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Josh Baker

Josh Baker
This episode features Josh Baker, the award-winning documentary maker and journalist and the host and writer of the BBC Sounds podcast 'I'm not a Monster'.
‎Media Tribe: Josh Baker | Escaping an ISIS car bomb, directing Louis Theroux & ‘I’m Not A Monster’ on Apple Podcasts
This episode features Josh Baker, the award-winning documentary maker and journalist and the host and writer of the BBC Sounds podcast ‘I’m not a Monster’. We chat about Josh’s four year investigation into the story of one US family’s journey into the heart of ISIS in Syria which aired on BBC Pano…
Listen to Josh Baker on Apple Podcasts
Media Tribe - Josh Baker | Escaping an ISIS car bomb, directing Louis Theroux & ‘I’m Not A Monster’
This episode features Josh Baker, the award-winning documentary maker and journalist and the host and writer of the BBC Sounds podcast ‘I’m not a Monster’. We chat about Josh’s four year investigation into the story of one US family’s journey into the heart of ISIS in Syria which aired on BBC Panor…
Listen to Josh Baker on Google Podcasts

Listen to Josh Baker on Spotify.

Shaunagh talks to Josh Baker

This episode features Josh Baker, the award-winning documentary maker and journalist and the host of writer of the BBC Sounds podcast 'I'm not a Monster'.

We chat about Josh's four year investigation into the story of one US family's journey into the heart of ISIS in Syria which aired on BBC Panorama, PBS FRONTLINE and became a podcast called 'I'm not a monster' on BBC Sounds. We also talk about Josh's experience directing the likes of Louis Theroux and Stacey Dooley from the BBC.

This episode's sponsors:

Noa
⚡ The first 100 people to use this link (or use discount code TRIBE50) will get a free week of Noa Premium, plus 50% off the annual price: ⚡

Credits

Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.

Episode transcript


Shaunagh Connaire

Welcome to Media Tribe, the podcast that's on a mission to restore faith in journalism. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years of experience working for some of the biggest news outlets in the industry. Every week, I'm going to introduce you to some of the world's most respected journalists, filmmakers, and media executives, and you're going to hear the story behind the storyteller. You'll get a sense of the integrity and hard graft that's involved in journalism, and hopefully you'll go away feeling that this craft is worth valuing.

Josh Baker

We were sleeping in this local man's house, he offered us a bed to sleep for the night, and I woke up to the sound of gunfire. My reporter went outside and looked and then came running back in, and he said, "[foreign language 00:00:49]," which is, "Car bomb, car bomb," and this gargantuan truck started coming down the street towards us. And then I run to the back of the house and before I got there, it detonated.

Shaunagh Connaire

My guest today is Josh Baker. Award-winning journalist and director who works for the BBC and PBS, and hosts the podcast I'm Not A Monster, that's now on BBC Sounds and PBS FRONTLINE. Josh Baker, welcome to the Media Tribe.

Josh Baker

Hello, this is great, and I had no idea what a squad cast is.

Shaunagh Connaire

There you go.

Josh Baker

It's great, which kind of makes me sound like a really old man, doesn't it?

Shaunagh Connaire

Listen, Josh. How to introduce you, I would have said maybe three weeks ago, I would introduce you as a war director, a veteran board director, who has worked for the BBC mostly and PBS FRONTLINE, but you've now added podcast guru to your-

Josh Baker

Podcast guru. I'll take that. You can send me an invoice for that compliment, honestly.

Shaunagh Connaire

Excellent. Well, listen, before we jump into your big podcast series that's out at the moment and your film with both BBC Panorama and PBS FRONTLINE here in the US, can you tell our audience how you started off in journalism?

Josh Baker

I always wanted to be a foreign correspondent and had no experience or connections really to the world of journalism, so I cornered a man called James Harding at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. So, James Harding used to be the editor of the Times newspaper, Times of London, and for the literature festival, they were doing a live morning conference. So in papers, some people will know every morning they get together, they discuss the stories of the day, and then they have a second meeting in the afternoon. They were going to do one of these lives at the festival.

Josh Baker

So, I was like, "Well, I'll just corner him and asked for a job." I was quite young, I was, I think it was 22, so I did. He came off stage. There was no way he could run, he was backed into a corner, and I was like, "Look, mate. I want to be a foreign correspondent. I love that thing." And he said, "Okay, I'll introduce you to a guy called Rick Beeston." So I get put into an email thread of this Rick Beeston. No idea who he is. He's the then foreign editor at the Times. Absolute legend of journalism and known for taking risks on young people.

Josh Baker

He had, historically, just to role a little bit back. He'd worked in Beirut. He covered a lot of the Middle East. When Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds, rick was one of the first journalists in there to get that story. So he'd gone and done it, and now was at the Times as foreign editor and had just built this reputation as being slightly mad, but would just champion youth. And actually, what I didn't know at the time, was he was actually terminally ill. He was dying of cancer.

Shaunagh Connaire

Right.

Josh Baker

So Rick brought me into the Times, was like, "What do you want?" I was like, "Can I have some custom time on the desk?" And he was like, "Yes." So next day I was lumped on the Times foreign desk. Had no idea what I was doing.

Shaunagh Connaire

So, Josh, had you studied journalism at this-

Josh Baker

No, no.

Shaunagh Connaire

Okay. This does not happen to normal people, so whatever you spiked his drink with at the races. Yeah, well done.

Josh Baker

So, just talked to him, and then had a week of being useless and just having to figure it out. Then they brought me back several months later, and then I worked at the Times while planning to do a film. And then I went from being a researcher to one of their foreign night editors and would night edit the foreign section. I covered a lot of stories with them, a lot of domestic stuff, the battle of green girls and things like that. And then ran off to the Middle East to make a documentary about Middle East peace protests, and then was like, "I hate journalism." And then ran into the world of NGO work for a while, and then came back out of that and went to work for the BBC and worked in varying departments at the BBC and sort of just work my way from news into documentary.

Josh Baker

And now I make, as you say, a lot of work in conflict, but also, to maintain my sanity, I do domestic stuff and other things. So I've got to work with Louis Theroux or Stacey Dooley, which are very different to a lot of stuff. Then most recently, a podcast series, which is possibly the thing that I am most proud of.

Shaunagh Connaire

That's amazing. Honestly, that career trajectory is quite different. I really don't think that happens to normal people, so well done, you. I want to tell you a bit of a funny story. It was about this time last year I was in Dublin, in the motherland, having a cup of tea with a very, very lovely BBC executive who I believe commissioned your podcast, Dylan Haskins. Great guy, real talent in the podcast field.

Shaunagh Connaire

And he started describing a series that he was kind of looking into. He didn't give way too much detail to be fair to him, but he described this person and he basically described somebody who sounded like my mate, Patty Wells at channel four, except for he worked for the BBC, and I said, "Oh, is that your man, Josh Baker?" So I actually knew this podcast was around the corner. And it's amazing. It's taken you four years to get this story off the ground. For anybody listening in, it's a podcast series called I'm Not A Monster, so you should all go and download it and subscribe and leave a rating and review, and also it's an hour-long BBC Panorama film, which has already aired, Josh, and then PBS FRONTLINE. But before we go there, talk to me about working with the likes of Louis Theroux and Stacey Dooley, because that feels very, very different to being a war reporter and director.

Josh Baker

No, totally, but I also think I sort of made a decision that once I got to do a bit of conflict work and what have you, that, in order to sustain it mentally and emotionally, I also needed to do other things, and I never wanted to get sort of typecast as that's all I could do. So I thought it'd be really important to go off and learn the craft in other areas.

Josh Baker

Back in 2017, Stacy wanted to go to Iraq. They had quite good film idea, so I sort of jumped on board that. Stacey and I are, on paper, very different people, and I just basically fell in love with Stacey. She is fantastic and possibly one of the most ethical and most emotionally intelligent people I've ever encountered. And I tell you what, in a conflict environment, give me Stacey Dooley over an excess AS bloke any day of the week, because she just has a way to just calm really aggressive men down just with a conversation or just a touch on the arm, and they don't really know how to deal with it. It's fantastic to watch. So I got to work with Stacey a lot, which was lovely. For those people who don't know, she's very prominent, popular British presenter in the UK.

Josh Baker

Then as you say, recently I got to work with Louis, which was the first time in my life I think I've ever had stage fright, like proper stage. It was just like, "I used to watch you on TV when I was a kid, and now I'm meant to direct you. What on earth happened here?" It was the most amazing experience to work with Louis. It was a very difficult film. Who knew making films about sex workers could be harder than making films about ISIS, but it was.

Shaunagh Connaire

I'm sure. I know our audience will definitely know Louis Theroux, and I reckon they will know Stacey Dooley. And I couldn't agree with you more Josh in the sense that she's such a warm presenter on camera, and I've heard from separate people she's a fantastic journalist. I certainly love her work. But I am curious, how was it bossing Louis Theroux about the place? That must've felt great.

Josh Baker

I don't know if you get to boss Louis. Louis got it worked out in terms of how to make films, because when you have Louis, you have this immense focus and he's a genius, this brilliance of him, and then he disappears. So when you have him in these moments and he's absolutely fantastic and it's a learning experience to be around him.

Josh Baker

But it's quite funny because you'll be going into do a scene. You're going to meet a mom and she's got two kids. She works as a sex worker, she fixed it around being a single parent, what have you. You and Louis will chat before about what you're going to get out of the scene, what you think it's about, what the questions you need to ask, and all this, you do this. And then Louis will walk in and all that goes out the window, and it's just like the wild ride of following Louis. You might film continuously for two, three hours, so it's exhausting and you're trying to remember everything that's going on, and then he'll eventually come back to all the questions that you wanted to ask.

Josh Baker

The first time I filmed with him, I had one of the weirdest moments ever where I was sat on a couch, had Louis Theroux to my left, and to my right I had a sex worker who was showing me a pornographic video involving a teddy while Louis was sort of watching it.

Shaunagh Connaire

Lovely.

Josh Baker

And I was just like, "This is the weirdest experience. I don't really know what to do. I don't know how we're going to use this. I don't know how to get out of this situation. I don't really want to be here." Then Louis just turns to camera and goes, "It sounds like you in this video, Josh," and it just descended into laughter. So that was my first experience with him and it was a really good icebreaker because I think he could tell I was quite nervous filming with the legend that is Louis.

Shaunagh Connaire

That's funny. So you were like, "Get me to Mosul, quick." That sounds a bit easier. Now, we've all read various headlines and narratives about the U S fight against ISIS. Most of them center around a single perspective that the primary objective of the US military campaign in Syria and its arounds was to defeat ISIS. Then came a memoir by Ash Carter, the US Secretary of Defense. Now I haven't read the full memoir, but a Bloomberg opinion article that I listened to this week on Noa, the sponsor of today's podcast, sums it up very well indeed.

Shaunagh Connaire

This audio article highlights how the US allied itself, not with Syria, Russia, or Turkey in its fight against ISIS, but with paramilitary formations who were equally opposed to ISIS and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. As a result, the US strategy in Syria shifted. It now had two objectives, defeat ISIS and regime change in Syria.

Shaunagh Connaire

This is one of my favorite aspects of Noa. Their editorial team is constantly on the lookout for articles that provide well-rounded perspectives on important topics. This is as well as the huge selection of spoken-word audio articles from premium publishers, like the Washington Post on the Economist. As a Media Tribe sponsor. Noa is offering the first 100 people who click the link in the show notes on this mediatribe.com a one week free trial of premium, plus 50% off if you choose to subscribe. If you haven't yet download the Noa app and begin listening. Doing so will help you understand and know more about important topics and help support me in bringing you more immediate tribe episodes like this one. Right, back to Josh.

Shaunagh Connaire

Well, I want to move on then, Josh, to the main part of the interview, and as usual, I just tee up this question so I hear the answer I want to hear, but can you tell me about a film or project that you're quite proud of? I would love nothing more than you to talk about your current masterpiece. And as I said, it has taken you four years to get to this point and you can be guaranteed you did a lot of it on your own, on your own time, your own resources. Do you want to start from the beginning, Josh?

Josh Baker

Should be only 17 years old. This old decrepit face, this is what comes from four years of trying to do this story. Yeah, look, I think all projects have their unique challenges. This one has been just, from start to finish, but it's still not finished, something else. Essentially, in 2016, I was making a film for FONRTLINE called Battle for Iraq, and we were looking at how the retaking of Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, from ISIS, which ISIS had taken control of it in 2014.

Josh Baker

We were looking at how the battle to retake this was a defining part of the future for Iraq, so we were embedded with Iraqi special forces. We snuck into the city because a commander wanted to show us what was really happening as he said. Then within 24 hours, everything went massively sideways. I had woken up, we were sleeping in this local man's house, he'd offered us a bed to sleep for the night and I woke up to the saying of gunfire and we're in the middle of a massive war, so there had been gun fire all night so I didn't think too much of it. I looked over and the captain who I was sharing a room with had basically just... The gunfire didn't phase him at all. He was buried under a duvet. Was not interested.

Josh Baker

But then it grew larger and I walked to the front of this house with my correspondent and my fixer. This is going to really pedantic, but the type of gunfire, I knew that it was our guys because they were using American weapons and it was all going one way and there was nothing coming back, so my head couldn't quite understand what was going on. My reporter went outside and looked and then came running back in, and he said, "[foreign language 00:00:49]," which is, "Car bomb, car bomb," and this gargantuan truck was basically reversing back and forth and started coming down the street towards us. And then I ran to the back of the house and before I got there, it detonated and the house collapsed with us inside it.

Josh Baker

Somehow my correspondent is just incredibly lucky and seems to have got away with a few scratches. I was partially buried and I'd fractured my spine and I had shrapnel all through the back of my head. Eventually I dug myself out of that and I was very lucky that unlike the civilians and the people who lived on that street, I was able to get out.

Josh Baker

Then when I was back in London, I had this phone call and it was from somebody I've known for many years of covering stories on ISIS, and he wanted to know how I was. We'd lost touch, he'd heard I'd been injured, and I said, "Well, let's meet up." So I met him in central London for tea and scones, I'm literally not making that up. Who goes for tea and scones? And just in passing, he mentioned this family, this American family who are trapped in Raqqa, which was then the self-declared capital of ISIS in Syria, and they're looking for a way out.

Josh Baker

Then he almost goes to move the conversation on, and I'm like, "What? That thing you just said, just roam it back for me," and he said, "Yeah, I've got these videos." He took out his phone and showed me a video and it was a young American boy called Matthew and it wasn't like a propaganda video like we'd all come to see from ISIS. This was kind of almost like in the style of a home video, and it showed a young American kid sat on the living room floor with the components of a suicide bomb at his feet, and he basically is forced to assemble or instructed to assemble it by his stepfather. I didn't know it was the stepfather at the time. And then I was like, "What is going on here?"

Josh Baker

So I find myself in this very weird position of having just lived through a suicide bombing and seen firsthand that reality and still sort of trying to come to terms with it, and then confronted with, just on face value, what seemed like the start of another one, except this time it was a young boy at its epicenter. So idealistically, it just gave me this huge drive of, "I have to understand this." And that set in train a story that would, as you say, take four years of unpacking how an American family left Indiana and end up at the heart of ISIS, and then came back again. As a piece of journalism, we have literally spoken to everyone you could possibly imagine, from people within dark spooky places, through to people that Sam map once when she was [inaudible 00:17:03].

Shaunagh Connaire

It's an extraordinary story. Not to give away too many details, because I really do encourage people to go and subscribe to the podcast at Watch Panorama on the iPlayer or over here on FRONTLINE, but the headline is an American mom, as you said, married to a Moroccan chap called [Moosa 00:00:10:09], the mom was called Samantha, took their son, was called Yousef while he lived in the caliphate. They took themselves to Syria to live with ISIS and-

Josh Baker

Kind of, kind of.

Shaunagh Connaire

Kind of. Okay, interject.

Josh Baker

It's basically, how did an American mom and her a family end up at the heart of the ISIS caliphate. She says she was tricked. Was she? And what happened while they were there? Is the broad overview, because even to this day, if you look at what she went down for and, without spoiling too much because that's how the podcast starts, it's not what you would expect given her story. So there are complexities to it and nuances that are really fun to explore in audio. I mean, the whole thing is totally mad.

Shaunagh Connaire

It's totally mad, but it's also really, really disturbing. And obviously the really, really disturbing part is seeing little Matthew/Yousef in those kinds of propaganda videos, and the fact that a child was used as a tool by ISIS, it looks like, by his dad anyway, potentially by his mum. So it is a very, very disturbing tale and I think the journalism is really fantastic. I feel like you obviously know this lady, Sam. You know her quite well. What do you think happened? Do you believe her? Do you think she knew she was going to Syria?

Josh Baker

I won't say completely because I want people to listen to the podcast, but that is a reason that she took a plea deal, which speaks to a lot about her life before she left America and the decisions she might've made. But I will also say, having met in Raqqa... So essentially this family ended up living in Raqqa for more than two-and-a-half years. While there, her husband became a ISIS sniper, possibly even a commander. Her son, as you say, ended up featuring in a propaganda video, which went around the world where he threatened President Trump. The family owned slaves. They survived basically one of the worst bombing campaigns since World War II.

Josh Baker

It's mental, what they went through and it's very dark and very depressing, but having spent a bit of time in Raqqa now, the slaves that the family owned all really like Sam and thank her for keeping them alive. The neighbors that lived on the same street as Sam have some very positive things to say about her. So you have these kind of opposites where you would expect her life in America to be where everything was good and Rosie and her life in Syria to be where she was potentially quite bad, and actually it's much more nuanced than that.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah, and I think that is the thing. Stories are always so nuanced. They're never, ever, ever black and white, and that makes your job very difficult to kind of ascertain whether a person is lying to you or not. I feel like by the time we publish this episode, some of your other episodes within the podcast will have been released, so it's probably okay to say that, as you mentioned, that the Yazidi girls seem to have liked Sam and it sounds like she was trying to protect them when they were bought as slaves by her husband and essentially raped. I believe one of them was 14, which is really disturbing. But also on the flip side, the juxtaposition to that, Josh, is that her dad says that he wouldn't be surprised if she knew she was going to Syria. Matthew's biological father said pretty much the same thing and they kind of accuse her of being more of a thrill-seeker, maybe, as opposed to being an extremist. What are your thoughts on that?

Josh Baker

Totally, and I think also it's important to recognize, and I don't want to do anything to take away from the survivors of the abuse, the slaves and their story and their opinion, but I do think it's important to consider their position within one, but they weren't with Sam by choice. They did not choose to be there with her and that's a very important distinction when viewing their position, but that's also not to take away from their feelings towards Sam.

Josh Baker

I think what you're talking about in terms of Sam and dad, "You can't trust her," kind of thing, but then her best mates being like, "She's the greatest friend I've ever had. She's so kind, she's so generous." You have somebody that does not fit the stereotypical mold of someone who ends up with ISIS and it's quite hard to process that and understand it. I think Sam does have thrill-seeking tendencies. I think when you go back through her life in more detail, she has sought out or found herself in, perhaps is about a way to phrase it, in extreme environments and extreme situations, and I think she's also had a lot of complex relationships where she's suffered abuse. And this, I think, is a bit of a continuation of that path, however, some of the decisions that she made, it is ultimately her children that are paying the ultimate price for that, really.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah, and I think that's actually what your film and the podcast, so far, really, really captures and captures really well. Kind of a more general question, Josh, how was it partaking in such a massive collaboration between two big beasts, one being the BBC and one being PBS, and then transferring your skills as a television director into the field of podcasting, which is a very different craft, even in terms of how it's scripted and the storytelling. I think BBC Sounds, you guys, and FRONTLINE, and have done a smashing job at that. It's a very, very well-put-together piece. It's very, it's very, very intimate and it's so powerful. Potentially even more powerful than television, I would say.

Josh Baker

Honestly, I love Sounds, so the chance to tell a story in Sound is so exciting to me. But also it's like you have this realization moment where you first move into it where it's like, "God, if I'd just been recording sound on some of the stories I've done previously, the stuff I would have got people to say." There's something about the camera that means that people are slightly more reserved, but what it's just a microphone, it's no holds bar kind of thing.

Josh Baker

The complexity of this is that, essentially, it started as a film. I have for years wanted to get it made into a podcast, kept pushing, and eventually we got it made into a podcast, so consequently, I made a real effort to record the best audio occurred when doing films, so the audio transferred across well, which doesn't normally happen apparently. So that was kind of our lucky step number one. But also, within the podcast world, we can just really get into all the little cul-de-sacs all the little bits that didn't necessarily go anywhere.

Josh Baker

So for instance, in episode 2, Laurie spends weeks talking to a people smuggler who she thinks is going to save her family from ISIS, and that starts to unravel. In film world, we can't really go into it because it doesn't really go anywhere. You've got 50 minutes, maybe 60 minutes in a film. You've got to pick what things you tell. Whereas in the podcast, you get this richness of storytelling and you can go into all the intricacies of what happened here, what happened there, why we ended up here, and you can really take your time with it. So I think in some ways it's a much more intimate and truer representation of what really happened.

Josh Baker

The thing about telling a story across multiple platforms is more and more people get involved, and then more and more people have a stake. Often more and more people are much more powerful, much more experienced than you are. So it's interesting because you have these two journalistic beasts, absolute masters of their craft in the BBC with Panorama and FONRTLINE who have their methodology of doing things, which, in their own way, are both brilliant, and then you have the added dynamic of Sounds, BBC Sounds and the podcast team, which is a completely different world of story selling. So, you almost end up with these very difficult things to navigate where you've got different ways of working, different types of things that people are used to producing, and I suppose cultural differences to some degree, if you think about the cultural differences between, say, filmmaking and podcasting. They're very different.

Josh Baker

What's been amazing on this is everybody involved with it has had to learn or find ways to collaborate or work together in what has been a gargantuan collaboration between the BBC and FRONTLINE, and it's indicative, in a broader sense, of, I think, how the BBC wants to do more of its stories going forward. The new director general who's come into the BBC, he has a mandate to, I think, get more from stories across more of the platforms that the BBC has to offer. And this is sort of the first one through the wall, so to speak, where you've got a film that's a one-hour special, then you've got a podcast series. Now We're doing a load of online multimedia stuff and there's lots of other spinoffs coming from it, and then you throw in a collaboration as well.

Shaunagh Connaire

Yeah, I think it's amazing. I think collaborating is absolutely the way forward. I have to say, I did feel slightly sorry for you reading out all those credits at the end of the podcast. It must have been exhausting.

Josh Baker

No, it is the way forward. I think what you end up being as well a lot of the time though, is that it requires a lot of management because you have to make sure you're addressing everyone's needs and there can be a lot of needs and a lot of competing needs.

Shaunagh Connaire

No doubt. Well, listen, Josh, last question, and I know you will provide the goods. Is there a bonkers, crazy experience you've had working in this industry that we haven't heard about?

Josh Baker

I don't know. I suppose that the being blown up is probably the most bonkers, but the thing about journalism is, it's all just totally mad because it's kind of the job for people who wants to do everything, because it gives you a legitimate reason to go into anything you can imagine and explore it. So whether you're sort of with Louis Theroux on a couch with sex workers watching pornography and not knowing how to feel or what you're meant to do or where you're meant to be, or whether I was trapped in the ocean for five days with Stacey Dooley, sleeping on either end of a couch trying to make a film about whale hunting, or the sadder stuff in Mosul where I was very lucky to survive the suicide bombing, I am so grateful to this job for what it allows you to do and the adventures that allows you to have, but also the connections with people.

Josh Baker

I suppose the one that's really stayed with me is what actually is episode 4, which is [inaudible 00:28:05], who is this young boy who was, basically he's a Yazidi, so from a religious minority in Iraq, and he was kidnapped by ISIS when he was four years old and had worst time imaginable. I remember finding out about this kid once he'd been returned to Iraq and he'd escaped ISIS, and it took us a little while to find him and we were basically driving through the Iraqi countryside to these remote areas in the mountain region. And I went there expecting to find this really damaged and broken kid, and I was greeted by the most beautiful little munchkin with this football in his hand and this little camera, and he had this love and this obsession with cameras, he still does.

Josh Baker

When I got out of the car with my camera, he immediately, straight over to me, wants to play with the camera, wants to start filming. So it's like, "All yours, mate, go for it." I spent this whole day with him and then he's like, "I really want to show you my camera." So he takes out this nice little pink snap-and-shoot camera he's got. The only problem is it doesn't have a battery and it doesn't work, and he goes by and pretending to take all these pictures and my heart just exploded, because here's this little munchkin who survived the most horrendous things. All he wants to do is take pictures and make films and all he's got to do it is this little camera, but he's the most joyous kid ever.

Shaunagh Connaire

He's such a standout character actually in the film or the podcast, just for context for the audience. He is Matthew's, the US boy's, best friend when they get to Raqqa to the caliphate, and he is really just the most lovely little boy. You can see he's a true character. I think that's a great story, Josh.

Josh Baker

All of mine are otherwise clinically depressing. They're not that funny.

Shaunagh Connaire

Thanks very much to Josh Baker for joining me this week, and you guys must definitely go and subscribe to his new podcast, I'm Not A Monster. If you did like what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, that's very good news because I'll be dropping new shows every week and every month on my new Media Tribe spotlight series. Also, if you haven't already make sure to take a listen to previous shows with some legends in the industry. And as ever, please, please, please do leave me a rating and review as it really does help other people find this podcast. Finally, if you have any guest suggestions, drop me a note on Twitter. I'm @shaunagh, with a G-H at the end, or @shaunaghconnaire Instagram, and again, that's with the G-H. Right, that's it. See you soon. This episode was edited by Ryan Ferguson.