This week, cohost Joe Hagan talks to Saad Mohseni, chief executive of the Moby Group, which has been broadcasting television news and entertainment programming in Afghanistan since 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban. As the fundamentalist group once again takes over the country following the U.S.’s chaotic exit, the fate of Mohseni’s media outlet in Kabul, staffed with 450 Afghans, hangs in the balance. Will the Taliban shut down or take over the TV network?

Even as Mohseni looks for signs of hope in a young population raised on TV and internet access (including the Taliban themselves), he remains wary of the Taliban’s extremism, misogyny, and censorship. He also expresses anger at the Biden administration’s handling of the pullout, which has left his beloved country to a grim fate after decades of cynical U.S. foreign policy.

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