Every morning in Kabul, a 14-year-old boy named Abdul waved from behind a bakery window. Then one day he was gone — taken by a government official, the kind the United States was funding to fight its war. What happened to Abdul has a name: bacha bazi, or "boy play." It is centuries old, it is systematic, and for two decades while America had a hundred thousand troops on the ground, it was largely ignored. 

Boys between the ages of 10 and 18, taken from the poorest families, dressed, danced, and passed between warlords, police chiefs, and officials — many of them trained and bankrolled by American taxpayers. When U.S. soldiers tried to intervene, they were punished for it. The Taliban claim to have banned the practice. 

The State Department's own trafficking report says otherwise. I go inside a story that powerful people on every side of this war have preferred to leave in the dark. 

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The Trump administration is pursuing the largest denaturalization push in American history, more than 400 people targeted for having their citizenship stripped. The cases that have been made public are damning: men who abused children, groomed minors, and distributed illicit material while swearing under oath they had committed no crimes. 

The legal mechanism being used is not new, and in cases like these, few would argue against accountability. But when volume quotas are set before the cases are identified, when the workload is handed to generalist attorneys in already-strained offices, and when stripping citizenship doesn't even guarantee deportation, the question shifts. 

Not whether these men should be held accountable — they should — but whether this is how rigorous law enforcement actually works, or how it breaks. We get into all of it. 

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The buyers in this market share one thing across every category: nobody is looking for them. Coverage of Afghanistan’s child marriage crisis is overwhelmingly supply-side. How many girls. How poor are the families. What do the Taliban edicts say? The buyers — the men whose demand makes the market function — receive almost no scrutiny. No government in the region faces meaningful pressure to investigate or prosecute the purchase of Afghan girls. Western donors have not conditioned their aid or diplomatic engagement on it.

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Why do we recoil in horror when a child is abused by an individual, yet so often accept the deaths of children in war as an unfortunate reality?

In this thought-provoking episode, Hollie confronts a difficult question that challenges some of our deepest moral assumptions. Drawing on years of reporting from conflict zones and humanitarian crises, she explores the psychological and cultural forces that shape how we perceive suffering—and why our outrage is often selective.

Why are some acts of violence against children universally condemned while others are explained away as collateral damage, military necessity, or the cost of security? What role do distance, politics, and tribal loyalties play in determining which victims we mourn and which we overlook?

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As millions of fans descend on North America for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, another group is already getting ready: human traffickers.

In this episode, investigative journalist Hollie McKay examines the hidden risks lurking behind the world's biggest sporting event. With an estimated 6.5 million visitors expected across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, experts warn that the tournament could create unprecedented opportunities for trafficking networks, child exploitation, and other forms of abuse.

Why do major sporting events attract criminal activity? Are host cities truly prepared? And where does responsibility lie—with local law enforcement, governments, or FIFA itself?

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Sherry Johnson was 11 years old when she was forced to marry the man who raped her, and it was completely legal. Half a century later, child marriage remains lawful in 34 U.S. states, some with no minimum age whatsoever. In this episode, Hollie breaks down the legal loopholes, the political resistance, and the staggering numbers behind a practice America condemns abroad but quietly permits at home and asks the question reformers have been demanding answered for decades: why won't Congress act? 

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A local doctor in Taunsa, a mid-sized city in Pakistan’s Punjab province, first noticed something was wrong in late 2024. Children were showing up at his private clinic HIV-positive, and most had no obvious reason to be.

Their parents were testing clean. They were too young for drug use or any of the standard risk factors health officials tend to reach for when a case is inconvenient. What they had in common was simpler and more damning: they had all been treated at the same government hospital.

So, what went wrong? 

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Does this Industry Need More Oversight?

A convicted child sex offender is now a legal father. He is not in prison. He is not hiding. He raised money on GoFundMe, found a surrogate through a family friend, and in 2024 walked out of the system holding a baby boy — and the law, in Pennsylvania and in most of the country, lets him.

That is not a bug. It is the architecture.

Plus some life updates, second pregnancy and seeking suggestions. 

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Listener questions drive this candid episode of Dispatches with Hollie McKay, spanning immigration raids in Minneapolis, the roots of Minnesota’s Somali community, NATO’s fractures, and the geopolitical stakes of Greenland and Iran. Hollie explains why closing the Strait of Hormuz could shock the global economy, whether Iran’s unrest could reshape the Middle East, and who benefits when conflicts like Congo stay out of the headlines. 

A conversation about power, accountability, and the human cost of decisions made far from public view — plus a personal detour into ballet, discipline, and storytelling under fire.

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In this episode, journalist and author Hollie McKay reflects on a rare personal journey to Morocco—a trip meant for celebration, but one that also sparked a deeper reckoning with the relentless pull of news, social media, and digital noise. From wandering the mystical streets of Marrakech to confronting the addictive vortex of online life, Hollie shares candid insights on learning to disconnect, redefining her identity beyond breaking news, and rediscovering the creative writer within. Along the way, she explores authenticity, motherhood, and what it means to be truly present in a world that constantly demands our attention. 

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