Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Smarter News. I'm Jenna, and I'm really excited that you're here today for

today's conversation and interview that I've been looking forward to for a really long time. So here's

a little bit of a background as to why. I'm recording this on August 10th, 2022, and I'm doing so

reflecting on last year at the same time, early August 2021.

When we first heard murmurs that something was happening in Afghanistan, something significant, we knew a few things.

We knew that the United States was going to be withdrawing from Afghanistan, but we didn't know the date or time or specifics of what that was actually going to look like.

We also had repeatedly over the

years looked at the actions of the Taliban and tried to really keep an eye on what was happening

in Afghanistan here at Smarter News. One of the facts that stands out to me continues to do so

is at that point the Taliban controlled more territory in Afghanistan than at any point in the

war. And after so many years of war, you might actually think it was the opposite. But that wasn't the

case. The Taliban throughout 2021 and really before that had been repeatedly gaining more ground,

gaining more territory. And we knew that meant something too, but again, we didn't know exactly what.

Of course, over the next few weeks last year, we would watch a world-changing event.

Afghanistan would yet again fall to Taliban rule. The United States would withdraw from Afghanistan.

And the Afghanistan that emerged in September was different than the Afghanistan that started in August.

And we were all able to watch that together.

We at Smarter News were trying as hard as we could to tell the best quality stories for you

so that we could really watch this evolution that we knew was significant.

And we wanted to make sure that we kept

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