As you've been hearing in the news, U.S. President Barack Obama's address to the nation is getting mixed reviews. He's vowing to destroy ISIS but offering no dramatic shift in strategy.

In the aftermath of attacks in California... in Paris... in Lebanon... all purportedly done in the name of ISIS.

The question still persists.

What makes someone take up arms for ISIS?

What drives them to kill, and be killed, for its so called vision?

It's a subject that Lydia Wilson is investigating thoroughly — and which has taken her to some very dark places, including interviews with ISIS fighters awaiting execution inside a prison in Northern Iraq.

Lydia Wilson is a research fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the University of Oxford.​ She's also field director at Artis International, a research institution that studies politically motivated violence.



This segment was produced by The Current's Gord Westmacott.





