Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

A list of the world's self-made female billionaires reveals a curious fact.

Lots of them are Chinese.

We look at the Mao-era attitudes that paved the way for China's billionaireses

and why it seems there will be fewer of them in the future.

And Barack Obama is laying the groundwork for his presidential library.

Every former president has a site in their honor.

But what are they?

Archives, tourist attractions, PR factories?

We take a look at why they're frequently so controversial.

But first... Afghan militants and American officials sat down for their latest round of negotiations in Qatar last week, even as violence continued.

Almost 18 years since America and other NATO members invaded Afghanistan,

the Taliban is still a powerful and lethal force.

Earlier this month, an attack by the insurgency group

on an American-run compound in Kabul spread chaos and left at least five people dead. In response to the

unrelenting violence, America and its allies are now negotiating with the Taliban, seeking a

withdrawal in exchange for a commitment from the group not to harbor terrorists. On the ground in Afghanistan,

there are plenty of clues as to why the Taliban has been so hard to beat.

So I found myself at this truck stop outside Kandahar, which is a city in southern Afghanistan.

We were sat on a rug, they served as tea, there was this kind of enormous storm coming in.

...