Afghan Women are World Citizens — Tom Freston on Why the Human Spirit Cannot Be Suppressed

About this episode

"Is the iron hand of the Taliban going to be capable of sustaining itself?" It's the question Tom Freston asks at the start of this conversation — and it's one that feels all the more urgent coming from someone who has known Afghanistan across five decades. Freston first travelled to Afghanistan in the early 1970s, when the country was a place of extraordinary openness: hippie trails, ancient hospitality, a society on the cusp of something. He returned in 2007, during the brief window when a different future still seemed possible. What he witnessed across those decades — and what has been lost since — gives his perspective on today's Afghanistan a weight that few outsiders can match. In…