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When The Taliban Turned the Internet Off in Afghanistan · Never Post

0:22
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello and welcome to Never Post, a
0:25
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host Mike
0:28
Rugnetta and we have a dedicated show for you this week.
0:32
Contributing producer and freelance journalist based in
0:35
Kabul, Ali Latifi tells the story of a roughly forty eight
0:39
hour period at the 2025 when the Taliban turned off the entirety
0:46
of the Internet in Afghanistan. His friends and neighbors
0:51
reflect on the surprising and not so surprising impacts of
0:55
being completely offline. And Ali reflects on how being so
1:02
completely disconnected shifted his perspective of being online.
1:08
First, we're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the
1:12
member feed and then Ali Latifi on the time the Internet got
1:17
turned off in Afghanistan. At the time of writing, Iran's
1:43
internet has been off for about two hundred and seventy five
1:46
hours, almost twelve days according to internet access
1:50
watchdog group, NetBlocks, and coinciding with The United
1:54
States and Israel's start of their coordinated bombing of the
1:58
country. This comes not long after an extended outage in Iran
2:02
which ended, albeit slowly and incompletely, in January. From
2:08
the eighth to the twenty eighth, officials restricted access to
2:11
the larger global network in response to demonstrations
2:15
during which their revolutionary guard killed thousands and
2:19
potentially over 30,000 protesters who took to the
2:23
streets because of inflation, soaring food prices, and anti
2:27
government sentiment. It was the largest demonstration in the
2:31
country in nearly fifty years and it spread to multiple
2:35
cities.
2:37
You maybe didn't hear much about it. An internet shutdown is one
2:42
major reason why and the reason governments do it. This is an
2:48
increasingly popular tactic amongst authoritarian
2:51
governments and even some democratic ones. Digital rights
2:54
group Access Now who tracks amongst other things internet
2:58
shutdowns by government, estimates there were 78 internet
3:01
shutdowns in 2017 and two hundred and 96 in 2024. They put
3:08
India at the top of the list with 649 shutdowns over an eight
3:13
year period, followed by Myanmar, Iran, Pakistan,
3:17
Ukraine, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Turkey, and so on and so on down
3:22
the authoritarian roster.
3:25
You may wonder hearing that list, why aren't China or Russia
3:29
near the top? Well, Internet shutdowns are a brute force
3:35
approach. When a country hasn't consolidated and nationalized
3:39
its communications infrastructure and they wanna
3:42
keep information from getting in or out, they don't have many
3:45
options. China and Russia have more control over their
3:49
networks. They can more easily stop certain data streams from
3:52
entering and in many scenarios leaving.
3:56
Though of course information as Stuart Brand proclaimed wants to
4:00
be free and it often ends up being a national infrastructural
4:04
game of cat and mouse. In 2025 for instance, Russia engaged in
4:08
broad scale shutdowns and restrictions especially for
4:11
mobile devices to thwart, they said, Ukrainian drone attacks.
4:16
But the blocks were widely circumvented with VPN use. It's
4:21
probably also worth pointing out here that China and Russia and
4:23
Israel and Sudan and a few others may not turn the Internet
4:27
off within their own borders, but often enact shutdowns on
4:31
their neighbors, Myanmar, Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Laos,
4:35
Bahrain, and so on. All this to say, China and Russia don't need
4:40
to shut off the Internet.
4:42
They have their own. This is the direction Iran is headed as
4:51
well. They've consolidated control of their communications
4:54
infrastructure and they're able to keep citizens on their
4:56
national intranet while blocking access to the global internet.
5:02
This means national services like banks, government websites,
5:06
and national media channels useful for disseminating
5:08
propaganda remain operational. Access to global social media to
5:13
report on what's happening is blocked unless of course you're
5:16
a high up government official.
5:18
And of course with a single national Internet, everyone is
5:22
just that much easier to surveil. Last fall, the Taliban,
5:27
the ruling government in Afghanistan, blocked the
5:30
Internet nationwide for about forty eight hours. They said
5:35
this was to prevent immoral activity, a measure taken to
5:40
prevent vice, one official said. Though there was speculation the
5:44
reasoning was much broader and like the blocks in Iran were
5:48
meant to keep citizens from communicating with the outside
5:51
world, especially following a massive earthquake in the East.
5:56
The Taliban has not consolidated control of their communications
5:59
infrastructure.
6:00
They have no half measures to employ, no filtering to use.
6:06
They literally just cut the cables and with very little
6:11
warning. What happened next is a revealing portrait of the ways
6:16
the Internet, the global Internet dominates everyday life
6:20
even in places we may think of as remote. We discuss on this
6:25
show the travails of social media, the immorality of tech
6:29
barons, but it is in stories like this that we see how the
6:33
Internet is a much larger thing, a literal lifeline to many while
6:38
also being still an extractive entity, a machine of
6:42
exploitation, a distraction from other parts of our lives. After
6:49
we take a short break, contributing producer Ali Latifi
6:51
was there in Afghanistan when the internet was shut off.
6:57
He asked his neighbors, friends, and acquaintances what that two
7:01
days was like.
7:18
Speaker 2: Not confirmed, but just received this. In
7:21
accordance with the decree of the supreme leader, Internet
7:24
services will be discontinued starting from 5PM today in
7:29
Kabul.
7:31
Ali Latifi: It's around 02:30PM on 09/29/2025 when I receive
7:36
this message on WhatsApp.
7:38
Speaker 2: The network will be permanently disconnected until
7:42
further notice, resulting in a twenty four hour outage each
7:46
day. Additionally, certain other networks will experience daily
7:51
Internet suspensions from 5PM to 8AM.
7:55
Ali Latifi: I immediately forward it to a friend who was
7:57
close with the government asking, true? His response is
8:01
simple. Yes. In case he's right, I send it to a human rights
8:08
researcher in Europe. Because the message mentioned the mobile
8:12
network I've had since 2011, I immediately rush to the office
8:16
of another carrier near my home and sign up for a new eSIM.
8:21
An hour later, I'm back home with nothing to do but wait and
8:26
see. A few years ago, I would have panicked. But by 2025, I'm
8:35
accustomed to uncertain political and security claims in
8:38
Afghanistan. There's no option in these situations but to sit
8:42
and wait and see. 05:00, it's happening.
8:51
Suha: Damn. Disconnected.
8:53
Ali Latifi: In ten minutes, all my devices disconnect. It's all
8:58
down. No signal on either SIM, no WiFi, no calls, and no texts.
9:04
Texts. Tens of millions of Avrons are suddenly and swiftly
9:08
cut off from each other and the outside world.
9:15
Hoping the text is true and the Internet will be back by the
9:18
morning, I decide to just wait it out and watch or rewatch what
9:23
movies were downloaded to my computer. But first, a drink of
9:27
water. I bent to grab a bottle and hit my head against the
9:31
metal hook. I never noticed it protruding out of the
9:35
refrigerator. There's blood in my hair.
9:38
It reminds me of the time I was hit by a motorcycle in Istanbul.
9:42
I panic and rush downstairs to the pharmacy down the street.
9:46
Did you get in a fight? Asked the pharmacist. I avoid the
9:50
question.
9:51
It seems better than admitting my refrigerator attacked me. He
9:56
gives me iodine, some cotton swabs, and pills. I head home.
10:02
Movie time. Movies I can't even log on letterboxed.
10:05
What I end up watching over the next forty eight hours is highly
10:09
ironic.
10:10
Ramin: All I have are negative thoughts.
10:13
Ali Latifi: Joker. No wizard that there is or was. Wicked.
10:18
You can act
10:19
Samir: like a man.
10:20
Ali Latifi: The Godfather
10:21
Samir: You can stop my war.
10:22
Ali Latifi: The Hunchback of Notre Dame I will decide. And
10:25
doubt What's important. The next forty eight hours are a blur of
10:31
confusion and anticipation. Everyone is constantly checking
10:36
to see if the Internet and phone services are back. Suha, a 20
10:44
year old online entrepreneur in Kabul, is in disbelief at the
10:48
sudden cuts.
10:49
She can't fathom that the Islamic Emirate could be so
10:52
audacious.
10:53
Suha: Because we all know that every system of a country is
10:58
reliant on Internet and technology in general.
11:02
Ali Latifi: Turns out she was wrong.
11:04
Suha: Unfortunately, in our society that turned out to be
11:08
possible.
11:09
Ali Latifi: Once people move beyond the shock, it's two days
11:12
full of speculation and rumors. Did Donald Trump really live up
11:15
to his threats? And is he actually at the Bagram Air Base
11:18
right now? Is the Islamic Emirates secretive supreme
11:21
leader, Habatullah Khunzada, in Kabul, and we just don't know
11:25
it? Or is all of this the setup for a coup d'etat that we don't
11:29
even know is underway?
11:30
Something that my parents' generation are very used to by
11:33
now. Farah works for an Internet provider and teaches online, and
11:40
she describes the uncertainty that pervades over Kabul. She
11:58
says being so cut off from the city, country, and the entire
12:02
world left her feeling like a child. Greatest fear is that
12:13
this marked the beginning of the end. The moment we had all been
12:17
dreading since 08/15/2021 when the former president ran away
12:22
and the Taliban returned to Kabul.
12:25
Are we officially going back to the strict rule of the nineteen
12:28
nineties Islamic Emirate? Really though, these forty eight hours
12:34
are a reminder of just how much of our lives in the twenty first
12:38
century depend on the Internet. Al Saeed, a resident of the
12:44
northern city of Mazar Sharif, puts it
12:48
Saeed: Basically, all life, social life, everything, it all
12:52
came to standstill.
12:56
Ali Latifi: I'm a journalist, and I have to wonder what the
13:00
world is saying. Obviously, there's no way to check, but I
13:06
still have to ask, has it made the news? Are people talking
13:10
about it? Am I being bombarded with media requests I can't
13:13
possibly respond to? Do they know I can't respond?
13:21
As the hours pass, all any of us can do is constantly check our
13:25
phones as we slowly realize how many simple things we can no
13:29
longer do. In Mazar Sharif, Afghanistan's main city in the
13:39
North, Syed notices just how much financial transactions are
13:43
affected.
13:46
Saeed: The money exchanges were shut, financial services overall
13:49
were halted, banks were closed, there was no real access to
13:53
money.
13:54
Ali Latifi: Samir from the western city of Herod, one of
13:57
Afghanistan's business and touristic hubs, notices that the
14:01
17 kilometer road leading to the airport is strangely quiet.
14:07
Samir: Flights were all canceled. No flights in or out
14:13
of Iraq.
14:14
Ali Latifi: Though I myself live only a few minutes from Kabul
14:16
International, airplanes didn't even cross my mind. At least not
14:21
until I unexpectedly run into a friend I hadn't seen in what
14:25
seemed like years after getting takeaway from a Yemeni
14:28
restaurant. If you can't have the Internet, you can at least
14:31
have chicken kabzah. Masood and I are sitting in the tables
14:36
outside the ice cream shop. We're talking about our primary
14:40
concern, the fact that the ATMs are all off and neither of us
14:44
ever bothered to open a bank account in Afghanistan.
14:48
This means I have to come back every few hours and check if the
14:52
machines are working again. At least I'm getting my steps in.
14:58
Over pistachio and vanilla ice cream at the mall, I tell Masud
15:01
that if the ATMs don't reopen, I'll have to ask a rich doctor
15:05
relative for a cash loan to tide me over. It all brings me back
15:11
to August 2021 when the Taliban had just returned to power and
15:15
the entire financial system was in disarray.
15:18
Speaker 8: People's access to banks and to cash remains a real
15:21
problem. The banks have largely remained closed. When they are
15:25
open, there are strict limits on how much you can withdraw.
15:31
Ali Latifi: At the time, I had to beg my employer to send me US
15:33
dollars because I was down to the equivalent of $11 in
15:37
Afghanis. The effects of this Internet shutdown are much
15:41
worse, though.
15:44
Suha: Business online. There is Instagram. I ran an online
15:47
clothing business via Instagram, and I had clients who had orders
15:51
that needed to be delivered for their events on those days.
15:56
Ali Latifi: Suha, the online entrepreneur, says it costs her
15:59
hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars in business.
16:03
Suha: But I couldn't get their orders to them because I
16:09
couldn't even get in contact with the delivery companies who
16:12
would deliver their orders. By the time the Internet was
16:15
restored, most of them had canceled their orders because
16:19
they needed them on those specific dates for their events.
16:23
And since I couldn't deliver their orders on time, they just
16:28
canceled them entirely. For
16:32
Ali Latifi: a small business in Kabul, even that much can have a
16:35
devastating effect. I've gone to Ramin, a tailor, to sew
16:39
everything from avani clothes to sheets for years and he reminds
16:43
me how small businesses are so interlinked. When I enter the
16:48
store he's talking to another colleague while staring intently
16:52
at a sheet of measurements. A client had an event to go to
16:54
that night, and they were trying to remember how he wanted his
16:58
clothes cut. Only there was no way to reach him.
17:01
Ramin: He invited 700 people to this wedding. Only 200 show up.
17:08
500 people didn't come the wedding. We had a bunch of
17:12
customers, who had events on that time and just had to cancel
17:18
them.
17:20
Ali Latifi: It's not just small businesses, though. Mohammad, an
17:24
NGO worker, said the macroeconomic effects were
17:27
sprawling.
17:28
Mohammad: For instance, businesses that had goods coming
17:32
from outside, their products were stacked at customs because
17:36
imports and exports were stopped.
17:40
Ali Latifi: Samir lives in Herat, a province that lies
17:42
directly along the 921 kilometer border with Iran. He saw just
17:47
how much cross border trade, whether that be goods or
17:50
currency exchanges, were affected.
17:53
Samir: The money exchange were left with nothing to do to find
17:57
out the exchange rates. The exchange will have to go all the
18:01
way to Islamabad border until the Internet actually was
18:05
restored. Every day at 8AM, something like a thousand cars
18:10
would go to border and stay until two 02:30 in the
18:16
afternoon.
18:19
Ali Latifi: Faid from Mazor E Sharif, considered one of
18:22
Afghanistan's main connection points to Central Asia, said
18:25
being cut off from regional trade also affected domestic
18:28
markets.
18:32
Ramin: People
18:35
Saeed: had no idea how to price things, what to sell something
18:39
for, whether it was the commodities or money markets. It
18:42
was all shut. No one knew how to price things.
18:45
Samir: But
18:49
Ali Latifi: you didn't have to travel far to see the impacts.
18:52
Even the most basic aspects of daily social life are impacted.
19:00
Saeed: You know how we are. If someone goes out and they are
19:03
even a little late, we are quick to call them and see where they
19:07
are. But, obviously, no one could get any information. We
19:10
had to do, like, back in the day and send someone out to the
19:13
street to find out where that person was.
19:20
Ali Latifi: What Saiz is describing is something that
19:22
annoys all Afghans, the fact that your parents are constantly
19:26
calling. Some people, though, had actual reasons to be
19:30
concerned with the fact that you couldn't even make a phone call
19:33
to check on a relative or a friend. Hamed, an NGO worker in
19:38
Kabul, says a colleague of his lived through what we were all
19:41
so afraid of, not being able to get in contact during an actual
19:46
emergency situation.
19:55
Hamed: One of my colleagues in the office lives in Kabul, but
19:58
he is from Khazni province. And that very morning, his mother
20:02
had died. Since phones were not working either, his brother had
20:07
to come to Kabul. When he got to the house, his family informed
20:11
him that his brother was in the office. So he went to the
20:17
office, but even there, since he couldn't call his brother to
20:20
come out, he was denied entry to the office.
20:24
He had to create quite a scene and finally, when the security
20:28
came out to talk to him directly, explain the situation.
20:34
It took until noon to sort out, and then they headed to Khazni.
20:41
By the time they reached Khazni, the funeral of their late mother
20:45
had almost taken place. So these were the issues, and all had
20:54
such challenges.
21:07
Ali Latifi: Farah, who works for an Internet provider, says being
21:10
cut off came at an especially trying time for her. She had
21:14
just lost her father a few days prior. With no Internet or
21:18
mobile phone access, she felt utterly alone at one of the most
21:21
difficult times of her life. Given the uncertainty and
21:41
confusion that had gripped the city, Farah said she couldn't
21:44
even will herself to go out and try to find her friends herself.
22:10
But some people seem to find the strangest silver linings.
22:13
Jabbar, a 22 year old student in Kabul, says when people aren't
22:18
scrolling through their phones, they can actually look at one
22:21
another, even talk to each other.
22:23
Jabar: What else is there to do?
22:25
Ali Latifi: Well, whatever happened to that game we used to
22:27
play before television was invented? It was called
22:30
conversation. In the twenty first century, mobile phones
22:33
have clearly replaced television, especially in the
22:37
Islamic Emirate where so much of what can be broadcast is so
22:40
tightly regulated.
22:44
Jabar: The shutdown of the Internet did have some benefits.
22:47
Though, because people's addiction to the Internet was
22:50
very real, people weren't speaking to one another or
22:53
hanging out with each other in person. This did create the
22:56
opportunity for people to actually have to sit down and
22:59
talk with one another directly for a few days instead of being
23:03
glued to the Internet to find time for their families.
23:07
Ali Latifi: Turns out, other people were thinking pretty much
23:10
the same thing Because within hours of the Internet being
23:14
restored on the afternoon of October 1, there was a video on
23:18
TikTok that said pretty much the same thing.
23:22
Speaker 13: Baba Sameer. Baba Sameer. The Internet is fixed.
23:25
The Internet is fixed? Really?
23:27
Yes. Forget it. What do you need with the Internet? For the two
23:31
nights that there was no Internet, I sat with my family.
23:34
They're such good people.
23:36
My little nephew has gotten so big. I swear to God, now I know
23:40
I have a family.
23:45
Ali Latifi: October 1 also happens to be Jabbar's birthday.
23:48
I'm on my way there for dinner when I stop outside a samosa
23:51
shop to buy some for the gathering. From the corner of my
23:55
eye, I see something I haven't seen in forty eight hours. A man
23:58
is speaking Pashto into his phone. Clocking that I'm
24:02
incredulous, the Samosa seller says in Pashto, yeah, it just
24:05
came back.
24:07
I immediately check my phone. There are bars. I start to get
24:11
alerts from WhatsApp, Instagram, Outlook. Before the food comes
24:16
up, I'm on my phone. The first thing I do is call my mother in
24:20
California.
24:22
After she scolds me for a few seconds, she asks me for the
24:25
details of what it's like. She's surprisingly speaking of it like
24:29
some kind of neighborhood gossip rather than a test of a nation's
24:33
endurance in the twenty first century. Walking to the birthday
24:37
party, I see everyone joyfully looking at their phones, calling
24:41
and happily posing for their first post in two days. When I
24:46
get to the party, it's all documented on Facebook,
24:50
WhatsApp, Instagram, and Snapchat. I'm taken by how
24:56
quickly everything returns to normal.
24:59
Almost as if the last forty eight hours were all just
25:02
Speaker 13: Super easy. Barely an inconvenience.
25:05
Ali Latifi: Less than thirty minutes after everything turns
25:07
back on, everyone is back on their phones. It's a cacophony
25:12
of TikTok videos and Instagram reels that fill the room. The
25:17
fervor, confusion, and worry are all gone. Everyone is sated once
25:22
again. I was sitting there watching men and women, young
25:30
and old, boomers to Gen X to millennials to Gen Z, all
25:36
returning to normal.
25:38
I'm struck by how quickly and easily everyone falls back into
25:42
their old habits. Maybe I'm naive, but I had just spent the
25:46
last few weeks helping with the coverage of Gen z protests that
25:50
led to the downfall of the government in Nepal, something
25:53
that was kick started by a proposed social media ban. A
25:56
year prior, I had helped cover the downfall of Bangladesh's
25:59
autocratic leader, Sheikh Hasina, which came after weeks
26:02
of youth led protests. Similar Gen Z protests had taken place
26:06
across Indonesia and The Philippines. I had hoped that in
26:13
Afghanistan, after forty eight hours of being cut off from each
26:17
other and the whole world, there would be at least something
26:21
more.
26:22
If not anger and people taking to the streets, then at least
26:27
people discussing what had happened, thinking about it, any
26:31
reaction. It didn't have to be anger, but just something to
26:36
show that a major unprecedented world event had just taken place
26:41
for all of us. But it turns out in Afghanistan, we were all just
26:48
happy to be back online. I think back to the song. By the next
27:11
morning, October 2, I'm at a cafe, MacBook and iPhone in
27:17
hand.
27:19
There is some lingering talk, mostly, wasn't that weird? And
27:23
I'm glad it's back, but that's really the most of it. I'm left
27:31
to wonder, is this the end result of our social media
27:34
obsessed society? Have we really become the humans in Wall E,
27:40
gluttonous and obsessed with what's in front of our faces?
27:43
Have we as a global society become like the resident of
27:47
Aldous Huxley's London, hooked to Soma?
27:51
In this case, content on Instagram, on TikTok, and
27:55
YouTube. Or in a country that in my parents' lifetime saw an
28:00
absolute monarchy turn to a constitutional one, to pseudo
28:03
democracy, to Soviet occupied communism, to a majority led
28:07
government, to the first Taliban Islamic Emirate, to an
28:10
approximation of Western democracy under US occupation,
28:13
to a second Taliban run Islamic Emirate, have people just
28:17
started to feel helpless and hopeless. The truth is I can't
28:32
say I blame them. If the last few months have taught us
28:36
anything, it's that this didn't end with the Islamic Emirate.
28:41
Only a couple of weeks prior to Afghanistan's Internet blackout,
28:45
pundits and politicians in The US were seriously questioning
28:49
whether the Internet was to blame for the public killing of
28:52
conservative firebrand, Charlie Kirk.
28:56
In 1999, video games and rock stars and to a lesser extent of
29:01
still fledgling Internet were cast with the blame for
29:04
Columbine. In 2025, the Internet and social media became the
29:13
alleged accelerant of what was being billed as an inevitable
29:16
spate of political killings.
29:18
Speaker 13: When you consider that young men are often
29:20
carrying out these kinds of acts of violence after becoming
29:23
radicalized online.
29:24
Speaker 14: I believe that social media has played a direct
29:27
role in every single assassination and assassination
29:30
attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years.
29:36
Ali Latifi: Australia banned social media for anyone 16. They
29:39
say they'll help any other country implement such policies.
29:43
India imposed a three hour deadline for platforms to delete
29:46
anything the Modi government, which has long been accused of
29:50
disenfranchising and abusing religious minorities, finds to
29:53
be false or misleading. Joseph Gordon Levitt, the star of one
29:58
of my favorite romantic comedies, The Five Hundred Days
30:01
of Summer, called for section two thirty to be repealed. It
30:05
protects companies from facing lawsuits over content users post
30:08
on their platforms.
30:11
Larry Ellison, the noted Zionist and a close associate of
30:14
Benjamin Netanyahu purchased TikTok in The US, a move that is
30:19
lauded by everyone from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. It
30:23
also resulted in allegations of censorship of pro Palestine
30:26
voices on TikTok. The Islamic Emirate may have been the most
30:31
stringent and the most sudden with their actions, but they're
30:34
far from the only government in the world trying to control
30:37
people's access to online content. In the end, we're still
30:44
not certain what happened in Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate
30:48
acknowledged that communication was cut off for forty eight
30:51
hours.
30:52
But as usual, they stopped short of any real explanation of why
30:56
or how it happened. But maybe that's just it. As much as
31:00
governments are working to restrict and regulate Internet
31:02
access, the truth is it's become a part of our lives. When I sit
31:09
and watch my family and friends in Afghanistan and The US
31:12
scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, I realize
31:16
that it's come to mean so much to so many. To my family in The
31:20
US, it's their way of keeping track of daily life in
31:23
Afghanistan.
31:24
They watch YouTubers and influencers travel the country.
31:27
And then they ask me if I've been to the new million dollar
31:30
restaurant or if I went to the same earthquake stricken
31:33
villages of Herat and Pattikar they saw online. I'm old enough
31:40
to remember waking up in the middle of the night as my
31:42
parents screamed into the phone to check on relatives in
31:45
Peshawar or trying to make their way out of Toshkant on what
31:49
would be their long journey to the Bay Area suburbs I grew up
31:52
in. To my family, friends, and neighbors in Afghanistan, the
31:57
Internet is a window to the outside world, a world that
32:00
looks strange and confounding at times. How could Kendall and
32:04
Kylie let their father become a woman?
32:07
Why is the president of The United States blathering
32:09
incoherently at a debate? And most importantly, have I finally
32:15
managed to watch all of Naruto? Spoiler no. The Islamic Emirate
32:22
is certainly portrayed as the most nefarious to do it, but it
32:26
seems as if the lesson that the world learned from our forty
32:28
eight hours is kind of basic. Yeah.
32:32
The Taliban are bad, but we're not them. A Taliban led
32:38
government may get all the blame, but it seems like so many
32:41
others are moving far too quickly to strip their citizens
32:45
of rights to free speech and the Internet.
33:58
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We're
33:59
gonna be back here in the main feed on or around Thursday,
34:03
March 19. Thank you so much to contributing producer Ali Latifi
34:07
for this story. Thanks also to our pseudonymous Afghans for
34:10
sharing their experiences. They were Suha, Farah, Saeed, Samir,
34:17
Ramin, Mohammed, Hamid, and Jabbar.
34:21
Thanks also to the folks who revoiced their tape in English.
34:26
Thank you to Sana Muradi, Fatima Hosseini, Haroun Rahimi, Nasir,
34:32
Ahmad Azizi, and Said. Did you know you can become a member of
34:41
Never Post for the low low low low low cost of $4 a month? It's
34:46
true. Head on over to neverpo.st and become a member today to
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help us continue to make episodes like this one, which
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The more support we have, the more adventurous and the more
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impactful stories we can produce. Neverpo.st, a measly $4
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a month. Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia
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Hampton and the Mysterious, doctor first name, last name.
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Our senior producer is Hans Vutto. Our executive producer is
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Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike
35:24
Krugnetta.
35:29
One, these are the vague demands you make on me. Two, that I
35:34
assemble. Two, recollect. Two, decode. Associate.
35:41
Three, that I admit fraught with difficulty. Reintegration is no
35:45
day at the beach in eggshell tints. The inmates start to get
35:49
brave and a little crazy when they hear that friendly voice,
35:52
the matron. Four, but that's also my mind lost. Her epic poem
35:57
on the constraints society places on the five,
36:01
misunderstood.
36:03
Excerpt of Sybil by Rebecca Wolf. Never Post is a production
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of Charts and Leisure, and it's distributed by Radiotopia.