Radio Free Mike

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In 2022 the Sundance Film Festival accepted, but then cancelled, Meg Smaker’s documentary about Guantánamo inmates and other accused terrorists living in a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia. Meg swears JIHAD REHAB will come out, under a new title, in 2025. We talk about that and a bunch of other things, including pirates, boxing, the California wildfires, adventures in Arabic, and chewing khat in New York bodegas.

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Podcast home page: https://michaelscottmoore.substack.com/podcast

Resources:

“Cowardice at Sundance,” The Atlantic, by Graeme Wood

“Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism Until It Didn’t,” The New York Times, by Michael Powell

“Why Filmmakers Have Had a Problem with ‘Jihad Rehab’ for years,” IDA website

Website for the film now called “Unredacted”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.com

Jason and his wife Yegi were both foreign correspondents in Tehran when members of the Revolutionary Guard knocked on their door in 2014. The Guards hauled them to jail, and Jason, who holds two passports, was accused of spying for the United States. The Iranian government held a sham trial and kept him in the notorious Evin Prison for about a year and a half. Jason and Michael talk about the nature of the Islamic Republic, about captive life, and about H.R. 9495, a House bill that could destroy American nonprofits through a simple, unfounded accusation of “terrorist funding.”The U.S. has laws to stop terrorist funding; but this bill started life as a wholesome idea by Jason to make a returning hostage’s life a little easier. He explains the history of H.R. 9495 — and his opinion of the different bill now making its way through Congress — in the paid version of the podcast.

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Resources:

Mike’s essay on Salman Rushdie and Iran

Jason’s memoir PRISONER, from Harper Collins

David Rohde, National Security editor for NBC News, author of Where Tyranny Begins, talks about Donald Trump and his war against the Justice Department and the FBI. His meticulously reported book argues that Trump trashed a number of Watergate-era norms in Washington, which allowed him to organize something far worse than Watergate on January 6, 2021. David also talks about being held hostage by the Taliban in 2007-08, but overall this first episode of Radio Free Mike is a dispassionate review of Trump’s first term: we review the Story So Far.

Link to full episode on Substack: https://michaelscottmoore.substack.com/publish/post/153594742Resources:

Where Tyranny Begins, by David Rohde

A Rope and a Prayer, by David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill

Two Treatises of Government (1689) by John Locke

“Wherever law ends, Tyranny begins . . . Is it reasonable that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his father’s estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his younger brothers’ portions? Or that a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor neighbour?”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.com/subscribe

Announcing a new podcast called Radio Free Mike. Episodes will be audio-only, available on your favorite podcast platforms or through a link to Substack, which we’ll send out every two weeks or so. Full episodes are for paid subscribers, but free previews are for everyone. Join us if you can, and Happy New Year..

Full website: http://radiofreemike.net/

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.com/subscribe