For episode 14, I interview journalist and novelist, Michael Scott Moore. Michael’s the author of Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, with Some Unexpected Results—a travel book about surfing that was revered as one of the best books of 2010 by The Economist.

While the main  focus of our conversation is on his surfing book, we also make time to chat about his harrowing experience as a hostage in Africa as well.

Shortly after the publication of Sweetness and Blood, Michael was kidnapped in early 2012 on a reporting trip to Somalia and held hostage by pirates for 32 months. He wrote a memoir about this experience that became an international bestseller. That book is titled The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast. We  briefly dig into that experience and book project at the end of the episode.

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Artwork by Nacer Ahmadi: IG @nacerfilez

Production by TwistedLogix and Morrisound Studios

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