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein
Additional producing: Lucy Burns
Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series editor: Clare Fordham
Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva
NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon
NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi
BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Additional music: Karim Chehoury 
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Where Is Austin Tice?: 4. The Driver

The Austin Tice files begin to give up their secrets. Josh and Sara uncover names, locations and new leads about what happened to Austin Tice. But to understand them, they have to go back to the start - to Austin’s own journey through Syria, the rebels he befriended, and the road he took before he vanished. That road leads to a town outside Damascus - and a shocking discovery.

Archive: CNN; Sky News; ABC; Fox; Houston Public Media; WNYC; BBC; CBS.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker
Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat
Series producer: Simon Maybin
Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein
Additional producing: Lucy Burns
Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series editor: Clare Fordham
Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva
NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon
NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi
BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Additional music: Karim Chehoury 
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Where Is Austin Tice?: 3. The American Journalist

In the chaos after the Syrian regime’s downfall, the hunt for Austin Tice is on. Josh Baker and his fellow investigative journalist Sara Obeidat are in Damascus as bombs fall and gunfights break out. Armed with a list of locations where Austin may have been held, they race across the Syrian capital searching for any sign of him. They find horrifying evidence of detention and torture on an industrial scale. Then, after climbing across a five-storey drop to reach a hidden room, they get a breakthrough — a trove of material about Austin that was never meant to be found.

Archive: Syria News; Al Jazeera; BBC; CBS; Fox; ABC; PBS; Al Arabiya; NBC.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker
Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat
Series producer: Simon Maybin
Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein
Additional producing: Lucy Burns
Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series editor: Clare Fordham
Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva
NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon
NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi
BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Additional music: Karim Chehoury 
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Where Is Austin Tice?: 2. "A Black Box"

Josh Baker investigates one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time. American journalist Austin Tice vanished in Syria, but the US president says he’s alive. For more than a decade Austin's mother Debra has been leading the search for her son. As Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat travel to Syria to help Austin’s mother’s search, a source gives Josh information that might unlock where he is - and a simple instruction: “Find Austin.”

Archive: Houston Public Media; NBC; PBS; CNN; C-SPAN; MSNBC; The White House; BBC.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker
Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat
Series producer: Simon Maybin
Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein
Additional producing: Lucy Burns
Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series editor: Clare Fordham
Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva
NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon
NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi
BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Additional music: Karim Chehoury 
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Where Is Austin Tice?: 1. "We Believe He’s Alive"

Josh Baker enters a dangerous world of fear, greed and betrayal as he sets out to uncover the truth behind one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time - the abduction of American journalist Austin Tice.

Archive: NBC; PBS; CNN.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker
Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat
Series producer: Simon Maybin
Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein
Additional producing: Lucy Burns
Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Series editor: Clare Fordham
Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke
NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva
NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon
NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi
BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Additional music: Karim Chehoury 
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell

Where Is Austin Tice?: Trailer

Nine years to the day since Shamima Begum entered ISIS controlled Syria, she’ll find out whether she’s any closer to coming back to Britain. Josh is at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London to hear whether Begum’s lawyers have succeeded in arguing that the British government’s decision to take away her citizenship was unlawful.

After she emerged from the remnants of the Islamic State group in 2019, the British Home Secretary took away her citizenship saying she was a threat to national security. Her lawyers claim that he failed to consider whether she was victim of trafficking. 

Will her appeal succeed?

The Shamima Begum Story: The Court Decides

Josh answers your questions about Shamima Begum and the making of the multi-award winning series. 
 
Recorded in front of an audience at the BBC’s Radio Theatre in London, Naga Munchetty puts your questions to Josh including: what is it about this story that captures the imagination and curiosity of so many people? How did Josh keep safe while making the podcast? And, Should Shamima Begum be seen as a villain?

I’m Not A Monster is the BBC’s most-awarded podcast series. It’s the only audio series to have won two Rose D’Or Awards and it won an inaugural Podcast Academy Award for Documentary, an Edward R Murrow Award, The Grand Jury Prize at the New York Radio Awards and three awards in the documentary, current affairs and true crime categories at the British Podcast Awards 2023. Series two was recently named podcast of the year by the Foreign Press Association and best investigative audio series by the Association of International Broadcasters.
 
Presenters: Josh Baker and Naga Munchetty
Radio Theatre crew: Alan Zani, Marc Wilcox, Brendan Gormley, Clive Painter
Production support: Janet Staples and Katie Morrison
Mixed by: Tom Brignell
Producer: Joe Kent with Sara Obeidat and Hayley Clarke 
Editor: Jonathan Aspinwall
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins

The Shamima Begum Story: Josh Baker Answers Listener Questions

What do you want to know about The Shamima Begum Story and the making of the podcast? Join us on Tuesday the 12th of September in London, as Josh answers your questions about the series, share more about how it was made and some extra things we’ve learnt about the story.

Apply for FREE TICKETS: https://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/shows/shamima-begum 
 
Email your questions: josh@bbc.co.uk

The Shamima Begum Story: Our Live Show

What happened to the girl Shamima Begum says convinced her to join the Islamic State group?

Less than 24 hours before this episode was published ,we got the answer. 

Reporter: Josh Baker
Written and produced by: Josh Baker, Sara Obeidat and Joe Kent
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell
Production coordinators: Janet Staples and Helena Warwick-Cross
Series Editor: Jonathan Aspinwall
Head of Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins

This episode contains some strong language

The Shamima Begum Story: 10. The World’s Unwanted

No longer a vulnerable schoolgirl, but a seemingly unrepentant adult. Shamima Begum enrages the British public and ends up stuck in Syria.

A series of media interviews come to shape how she’s perceived - with long lasting consequences.

Reporter: Josh Baker
Written and produced by: Josh Baker, Sara Obeidat and Joe Kent
Composer: Firas Abou Fakher
Theme music: Sam Slater
Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell
Production coordinators: Janet Staples and Helena Warwick-Cross
Series Editor: Jonathan Aspinwall
Head of Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon
Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins

ARCHIVE
John Sparks interviews Shammia Begum: Sky News (2019)
Rohit Kachroo interviews Shammia Begum: ITV News (2019)

This episode contains upsetting moments involving children

The Shamima Begum Story: 9. State of Mind

A suicide bombing in Iraq and a home video from inside the ISIS caliphate begin the search for a family trapped in Syria. A desperate plea arrives from an American woman who says she wants to escape the Islamic State group with her young children. 

This episode includes descriptions of violence and some upsetting scenes involving children.

Reporter: Josh Baker
Written by: Josh Baker and Joe Kent
Producers: Joe Kent and Max Green
Production assistant: Lucie Sullivan 
Composer: Sam Slater
Sound Design and Mix: Tom Brignell
Series Editor: Emma Rippon

Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins
Commissioning Editor: Jason Phipps
 
“I’m Not a Monster” is a collaboration between BBC Panorama and FRONTLINE (PBS) and is a BBC Radio Current Affairs production for BBC Sounds.

I'm Not A Monster: 1. I Love You, I Miss You

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