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 billionaires

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 Kandahau, which is city in southern

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

in. Daniel Nolz is an international correspondent at the economist. He's been recently reporting in

Afghanistan. And these guys told me about what it's like to drive across Afghanistan, they drove all

over the country carrying goods and they, you know, they told me about how they get stopped all the time

by members of guns, you know, and they get stopped by the Taliban and they get stopped by the

...