This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelscottmoore.substack.comScott Hulet is the longtime, formative editor of The Surfer’s Journal, a magazine focused on the art and adventure of surfing rather than its klieg-lit industry. Flow Violento is a collection of his pieces from around Latin America, and the title derives from a phrase in Cuban slang that translates, roughly, to “amazing style.”We talk about surfing Ecuador, about “Shipwrecks” in northern Baja, about a remote island off the coast of Nayarit which has both surf and fish, and about the romance of Mexico in the mid-20th century, when The Night of the Iguana was written and filmed in Puerto Vallarta. Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free Mike. Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:Flow Violento, by Scott HuletSweetness and Blood, Mike’s folk history of surfing“Flow Violento,” a rap song by ArcángelOther books featured on Radio Free Mikeradio 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.comDiane Foley is the mother of Jim Foley, the American journalist who was kidnapped in 2012 by members of ISIS in Syria, and beheaded on camera in 2014. Diane has written a memoir called American Mother, with the help of Irish novelist Colum McCann, about the hostage ordeal and its long echo. The book describes her meeting with one of Jim’s captors, Alexanda Kotey, after Kotey pled guilty to charges regarding Jim and several other western hostages. He’s serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison. Diane now runs the Foley Foundation in Washington, DC, which speaks up for hostages, and Colum is a co-founder of Narrative 4, a global storytelling nonprofit.This podcast comes in advance of a long-read essay about the trial in my own hostage case. We had some audio interference, so if we talk over each other it’s because we couldn’t hear each other as well during the live interview as you’ll be able to hear us now. Resources:American Mother, by Diane Foley and Colum McCannFoley Foundation websiteColum McCann’s websiteNarrative 4, Colum’s nonprofitTwist, by Colum McCann, his latest novelApeirogon, by Colum McCann, a novel about a friendship between an Israeli and a PalestinianLet the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, a National Book Award-winning novel about the Twin TowersThe new Radio Free Mike virtual bookshop features almost every book mentioned on the podcast, and I earn a small commission if you order from it.ALSO:If you’re in Southern California, please come out to “Pub Fiction” this Sunday, July 12, at Knoll’s in Aliso Viejo. I’ll read from a work-in-progress. No reservations necessary. 7pm, 29971 Alicia Pkwy, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677radio free mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actor and writer who was diagnosed in 2020 with Stage 4 lung cancer. The diagnosis came as a complete surprise, and her new book about the shock and its aftermath is called The End of My Life is Killing Me. It’s a collection of personal essays dealing with the clichés of cancer patient-hood, with juicing machines that did not help, Greek myths that did, and with her short career as a merch girl for a touring heavy-metal band.Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free Mike. Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:The End of My Life is Killing Me, by Annabelle GurwitchAnnabelle’s websiteAn extract from the book in the New York TimesFeatured books on Radio Free Mike (I earn a small commission!)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

Meg Smaker is a filmmaker and journalist, director of Jihad Rehab (or The UnRedacted), which was the subject of an earlier Radio Free Mike episode. In 2003, Meg was held hostage with two other Americans in Colombia by an anti-FARC militia for about ten days. We talk about what it means to be held hostage; in fact this interview starts with Meg interviewing me.A little context: Jihad Rehab deals with former inmates of the American prison at Guantánamo who were sitting in a re-integration center in Yemen. Meg exlpains how her short kidnapping in Colombia led her, eventually, to the topic of her controversial film.Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free Mike. Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:Meg Smaker filmography on IMDBWebsite for the film now called “Unredacted”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

Ed Park is a novelist and journalist and the author, most recently, of An Oral History of Atlantis, a collection of stories full of wit and humor and strange invention. We talk about our shared enthusiasm for REM — which shouldn’t take any of my listeners by surprise — and by the end of the show we talk about his two upcoming books in a surprising amount of detail. So if you’re interested in that, stick around.Ed has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his two upcoming books include a memoir “of sorts,” called Three Tenses: A Transmission from the Nineties (in August) and a long story called The Repairer of Reputations (in September). Ed tells me the long story is not unrelated to the stories we discuss on this episode. Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsNext week on June 10 I’ll be in conversation with Jeanne Carstensen — also a Radio Free Mike guest! — at Village Well Books in Culver City. Her book A Greek Tragedy tells one of the horrific stories from the migration push across the Mediterranean. It was a finalist this year for the PEN/Galbraith Award.Tickets available here, and the price can include a copy of the book. And I’m happy to sign copies of The Desert and the Sea at the store.Podcast Resources:An Oral History of Atlantis, by Ed Park Ed’s websiteThree Tenses previewRepairer of Reputations previewThe new Radio Free Mike virtual bookshop features almost every book mentioned on the podcast, and I earn a small commission if you order from this page.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.comToday we’re talking to not one, but two guests — a journalist, Daniela Gerson (right), and her wife Talia Inlender, who’s an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles. Daniela’s the author of THE WANDERERS, a new book about their Jewish grandparents, who all escaped the Holocaust from eastern Poland by heading east — though not together, and the coincidence they discovered about their family histories will be worth the price of admission. We talk about World War II history, fleeing the Third Reich, and about how the past is not really past.This episode has a mild echo on Talia’s feed, which vanishes after a while. We’re on a budget around here. For that reason, please upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free Mike!Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:The Wanderers, by Daniela GersonA review at the Wall Street JournalDaniela’s websiteTalia’s bioThe new Radio Free Mike virtual bookshop, featuring almost every book mentioned on the podcast. (I earn a small commission if you order from this page.)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.comElizabeth Crane just published two collections of stories on the same day, a new one, called THAT MIGHT NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK, and her first book, from 2003, WHEN THE MESSENGER IS HOT, in a reprint from Triquarterly Books. I’m a fan of her memoir about a broken marriage called THIS STORY WILL CHANGE, and we talk about the similarities between that book and her new short fiction, but also the horrors of dating apps, and what to call her slightly frantic first-person stories.Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free MikePlatforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:That May Not Mean What You Think, by Elizabeth CraneWhen the Messenger is Hot, by Elizabeth CraneThis Story Will Change, a memoir by Elizabeth CraneElizabeth’s website“Breakdown” by Tom Pettyradio free mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Andrea Pitzer is a journalist and author of three books, including One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, which follows the modern development of irregular prisons beginning in the 1890s, when the Spanish Empire first tried to corral Cuban revolutionaries using new technology that included factory-produced barbed wire. We talk about Hitler, as well as Stalin, and I ask her to grade the United States’ new plan for warehouse-style “detention camps” on a historical curve. Her assessment isn’t good.Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free MikePlatforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:One Long Night, by Andrea PitzerAndrea’s website Sweetness and Blood, by Michael Scott Moore — nominally about surfing, but it has a section on Indonesia’s detention camps and an interview with the novelist Pramodya Ananta Toer “Somali pirates gave me toothpast and soap,” the viral tweetradio 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

Thomas Blubacher is a Swiss theater director and author on theatrical subjects who’s published a new book about European emigrés in Los Angeles called Weimar Under the Palms. Many of the artists who fled Hitler in the ’30s and ’40s — including Lion Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann, Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht — came to the West Coast for the studio paychecks and the sunshine. They contributed in sometimes invisible ways to the culture of California, but found something besides pure political freedom.There should be more from me on this topic in the near future. But this is a name-dropping episode, so you’ll find an index of names at the bottom of this email.MEANWHILE don’t forget about our beach-noir reading this Thursday, March 26, 2026, at the Hermosa Beach Museum. A new Kelp Books anthology called The Savage Waves of Spring will be launched into the stratosphere, and Mike will read from a story.It’s free, but reserve a seat. Space is limited, and these evenings are popular. If you’re in California, consider a trip to the watery fringe of L.A., and if not, order the anthology at your favorite bookstore, online or otherwise. Or straight from Kelp.Upgrade to a paid subscription to Radio Free MikePlatforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:Weimar Under the Palms, by Thomas BlubacherThomas’ biography in EnglishA link to his new novel, Aufgelöst, in GermanSweetness and Blood, by Michael Scott Moore, for more on surfing in Bali in the 1930sradio free mike is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.An index of names in Episode 30:Friedrich W. Murnau, directorWalter Spies, painter and musicianBerthold Viertel, directorSalka Viertel, screenwriter and actressEmil JanningsErnst Lubitsch, directorCharlie ChaplinVicki Baum, author and screenwriterLion Feuchtwanger, authorMarta Feuchtwanger, authorBertolt Brecht, playwrightHelene Weigel, actress and cabaret singerThomas Mann, authorGreta Garbo, actressChristopher Isherwood, authorAldous Huxley, authorFritz Lang, directorArnold Schönberg, composer 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

Tom Jennings, an award-winning filmmaker for PBS Frontline, has a new documentary on the The New Yorker site called Rovina’s Choice, about a South Sudanese woman whose children lived in a refugee camp in Kenya, malnourished but surviving, until food aid had to be cut last year.The film shows the human effects of Trump’s sudden, wholesale destruction of USAID. The foreign-aid organization had sent poverty and disaster relief all over the world for over sixty years — including to East Africa, a place I know something about.Upgrade to a paid subscription and listen to the whole episode.Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, PocketcastsResources:Rovina’s Choice, directed by Tom JenningsDirect link to the film on YouTubeTom’s bio on FrontlineThe Desert and the Sea, by Michael Scott Mooreradio 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