meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Slate Daily Feed

What Next - The Taliban vs. the Press

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Afghan women and LGBTQ+ people immediately felt the impact of the Taliban’s return to power last year. But journalists trying to tell their stories could face intense and even violent backlash from the extremist group—like what happened to Lynne O’Donnell. 


Guest: Lynne O’Donnell, columnist at Foreign Policy and former Afghanistan bureau chief for Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey friend, before you hit fast forward through this ad, let me just bend your ear a tick

0:06.2

and tell you all about Slate Plus, Slate's membership program. Do you know that what next is

0:12.7

going to be here for you, whether there's big breaking news or whether you just want to hear

0:17.2

about a story you might have missed? Basically, we've got you totally covered. And we're here,

0:22.8

thanks to Slate. If you want to support us, and I know you do, the best way to do that is to

0:29.0

join Slate Plus. It'll get you all connected with Slate's award-winning journalism,

0:34.5

you'll get ad-free podcasts, you'll get plus exclusive content on shows like Slow Burn

0:39.1

and Political Gabb Fast, and you'll never hit a paywall on the Slate site. Every new membership

0:44.8

helps ensure we can continue bringing you the biggest stories each week. So go on, hit the Pause

0:50.0

button, and go to Slate.com slash what next plus. Again, that's Slate.com slash what next plus.

0:56.5

All right, on with a show.

1:05.1

Getting into Afghanistan right now is a little weird. Journalist Lin O'Donnell,

1:10.5

she's used to weird. She's been a foreign correspondent for years. But when she made plans to

1:14.8

go to Kabul back in July, even she found it weird. Take getting her visa. Lin went to the Afghan

1:28.6

embassy in London, told them her plans. But the embassy, it doesn't have any contact with the Taliban

1:36.9

government. She says it's still flying the old flag from before the Taliban took over.

1:48.1

And so it wasn't like they sent my application to Kabul to the foreign ministry to issue me with

1:54.8

a media visa. Hold it, that's so strange. So the embassy just operates, it's like a zombie embassy

2:04.0

operating from pre Taliban times. Yes, and most of them in around the world are, and the one in the

2:09.6

US has been closed down. When they gave you that visa where they were like, sure, if you want to go,

2:16.0

like well, exactly. But the sure if you want to go was accompanied with an affidavit that I

2:22.0

signed to say that I knew that I was taking a risk in going and that I accepted the risk and

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.