[2][3][4] He received his bachelor's degree from Middlebury College in Vermont and his doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Although Padnos originally claimed in his NY Times article that he went to Syria to "stop into villages and interview people, telling the story of a nation with many identities, dissatisfied with them all, in trouble, wanting help," [11] he later completely changed his story in his documentary, claiming he was there to "follow some refugees back into Syria and write about the adverse conditions in the camps.

"[15] However, in his former cellmate's book, "The Dawn Prayer," Matthew Schrier claims Padnos told him he was in Syria to write a story about abducted American journalist Austin Tice, and provided documentation proving so in the form of an email Padnos wrote to Tice's editor shortly before he was kidnapped asking him to "commission" the article.

[16] According to his account of his captivity published in The New York Times Magazine on November 2, 2014, he was held by al-Nusra Front and later by Abu Mariya al-Qahtani, who also released him.

Padnos considers himself "most responsible" for his kidnapping, believing he was reckless in crossing into Syria with smugglers he did not know and who held him captive.

Commenting on the torture and mistreatment he endured at first, he says, It seemed to me that I had been walking calmly through an olive grove with Syrian friends, that a rent in the earth had opened, that I had fallen into the darkness and woken in a netherworld, the kind found in myths or nightmares.

Both were tortured by Al Qaeda and Schrier, of Russian Jewish heritage, strategically converted to Islam as a survival tactic[17][18] while Curtis remained a Christian.

[20] Relatives were not told the terms of Curtis's release, which came one week after James Foley's beheading by the Islamic State.