This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comMeghan Daum is a an essayist and author who lives in L.A. but lost her home in the Eaton Fire in January. She also has a new book out called THE CATASTROPHE HOUR. She insists the title is a coincidence, because she named the book before the fires started. We talk about the fires, being “problematized,” and about Ezra Pound’s basic standards for writing in the age of under-edited writing platforms. You can also listen in real time while Mike discovers a decent segue sound for this podcast. We’re just making it up as we go here, folks.Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts Resources:The Catastrophe Hour, by Meghan DaumThe ABC of Reading, by Ezra PoundFirst mention of “woke” in America, during a live version of “Scottsboro Boys,” by Leadbelly. Perfectly good usage. Radio Free Mike (original website) Radio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comMark Sundeen is an accomplished novelist and essayist, author of The Man Who Quit Money, a bestselling biography of Daniel Suelo, who sold all his things to live in a Utah cave. Now Mark has published a collection of similar nonfiction portraits of people who inhabit the American West, the drifters and dreamers who once populated L.A. and San Francisco before those cities got too expensive. His book, Delusions + Grandeur, also turns out to be a chronicle of American masculinity in the age of Trump. Mark and I were both slightly disaffected teenagers in an L.A. beach town back in the day, so the conversation moves everywhere. We talk about Alta California before 1849, the Standing Rock protests in 2016, and Jack London’s adventures as a famous-but-somehow-obscure American writer. Oh, plus his contributions to surfing. Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Podcast Addict, PocketcastsResources:Delusions and Grandeur, by Mark SundeenThe Man Who Quit Money, by Mark SundeenA BBC video on the man who quit money, also by MarkSweetness and Blood, Mike’s peripatetic history of surfingRadio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Antoine Wilson is the author of three fine novels, including The Interloper and Panorama City, and his latest book, Mouth to Mouth, is about a man who rescuscitates a stranger on the beach in Santa Monica, but afterwards can’t resist intruding on the saved man’s life. We talk about the unreliable nature of narrative, but for the first ten minutes we also discuss the L.A. wildfires and surfing, so if you don’t want to hear about that please skip to 9:30, where you can hear Antoine explain the personal sources of Mouth to Mouth, if he can be trusted. We chat about writers we like (W.G. Sebald, Patrick Modiano), and, at the end, some bonus material — tips for young writers!Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Podcast Addict, PocketcastsResources:Mouth to Mouth, by Antoine WilsonAn essay by Antoine on “the pleasures of the teetering stack,” at LitHubAntoine’s websiteRadio Free Mike website (off Substack)Radio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comJeanne Carstensen was in Greece as a reporter for The World when an overfilled boat chugging across a narrow part of the Aegean foundered and sank. The disaster brought the island of Lesbos together, in part because its residents remembered even older surges of migration, including the one caused by the Greco-Turkish War in 1922. Now she’s written a compelling and humane book about the disaster from as many points of view as possible — Greek, Syrian, Afghan, Iraqi, Turkish; her own — and it’s a stark reminder that people are still dying on the water. We talk about the nature of human smuggling on the edges of Europe and, finally, its effect on EU politics. Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Podcast Addict, PocketcastsResources:A Greek Tragedy, by Jeanne Carstensen“A Lethal Farce in the Aegean Sea,” one of Jeanne’s first reports on the story“The Libyan Coast Guard is Not What it Seems,” by Michael Scott Moore, a reported essay from the central Mediterranean Radio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comPeter Theroux has started to publish a two-volume memoir about his career in US intelligence. He’s an excellent writer, from a family of them — his brothers are Paul and Alexander — and In Obscura describes his government work in the Middle East and suburban Washington with a sharp sense of detail and a lively sense of humor. Peter also describes Syria with so much obvious affection that I thought it might be interesting to hear from him about the old Ba’athist regime that fell in December, as well as the unreadable Islamist who’s now in charge. Upgrade to a paid subscription, and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Podcast Addict, PocketcastsRadio Free Mike original websiteResources:In Obscura, by Peter TherouxTranslating L.A., by Peter TherouxSandstorms, by Peter Theroux

Soraya Simi was hand-picked by Angela Madsen to direct a film about her last major ocean-rowing voyage, a solo attempt to row from L.A. to Honolulu in 2020. Angela was a professional ocean rower and paraplegic, an Olympic gold medalist, a Guinness world-record holder in several categories, and a former U.S. Marine. Soraya’s new film about the ill-fated voyage is named after Angela’s fiberglass boat, THE ROW OF LIFE, and the story behind the film is almost as tense and tough as its subject. We talk about the ocean, the indie filmmaking business, and those big-wave surfers at Nazaré.Upgrade to a paid subscription if you like the podcast!Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTubeResources:ROW OF LIFE upcoming scheduleSoraya Simi’s websiteMike’s book on surfing, Sweetness and BloodRadio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comAmerican journalist Jacob Kushner is the author of a fine new(ish) book about a series of crimes by a neo-Nazi gang in Germany called LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants. I was still at Spiegel Online when the cops closed in on the “National Socialist Underground,” as the group was called, and arrested a woman called Beate Zschäpe. Her partners — both named Uwe — destroyed themselves in fiery Wagnerian fashion. Jacob talks to me about this weird story as well as the German elections coming up this weekend, and, yes, Elon Musk’s Nazi salute.Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube Resources:Website for Jacob’s book, Look Away, or White Terror in the UKJacob’s feature about the AfD in BerlinMike’s essay, “Was Hitler a Man of the Left?”, basically a review of Liberal Fascism by Jonah GoldbergMike’s essay “The Lying Press,” about Elon Musk and propaganda minister Joseph GoebbelsNotes by Elon Musk’s former colleague on that Nazi salute.Radio Free Mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comIn 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. Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Podcast home page: https://michaelscottmoore.substack.com/podcastResources:“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 websiteWebsite for the film now called “Unredacted”

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comJason 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.Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.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 RohdeA Rope and a Prayer, by David Rohde and Kristen MulvihillTwo 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