Josh Baker

speaker

306 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 8 Feb

Josh Baker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.

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And while we were there, people's phones started buzzing.

And that was because a suicide bombing had gone off.

And at that point, I remember watching my friends' faces and they were like, huh, the insurgency has started.

And I think this is the key thing.

While they disappeared from the headlines, they didn't actually disappear on the ground.

Before we get any further into this conversation, I just want to pause for a moment and talk about terminology.

You've heard me refer to the group here as ISIS.

Some listeners may know it as IS or the so-called Islamic State.

And the terminology can be a little confusing here because the group has been described under different names.

But regardless of the name, I think it is worth rewinding to 2014.

And I think that's the moment when here in the United States, ISIS really penetrated into the public consciousness.

It's the year that President Obama announced the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

It was also the year that the American journalist James Foley was executed.

And at that time, Josh, what was the group selling?

So let's just rewind for a moment, because when we think about terrorist groups, we tend to think of small entities running around, creating havoc.

And actually, what was unique about ISIS is that they actually formed a so-called state, their caliphate, as they called it, if you will.

And people sometimes forget this when we talk about this group.

is at the height of their power, they actually controlled an area the size of England, right, that spanned Iraq and Syria.

And it had roughly 10 million people under their governance.

And what they did then is they set about a really highly polished PR and propaganda campaign.

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