Welcome to episode 103 of what most people think and I'm aware that the music hasn't been

updated the theme tune. I'm still tweaking, just getting things right, you know. And I just

like the sound of it as it is, but I do realise that we have to reflect on new reality and what a

week is this week, a week where the Taliban came back, you know, it's just, it's like fashion,

isn't it? It's like flares or fucking leggings or shelves suits. If you wait long enough, you know,

things come back, including the Taliban, it seems. And we will obviously be making a big focus of

that in this week's show, but just one little thing at the top of the show is I don't know who does

the Taliban's PR, but evidently they've been working hard on it because they they've managed to

seem more sophisticated than the entire West, right? We thought they were in the hills of Kandahar

learning new terror activities and what they were really doing is being schooled for doing press

conferences, okay? Now look straight into the camera. Am I allowed to do that these days? That's just

a generic kind of Taliban accent. Is there such a thing as a Taliban accent, but yeah, no,

they've won. So I'll be hiring. If anybody, if anyone's listening in on the wires from the Taliban,

I would get, I would like to get in touch with your PR and, you know, for the tour. We're also on

the back of that. We'll be looking at masculinity because obviously we have a lot of chat about the,

you know, the shocking implications of this for sort of feminism and women in Afghanistan, but we'll

also be looking at the state of masculinity generally because I think it provides a very interesting

contrast point in this country. Just before just a minor thing before we crack on with the shows,

I see that Australia and New Zealand are, you know, imposing incredibly draconian lockdowns

on based on the very smallest evidence of COVID outbreaks. And look, I get it at the beginning of,

do you remember, right? I'm not right about many things, but I said at the beginning of all this,

last spring, that you judge a country's handling of the pandemic across two years, right?

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