[Read this recent Twitter thread to see Ms. Callimachi’s responses to readers’ questions about her work covering ISIS.]

In “Caliphate” you mention how previous interviews with ISIS members left you frustrated and made you question whether they were being truthful. Have you had similar feelings with Abu Huzayfah?

I would have to spoil a lot of things if I answered that question. In general on this beat, though, that’s the puzzle you’re always dealing with. First of all, you’re spending so much effort just trying to get even one ISIS member to talk to you. It’s so hard to find them. You can somewhat get access to them in prisons in Iraq, but you don’t get much time with them. It’s also very hard to do these interviews in 20 minutes, 30 minutes because you’re just scratching the surface.

And then you have a source’s story. Imagine how hard it has been to confirm the reporting on Harvey Weinstein, and that’s happening in Hollywood, a place with a paper trail and American citizens and people who speak the same language we do. It’s so hard with ISIS because you’re dealing with a place I cannot go: the caliphate, when it was around. So half the work is just getting the interview and the other half is figuring out if there’s any way to corroborate it.

Have you been contacted by any law enforcement officials who are concerned that you’re communicating with a former ISIS member in Canada?

A retired Canadian intelligence analyst started tweeting at me, basically asking if I had a moral responsibility to flag this person to authorities. Obviously, as journalists, we can’t act as an extension of law enforcement. That would be the end of me on this beat if I started turning in my sources. At the same time, we are dealing with members of a terrorist group — a group that has called for attacks in North America. You’ll see later in the podcast that we found a way to keep our journalistic integrity but also answer some of these questions.

What are some of the other ethical dilemmas you’ve discussed?

My goal in telling the story of Abu Huzayfah is to try to explain, in a way, the unexplainable: How does a normal-seeming person, who grew up in a middle-class family, with no abuse that I know of, loving parents and a comfortable lifestyle — how does that person, because there are so many of them, end up joining this murderous group? There’s a rut in the reporting on ISIS, where it’s so easy to write about the salacious, awful things they do. Very quickly, we go into this boogeyman narrative about these savage, brutal criminals. We forget that human beings are doing this, and 40,000 people have joined from overseas. Yes, you can find the psychopaths among them. But, in my experience, there are a lot more Huzayfahs than the others.