Three years ago the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan. 

From his new home in Adelaide, Australia, Hazara human rights activist and photographer Muzafar Ali watched warlords returning to the places he had loved but had been forced to leave. He saw Western journalists describing a place they didn’t know and didn’t really understand. 

So last month, Muzafar returned to Afghanistan at great personal cost to document what life is like there. He found a network of underground schools where girls are risking their lives to get an education. 

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Guest: Hazara human rights activist and photographer Muzafar Ali

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Neale Radley was in his early 40s when he dived off a houseboat and hit a sandbar, becoming a high-needs quadriplegic. With no family members able to look after him, he was faced with limited options and ended up in aged-care.

Now, a clause in the government’s New Aged Care Act could mean that more younger people will end up in aged-care, potentially unwinding decades of work to prevent this from happening.

Today, Neale Radley on the reality of living in aged-care as a younger person and The Saturday Paper’s senior reporter Rick Morton on the plan that might make the problem worse.

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Guest: Neale Radley and senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton.

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This year’s Olympics has been phenomenal for women in sport.

Paris 2024 also set a milestone as the first Olympics to achieve full gender parity on the field of play.

But these achievements have been overshadowed by the abuse levelled at two female boxers who both clinched their first olympic medals over unfounded speculation about their sex.

One of the boxers, Imane Khelif, has spoken out several times in the face of it all.

The saga is fuelled by a current moral panic about ‘fairness’ in women’s sport – but it’s also part of a long and insidious history of scrutinising the bodies of female athletes, especially the successful ones.

Today, Fox Sports News presenter and women's sports advocate Sam Squiers on why female bodies remain one of the main objects of regulation by sports committees.

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Guest: Fox Sports News presenter and women's sports advocate, Sam Squiers.

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In this episode of our sister podcast, Read This, host Michael Williams speaks with journalist, editor and media proprietor Eric Beecher about his new book The Men Who Killed the News. Eric has worked for some of the most well-respected newspapers in the world, including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Wall Street Journal. He’s currently the head of Private Media, which runs the website, Crikey.

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It’s been called a forever war: the fight over how to teach children to read.

For decades, an outdated method has lingered in Australian classrooms as states protect schools’ right to teach how they wish.

Following a recent report from the Grattan Institute that found a third of Australian children couldn’t read well, state governments are finally picking a side and mandating the best way to teach reading.

Today, associate editor of The Saturday Paper Martin McKenzie-Murray on why “vibes-based learning” stuck around for so long and how children should actually be taught literacy.

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Guest: Associate editor of The Saturday Paper, Martin McKenzie-Murray.

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In the weeks since he was announced as Donald Trump’s running mate, some of JD Vance’s past remarks have resurfaced. He is now at the centre of a number of bizarre rumours and jokes.

 They’ve been picked up by some Democrats, who are labelling the two men on the republican ticket as ‘weird’.

Kamala Harris has chosen the man who started the ‘weird’ line of attack, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, as her running mate – 17 days after Harris herself became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Walz has been described as a plain speaker with ‘dad appeal’ – a stark contrast to his opponents.

So, is being ordinary enough to win over American voters?

Today, senior researcher at The Australia Institute, Dr Emma Shortis, on the tactics of the two VP candidates and what their nominations say about their respective parties.

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Guest: Senior researcher at The Australia Institute, Dr Emma Shortis.

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Hardly any foreign journalists have been into Gaza since Israel’s bombings began. The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes is one of the few who has.

On a recent trip, Zanny visited the streets of Jerusalem, the Knesset, Gaza and the West Bank, and spoke to dozens of people about what will happen to Gaza when, or if, the fighting stops.

Now, an end to conflict in the Middle East seems further away than ever. Iran’s supreme leader has vowed to retaliate against Israel after the head of Hamas’ political bureau was assassinated in Tehran last week.

While tensions continue to escalate, the question remains: who will control Gaza once the dust settles?

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Guest: Editor-in-chief for The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes.

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They’re hard to miss: the number of gambling ads flooding our screens and devices everyday. They’ve become such an inescapable part of sport that a parliamentary inquiry was formed, which looked at the impacts the ads have on the community. 

In the final months of her life, Labor MP Peta Murphy was the chair of that inquiry – and after hearing from the gambling industry, dependent sporting codes and families impacted by gambling addiction – her position was unequivocal: all ads for online gambling should be banned.

It’s been more than 14 months since the government received her recommendations and yet the proliferation of gambling ads has continued unabated. Now, the government could be set to water down a ban, in favour of caps on the number of ads per hour.

Today, Independent Senator David Pocock on the stranglehold the gambling industry has on Australian sport and politics and what it would take to change that.

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Guest: Independent Senator David Pocock

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It was supposed to be a routine call out when four police officers attended a property in regional Queensland just before Christmas in 2022.

The young officers approached the house, looking to do a routine welfare check, when they were fired on. After a siege that lasted hours, six people were killed, including two constables.

In the weeks that followed, media reporting focused on the strangeness of the town, and the strangeness of the Train family: two brothers and the woman that had been both of their wives.

Today, journalist and author of The Believer Sarah Krasnostein on the inquest into the Train family murders and the bigger questions that need to be answered if we’re to prevent similar attacks.

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Guest: Journalist and author of The Believer, Sarah Krasnostein

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In this episode of our sister podcast, Read This, host Michael Williams speaks with the winner of the 2024 Miles Franklin Award, Alexis Wright. Her epic novel Praiseworthy, also won the Stella Prize and has been described as “an astonishing feat of storytelling and sovereign imagination.

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