I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice?
Josh Baker enters a dangerous world of fear, greed and betrayal as he sets out to uncover the truth behind one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time - the abduction of American journalist Austin Tice.
Josh - creator of two of the BBC’s most award-winning and widely listened-to investigative podcasts, I’m Not a Monster and The Shamima Begum Story - returns for his most ambitious chapter yet, in a major new series from BBC Radio 4 and NPR’s Embedded.
This is not the retelling of a closed case. It is a real-time investigation into a disappearance that has remained unsolved for more than a decade, conducted in close contact with Austin’s family.
What started out as a personal effort to help a mother find her son has turned into a multi-year journalistic investigation stretching from the corridors of power in Washington DC to the depths of the Syrian security state.
Austin Tice is a journalist, law student and former Marine officer, who vanished in Syria in 2012. Since then, competing stories have emerged about his fate. In some, he is alive - held in a cell and waiting to be rescued. In others, he was smuggled out of Syria and hidden away. In the darkest versions, he died long ago.
His disappearance has reached the highest levels of power - from presidents to popes - yet remarkably little is known about what happened to him.
Investigative journalists Josh Baker and Sara Obeidat begin following Austin’s trail long before the fall of the Syrian regime. Then everything changes. The regime collapses, and the black box of Syria’s intelligence state opens. Sources step forward, unprecedented leaks arrive and doors to secret bases that had been sealed for years open. Josh and Sara speak to spies, search secret prisons and track down alleged war criminals in hiding, uncovering information that has never been made public and making discoveries that generate international headlines. The audience follows every breakthrough as the investigation closes in on those who may know the truth - while Syria is transformed and powerful interests compete to shape what happens next.
Some claim Austin was working for the CIA. Others say he was simply a young journalist trying to make his name in war reporting.
His fate has become entangled in secret negotiations and geopolitical power struggles that are still unfolding. At the centre of it all is his mother, Debra Tice, who has never stopped searching for her son.
There are people who know exactly what happened to Austin.
Some of them do not want the truth to come out.
So where is Austin Tice?
© BBC 2026 · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedure
See more
This podcast may use tracking and attribution, dynamic content insertion and is insecure
Stats: Statistics are produced by BBC to help I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice? to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Tracking and attribution: BBC or its partners may connect the fact you listened to this podcast to an action elsewhere on the internet. For example - it may spot a device that downloaded an episode of I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice? later visited the website of an advertiser; or it may track that a device that listened to I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice? also listened to a different show. This form of attribution is used to measure advertising effectiveness.
Dynamic content insertion: BBC may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice? may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
I’m Not a Monster Presents… Where is Austin Tice? is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
This uses an insecure connection. This podcast uses an HTTP, not HTTPS, address for its audio files. These are not encrypted, and may allow people who can see your internet traffic - like your internet service provider, employer or even your government - to know that you listen to this podcast.
Here’s more about insecure links and unique domains.
In the news
BBC Sounds reveals their top 10 most popular podcasts of 2023 with podcast listening up 34% on the platform (Dec 28 2023)
Clive Myrie and Nicky Woolf acclaimed presenters of the year (Nov 12 2023)
Listen and follow
Apple PodcastsInformation for podcasters
- Podcast GUID:
dbb86493-3501-5533-83c8-6d716b39324b - This podcast appears to be missing from Truefans, iVoox, and Luminary. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- See this podcast’s listener numbers, contact details and more at Rephonic
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator