Josh Baker is the journalist behind the BBC\u2019s smash hit I\u2019m Not a Monster. He\u2019s back with his most extraordinary investigation yet \u2013 to solve the mystery of Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria 14 years ago<\/p>\n
In 2012, the US marine turned freelance foreign correspondent Austin Tice disappeared in Syria. If he\u2019s still alive, he\u2019ll be the second-longest detained journalist in the world. That, says Josh Baker (speaking to me from Wales), was the podcast he thought he was making: \u201cWe thought we were looking for a missing person, and what we fell into was almost like a Bourne novel, utterly extraordinary. A world of espionage, spies, dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also a story of American exceptionalism \u2013 the way the US saw itself in relation to the rest of the world. Moreover, \u201cI don\u2019t mean this in a crass way,\u201d Baker says, \u201cbut through Austin\u2019s story, we also learn a lot about the last 14 years of the civil war in Syria. We really go inside the regime\u2019s industrial complex of disappearance and torture. As episode two begins, Assad is gone, and we enter into these facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/95883ac0ccd1c53a56b292d4de5aaaec4e918778\/707_631_2538_2031\/master\/2538.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5eb2e7e33998781fc1566f4b2f85bbd3\" "\\"\u2018It")
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