I'm not a monster podcast

[Saker]

I listened to the second series of this about Shamima Begum and then the first series about an American woman who took her children to ISIS. It's really interesting especially in light of all the controversy over Shamima Begum. Josh Baker has done a really good job at investigating all sides and I would really recommend it to anyone in trying to form a balanced view of this subject.

Thanks for the recommendation op.

it’s a very complicated subject I think and I would be interested to hear her side of the story.

Yes - Shamima Begum doesn’t come across well, does she?

I started worth the American woman and listened to it all in a couple of days. Now on the Shamima one. I think Josh has done some amazing investigative work on these cases. Can’t wait for tomorrows one !

@WarningToTheCurious , no, she doesn't.

She comes across as a bit flat and unemotional, but I wonder if she has almost had to shut down her emotions just to be able to cope with her experiences. There's a really interesting bit in the Q and A at the end of the first podcast, where Josh Baker says that people have questioned how Sam can talk about tortured and the things that happened to her children in such a normal way, but that his experience of traumatised people shows that you can't draw any conclusions from the way they talk about it and that people don't all respond in the same way or in the way you would expect.
I had heard it said that Shamima Begum doesn't appear to care about her children and that wasn't at all what I felt from listening to it. Quite the opposite, she seemed to care deeply. But how would you cope with having watched your children starve to death? I think you would have to shut down all emotional channels just to be able to keep living yourself.

Josh Baker is excellent. I have listened to both series. The documentaries are also on iPlayer. Sam looked the absolute opposite to what I imagined.

I thought the flat non reactive persona may have been a response to trauma. She really wanted to come back to the UK and her response to the removal of her British citizenship was very muted, you would expect that she would be quite devastated by that.

Yes today's episode was excellent. He is very good with gentle but incisive questioning.

I was more struck by her minimising the nature of the regime that she had joined, and that she doesn’t accept any accountability for her actions.

Really good podcasts, both series. Shamima just seems to be easily led and possibly not the brightest. Clearly been indoctrinated into the regime, and will find it so hard to extract herself from it. The only real emotion is when she speaks of her husband, clearly wants nothing more to do with him, & the media.