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When the United States pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban promised that women would be allowed to exercise their human rights within the confines of Sharia law, including the right to work, study, and be in public squares. That was a lie. Former U.S. Department of State Diplomat Annie Pforzheimer explains the actual situation for women today in Afghanistan and why the U.S. is both morally and strategically obligated to help them.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Annie Pforzheimer

Andy Slavitt  00:19

This is IN THE BUBBLE with Andy Slavitt. As always, you can email us your thoughts or ideas at in the bubble at laminotomy at Dad comm we’d love to hear from you. So the world is making incredible progress on many fronts and tackling its progress. But we’re also taking enormous steps backwards over the last year. Nowhere is this more true than in the plight and daily existence of women around the world. Whether Iran or Afghanistan, the lack of opportunity, human rights abuses, imprisonment, abuse and threats are, in some ways beyond the understanding of many of us to say nothing about the backward steps here in the US from courts in our own country around reproductive rights. But we’re not paying enough attention to what’s happening, particularly inside Afghanistan right now. Since the Taliban came back to power. After decades of absence, their promise of a more moderate and humane approach to women’s rights has turned into a lie, a nightmare, really. They’ve restricted education beyond the sixth grade, they’ve forbidden word for women outside of the house. Women cannot be in public parks, even with a chaperone. And they must be chaperoned by men at all time. And they cannot leave the country without men. And it’s getting worse and worse in December. They’ve basically forbidden women from attending universities are working inside an NGO. So this is a very, very troubling situation. And it also is one where the US has its fingerprints, given our long occupation. You know, the Taliban is empty rhetoric is one thing women in Afghanistan have come not to trust. But the empty rhetoric of the US toward women, both as a pretense for the original invasion, and the false hope given during the occupation, are really troubling. And seeing rhetoric that backed up by its actions should trouble all of us. Our hasty exit from Afghanistan, left the Taliban carte blanche and bended years of hope and progress and promises we’ve made both explicitly and implicitly. So why is the world not paying attention? You know, when we talk to people to interview them to come on the show, about the work they’re doing, they thanked us for calling attention to the situation. They are not in high demand to tell the story on cable news or in the world’s leading newspapers. So the situation is largely being ignored. So we’re going inside Afghanistan today to get the firsthand accounts of what’s happening to women, what women are saying, and what women are attempting to do about it, and to call on the US, and the United Nations in particular, who is present in Afghanistan to do more. I also want to know what all this tells us about making commitments around the world about allied ourselves with governments that don’t respect human rights, whether it’s Saudi Arabia, whether it’s China, or anywhere else, where we do business, what is our role? What influence should we providing and prioritizing the rights of women? This is after all; 2023 We’re supposed to be living in an enlightened world. What pressure are we supposed to bring? One thing is for sure, we need more focus, and we need more awareness. And that’s why in the bubble, is doing this episode. People need to know we’re paying attention. My guest today is the perfect person to talk about all of these questions. Any first timer, was a deputy assistant secretary of state for Afghanistan. She’s now at the Center for Strategic Studies. She also oversees an NGO in Afghanistan for Afghan women, whose name I can’t disclose for the safety of those working on the ground. As always, don’t forget, email us email me at in the bubble. Had LeBron had a media.com. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your ideas. I want to hear your thoughts. And let’s bring it in for this important conversation.

Andy Slavitt  04:46

Annie, welcome to the bubble.

Annie Pforzheimer  04:47

Thank you. Very nice to be here.

Andy Slavitt  04:50

So 16 months ago, when the Taliban came back into power, they promised that women would be allowed to exercise their human rights within the confines of Sharia law, including rights to work and study, and be in public squares, now we sit here 16 months later, can you describe what’s actually the situation for women today in Afghanistan?

Annie Pforzheimer  05:14

No, absolutely. And first and foremost, they were not telling the truth when they made those promises. What was happening right now is that women have been deprived of the right to study after the age of 12. They had been studying in the university and about 10 days ago, the Taliban, summarily close universities kicked out women who were in the middle of their final exams or ready to graduate, the Taliban has restricted women’s movement without a male escort, they can’t go to parks, they can’t, generally speaking, go to work. And there are moves to have them unable to go to health services, again, without a male escort. And the most recent decision by the Taliban is that women cannot work for nonprofits, for NGOs, and women have been serving in the NGOs that are carrying out incredibly vital humanitarian assistance, doing so on behalf of the United Nations in general. And if women can’t work for these NGOs, that means that they also can’t serve women who need that help. Because there can’t be any kind of mixing of the sexes under the Taliban regime. And so they have suspended their work. And the UN is in negotiations right now as we speak with the Taliban to get them to reverse this latest order. So life for women has been a series of doors slammed in their faces, as they get poorer. And the violence of the war, that we all are happy that violence is over that violence has moved indoors, to people’s homes, where women are suffering from gender based violence at the hands of family members, with absolutely no recourse.

Andy Slavitt  07:19

No recourse and it sounds like no escape, because women’s shelters and any other kind of ability for women to change your situation. It just sounds like it’s been systematically and summarily cut off. It sounds very much like an imprisonment.

Annie Pforzheimer  07:38

It is and I even you know, it occurs to me that that people might be familiar with the issue of trafficking in persons, right, where maybe you’ve been to a bathroom at a rest stop in on a highway in the United States. And there might be a sign that says, these are the signs of trafficking. Well, one of you know that the things that you could say is that the whole female gender in Afghanistan, is being deprived of its right to free movement. They don’t have their passport, they don’t have the ability to marry who they want. They’re being given in marriage, in many respects, partly out of poverty and hunger at younger and younger ages, or they’re being taken by Taliban fighters. So it’s sort of a whole half of the population under that kind of repressive person by person repression that, as you say, it’s like a prison.

Andy Slavitt  08:39

For what understand a little bit about how the Taliban has been operating. Because, as you said, what they said, when they came to power this time around, that they were going to have a softer stance, clearly lacked credibility. Yet, as recently as a few months ago, my understanding is that women were able to sit for university exams. Is there evidence that while the preponderance of the Taliban has come down this way that there are more moderate voices within the Taliban who are not in favor of this latest move? And did those voices have a chance from what you’re hearing on the ground?

Annie Pforzheimer  09:16

Yeah, I’m not sure that I credit there being too many of those moderate voices, there are a few and people point to them. But by and large, when the functionaries in the Taliban regime, in other words of their ministers, or their governors or their sub governors, they basically carry out without question or deviation, the orders that are coming from the center. And so whether or not there might be moderate thinkers, there aren’t really any moderate actors. And it’s turning into simply a case of the Taliban most orthodox leadership. Moving in a kind of systematic way to dismantle the freedoms that women and not just women, the media, and some of the ethnic and religious minorities, the freedoms that those people had.

Andy Slavitt  10:13

You don’t see signs that there’s any active debate within the Taliban over these policies?

Annie Pforzheimer  10:19

No, I think you have to judge by actions. And there, there could be debates, but it doesn’t matter. Because in terms of action, you only see the highly orthodox, highly conservative group, saying what they say, and then everyone else carrying out their orders.

Andy Slavitt  10:41

So very, very little hope that they can be moved or that those factions can be activated. Let me ask you about a little bit of the context behind what women have experienced over the last number of decades in Afghanistan. I think many of us are used to thinking of women as being historically oppressed. But women in Afghanistan got the right to vote before women in the US got the right to vote. And women up until the Taliban came to power. We’re part of that society in a much more wholesome way. Obviously, the Taliban came to power in the mid-90s, and changed all of that. And then I imagine limited experience two decades of promises, and education and opening. And I guess I’m wondering, what is it like to feel those sense of promises to feel that hope? And then to have it taken away?

Annie Pforzheimer  11:42

Yeah, I can’t even you know, I am not an Afghan woman, I speak with many on a regular basis, but I can only begin to try to echo what I hear. Of course, they’re not an on, you know, differentiated mass of victims, Afghan women have been part of their own, you know, self-education. And in many respects, this 20 year period, under the republic with the US and NATO presence was a period of many firsts for Afghan women in senior ranks of government, in business, in sports, in a lot of walks of life, and in the media, that all of those decades before had prepared them to do to participate in, you know, Afghan women are part of a bigger society, which has had 40 plus years of war, which has really devastated their opportunities. And it also was a society that had had a big divide between rural and urban populations. So in the rural areas, they were not participating to the same degree as in the urban ones in all of those opportunities that were offered before and after the Taliban in the recent past. But overall, the country was seeing a tremendous improvement in the position of women and also in their physical and mental and other health indicators. You know, maternal and infant mortality rates were way down, birth rates were down. And life expectancy rose tremendously in the 20 year period between 2001 and 2021. So even if women were still in some areas, very much part of a traditional and rural lifestyle that wouldn’t have included them going to secondary school, it wouldn’t have included them working, but they were seeing an improvement in their lives. And then, you know, you have the spectacular examples of like the girls robotics team, that’s kind of, you know, another one of those signature achievements were any time African women who wanted to study got the chance to study. They have been amazing.

Andy Slavitt  14:04

Yeah, I’ve been reading some accounts from professors over the last week or two in Afghanistan, and I hear exactly, exactly that. Let’s take a quick break. We’ll come back and talk further about what you’re seeing on the ground. And I want to get into this idea of what attitudes are towards the long US occupation and where things stand now. You run a nonprofit and NGO on the ground in Afghanistan. You’re not going to disclose the name for reasons of keeping the people involved safe to we understand that. But I’m wondering if you can give us a sense of it’d be at first is what it feels like on the ground from the women that you speak with? Is it fear? Is it fear mixed with defiance? Is it great sadness? Loss? What is the atmosphere, and how women seem to be responding to this whole series of events?

Annie Pforzheimer  15:26

Well, thank you for asking that. I’m Chair of the Board of this nonprofit, and it was much larger, and it’s had to let many, many people go over the last year and a half as funding has been pulled, and the permission to perform the roles that we had been performing those that permission is gone. So first and foremost, people are struggling to stay alive to feed their families. And for those who continue to work, what they’re dealing with, it’s overwhelming, it’s crushing. And I think that there are issues of trauma that Afghans have been through who are living there and trauma for Afghans who have left. It’s kind of unacknowledged sometimes people think, Oh, if an Afghan has made it to the United States, they must be happy. And in fact, what they hear from their family on the ground, you know, that the daily struggle to get food. And then the other struggles to, you know, to get an education or to find work. Nobody who is associated with Afghanistan can be feeling any kind of real happiness or optimism at the moment. There is just a determination to keep going.

Andy Slavitt  16:47

Yeah, it is. It’s something really hard for people in the West and in the US to imagine this closing off of hope and opportunity. And even before women were banned from universities, of course, they would, as you say, they were banned from secondary schools already restrictions on how education worked. were such that women couldn’t ask a question of a male professor and of course, had to be segregated from male students and taught separately. And I read some incredibly heartbreaking. And yet, I couldn’t help but notice the tones of bravery and defiance and strength in some of these accounts, from some of these women.

Annie Pforzheimer  17:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s, there’s sort of no comparison I can truly give to us audience. We’ve never been through the things they’ve been through. We all went through a lockdown in the US the beginning of COVID, and found it to be, you know, sort of unbearable, but Afghan girls are on their 500th day of being unable to leave the house and unable to just meet with their friends. You know, and how do people keep resilient under those sorts of pressures? It’s asking too much. And so what I think we’re on the verge of, unfortunately, is the possibility of another outbreak of violence there. Because these restrictions on women are not isolated. There are restrictions on men and the media, and there are reprisals and killings of former soldiers and government employees. And there’s probably going to be more violence by people fighting against the Taliban, this is incredibly avoidable, Afghan people want peace. But if you’ve pushed people too far, it’s very possible that they will start fighting again, which, of course brings us to the fact that that’s entirely not in the US interest. But we are part of the reason that this happened.

Andy Slavitt  18:58

And I do want to get into that. How are people blooming in particular feeling about the entire US presence in the country of the United States right now, given the promises made? You know, I reread some of the fairly grandiose statements from the time Secretary Powell, from Prime Minister Tony Blair, from others talking about women’s rights were one of the core objectives of moving into Afghanistan. And I don’t doubt necessarily their sincerity in saying it at the time, but it has got to feel to people I want let me just ask you how what do people say what people say today about the United States?

Annie Pforzheimer  19:52

Oh, you know, people that I speak to and hear about and hear from are so angry and they’re so disappointed. And they do look at those same words that you’ve just described and say, What’s the truth? You know, that there was so you know, this reversal, the decision by the Biden administration in April of 2021, to pull troops out, really made it very clear that, you know, whatever happened would be okay with the US. And that stands in complete contrast to the multiple assertions of friendship and solidarity. And, you know, our we had a bilateral security agreement that was signed in 2015. We had a lot of years and a lot of congress people visiting to, you know, meet with women’s groups. And I think those women’s groups, look at this all and say, what was that about? Were we a decoration? Did you mean it at the time? Or was this? You know, it feels delusional to them, honestly. Because we don’t seem to know what we want?

Andy Slavitt  21:03

Well, it certainly their interests weren’t enough, important enough to negotiate or manage even on the way out. It just can’t help it feel that way. So I guess when I read statements from the west today, there are condemnations of the Taliban. Certainly, I can’t tell. And you know, you’ve been in the State Department, I can’t tell if those are communications were written by, you know, the communications team with words that are hollow and don’t carry any meaning behind them, whether there are sanctions or actions or activities or aggressive actions that people are taking, it feels just feels to me like this is getting too easily accepted and lost and swept into the pattern of, well, this is not our problem. Am I wrong?

Annie Pforzheimer  21:57

You are not wrong. You are right. This is a lot of words, and yet not really any actions that seem to be bearing fruit. And part of the reason you’re not seeing the actions that will bear fruit is that there aren’t that many policy options available. We gave away so much of our leverage without getting really anything in return for it. And once you’ve given it away, you know, what have we got to work with? Obviously, military options are completely off the table. Everybody knows that everyone accepts that. But aside from military options, and when you’re dealing with people who truly don’t care if their own citizens live or die, you know, what have you got to work with? Condemnation by the West is something that actually makes them feel better, even about what they’re doing. It’s like a validation.

Andy Slavitt  23:00

Everybody pat themselves on the back, the West and the Taliban.

Annie Pforzheimer  23:04

Yeah, you know, if you did that, right, if you did that, if you got that mad, that means that you’re on the right track. There have been some good work by the Special Envoy Rina Emiri. She’s an African-American, and she’s been traveling to Muslim majority countries to get them to make condemnations which they have done. And that is not enough to sway the Taliban, they have withstood the criticism of the Muslim majority world before. But it does land differently than having you know; the US and Germany and France say something.

Andy Slavitt  23:44

Does the US have an obligation here?

Annie Pforzheimer  23:46

Yes, it does. Yes, it does. I really believe that.

Andy Slavitt  23:50

Tell me what you think that obligation is?

Annie Pforzheimer  23:54

Well, I’ve really been saying for a long time that I think that we have both a moral and a strategic interest. And our moral interest, as you say is that these are values that we can’t walk away from the Biden administration is about the how the democracy and other democracies Summit. And if you can stand for democracy and watch at the same time, the complete dismantling of human rights of an entire population, then I don’t think that your Summit is going to ring true. So we have a moral responsibility. But I think we have a strategic one as well. You know, this is an important part of the country. There are nuclear neighbors there. China has just signed a big energy deal with the Taliban. It’s Russia’s backyard and we had an influence right in the middle of all of that which we chose to walk away and desert. So why don’t we try harder to make our relationship To be with the Afghan people, and not with the regime that seized power by force, what is it that we can do that will empower the Afghan people not in power in the arming them sense, but empower them in their own society, to push back at the restrictions that are truly, you know, being imposed on them that are not popular, you know, to push back in the name of the human rights that we actually believe in?

Andy Slavitt  25:30

Okay, let’s take one more final break, come back and talk  with Annie about what’s going to happen next in Afghanistan, and what chance is the UN has of really trying to make a difference with the Taliban? You know, I’m sure you noted, as I did that, in the recent omnibus bill, the very, I think, modest proposal to accept Afghan refugees was defeated by you know, I think the protestations of Chuck Grassley, the 89 year old senator from Iowa, by all accounts.

Annie Pforzheimer  26:26

Yeah, the Afghan Adjustment Act.

Andy Slavitt  26:29

Please talk about that. And what it obviously says is, you know, we’re done. We’re, you know, we’ve had enough, we’re done. And I think, the same attitude that you see, in much of Congress towards COVID. In public health, you know, this is over, we’re done. We’re moving on, we have no obligations.

Annie Pforzheimer  26:47

Well, we have this very famously short attention span in the United States. In 1983, the Afghans were our favorite people, they were fighting the Soviets. Ronald Reagan had a, you know, Afghan day, he met with some of the Mujahideen at the time. And he lauded them in a way that would sound very familiar to anyone watching how we deal with Zelenskyy, right now, Ukraine, they were our favorite people. But you know, wars take a long time, Americans sometimes think that a war is supposed to take exactly four years start to finish or something. These conflicts are long and almost intractable. And so the fact is, the Afghans are still fighting, the same fight, but we’ve moved on. But what is that signal to other countries in the world, including Ukraine, about our value as an ally?

Andy Slavitt  27:48

What was it that Colin Powell said, The Pottery Barn rule, you break it, you own it? That just seems like it couldn’t be further from a public attitude. But I’m curious to see if you could tell us what in the process of how we got here, and how what role we played what we could have done differently, what we need to do differently, how our policies need to be different, how we can build women’s rights and human rights into foreign policy, in a world of lots of real politics and a world of, you know, where you got to deal with people that often don’t share your values. But, as you say, oftentimes, our values and our interests are very much aligned. And when we don’t protect women’s rights, or fight for them, or treat them as important upfront, you know, it enables organizations which are counter to US interests, oftentimes.

Annie Pforzheimer  28:44

Exactly. I think that the concept that women’s rights are sort of an additive, and extra, this is a really a dangerous idea. Because women’s rights and counterterrorism should be looked at in very much the same lens, what are our interests? Who are the people that we can deal with? And who are the people who are going to carry out terrorist acts against their own population, to the degree that they’re also going to encourage terrorism elsewhere? So right now, while the Taliban is oppressing the women in a completely connected way, they are also allowing the presence of various terrorist organizations on the soil in the soil of Afghanistan. And we have no partner there that we can work with, even if people in the US government, you know, they think their counterterrorism, sort of silo is all about how can we get the next guy and there could be people out there thinking that they could work with the Taliban in order to get the next guy if that guy is from ISIS, who’s a common enemy, but that’s a silo. If you really think about it, empowering the Taliban in any way, just makes ISIS stronger. You know, you can have a tactical victory and find a person of interest. But the organizations out there that watch what happens when a terrorist group grabs a whole country and takes a whole population hostage, those groups are watching the Taliban, and they’re very encouraged. And if the US government is meeting with the Taliban at senior levels, and treating them with great respect, they’re even more encouraged.

Andy Slavitt  30:40

So some people would say, as a counter that in this world, we have no choice. But to deal with people whose values we don’t. We don’t agree with, for geopolitical reasons, for energy reasons, for reasons of getting people to cooperate on any one of a number of topics, climate, etc, etc. And that, you know, you sometimes have to compromise your values. What do you say to that? I mean, you were you were obviously part of the diplomatic system in the United States who dealt very much with those tradeoffs all the time. Yeah. When does that argument, the right one, and when is it just time to throw it out?

Annie Pforzheimer  31:19

These are very important arguments even to have right that you, you could have the debate, and I was in that system, as you know, having that debate on many occasions, maybe first of all, I would say, if it’s a tradeoff, that indicates that there’s kind of a mainstream policy, and that you occasionally deviate from it. And I think that would be a good way to start, like the policy that we should employ, is that we are trying to strengthen human rights around the world, including, of course, starting in the United States, and that we are going to work more productively with partners who share those values. And then yes, there are exceptions, there are places where our human rights agenda is going to have to exist on maybe a lower burner. But the idea that you can sort of trade and put human rights completely to the side, and have a productive bilateral relationship. There. I think we’re just fooling ourselves. Because human rights as I say, they’re not they’re not an additive. They’re a foundational issue. That’s why the Biden administration is bothering to have a democracy Summit, they believe this, or they say they believe this. So if it’s foundational, everywhere, it needs to be foundational in Afghanistan, there can’t be this unbelievably visible double standard, about, you know, what is a war crime in in Ukraine, and what is just oh, too bad. In Afghanistan. I mean, there are war crimes happening right now.

Andy Slavitt  33:06

Particularly in a country, we were propping up for two decades Exactly. And making promises to so what happens next here, give us give us a sense of what we should be watching for in the US. And I really hope that people in the US begin to pay a lot more attention to this. One reason I think people stop paying attention is when they feel like there’s nothing for them to do or they don’t know what to watch, or they the situation feels hopeless. Sure, help us understand what to focus on what happens next. And how to make sure that we support organizations like the NGOs on the ground, and others who are who are trying to turn the situation around.

Annie Pforzheimer  33:47

Well, one thing that one thing that I think people must accept is that the US is turn of being in, you know, the lead of this policy that meant that maybe over what we could be doing most productively is empowering the United Nations, and giving it as much support as possible behind the scenes, so that it is the very vigorous spokesperson for the international community’s interest in improved human rights in the reversal of these terrible policies. As I mentioned, the I think the UN is currently negotiating with the Taliban to try to reverse the policy with respect to not NGOs, because there could be an interruption of lifesaving humanitarian assistance, because nobody will be on the ground to carry it out. And the Taliban have repeatedly indicated that they don’t care. So this is a tough, tough negotiation and the UN has to be as strong as possible. So sometimes the US has to Understand when it’s not supposed to be in the lead?

Andy Slavitt  35:02

Is there is there evidence that the US behind the scenes is working within the US structure to help them get that done and provide the resources to get that done?

Annie Pforzheimer  35:15

To my way of thinking, there is some evidence that the US is trying to empower the UN, but it’s not enough. I believe that we could be part of and there are going to be more meetings in the Security Council next week on this topic. That’s where we have some real strength is in the Security Council. And even though obviously, our relations with Russia and China are terrible, there is a certain meeting of the minds on this issue. So that’s where the Taliban might actually listen, if it’s a united international voice, even including Russia and China, that is giving them a message that their behavior is beyond the pale. And so our strength at the Security Council is a tool that we have to use even more vigorously than we’ve done so far.

Andy Slavitt  36:09

Well, on that note, sticking of women having an Afghanistan on top of the situation they’re facing to rely on the US, China and Russia agreeing to come together and provide support feels like yet another unwinnable burden that we face here. Andy, thank you so much for talking to us today. From the Middle East, I know that it’s an hour, and you need to get to bed. But I really appreciate you keeping us informed and educating everyone here about what we need to know in this really drastic, drastic situation. That is one of the most significant violations that you can possibly think of, of millions and millions of people.

Annie Pforzheimer  36:53

Well, thank you very much for being interested in for your listeners for remaining engaged on this.

Andy Slavitt  36:59

Thank you for being with us this week listening to I think, all of these important shows that we did this week, we heard about how, what’s going on in Afghanistan today we heard Wednesday, from Governor Tim Walz about how to govern in a world where you’ve got MAGA Republicans on one side in rural communities and big cities that are liberal and other communities. And of course, we started the week with an important episode about COVID In the latest variant so if you haven’t listened to those earlier episodes, go back and listen, let me tell you what we’ve got going next week. Monday, is Martin Luther King Day, an important day for all of us to reflect. I have Keith Ellison, the Attorney General in Minnesota coming on, Keith Ellison, among other things, was at the center of the George Floyd. Police Officer prosecution. Derek Chauvin put him in jail for a long, long time. And it’s been at the center of the storm around how we think about safety and criminal justice. And what are many of the things that Dr. King fought for his life. So that’ll be a great episode Wednesday. I’m really pleased to have Dr. Celine Gounder. On the show, Celine is a wonderful resource in the world of public health always has been done on the show before. She’s also the widow. Although it’s hard to even imagine that she’s a widow at this point in her life of the late grand wall, who died suddenly, at the World Cup. You may have read about it. You may have read about Grant waiting for very personal and important conversation about public health topics and Celine’s. Life today and Grant’s life on Wednesday. And then on Friday, we’re going to talk about American football and the physical dangers that exist around concussions and other things with a great resource […]. So that’s our next week. I look forward to talking to you then. Have a fantastic weekend in the meantime.

CREDITS  39:25

Thanks for listening to IN THE BUBBLE. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kathryn Barnes, Jackie Harris and Kyle Shiely produced our show, and they’re great. Our mix is by Noah Smith and James Barber, and they’re great, too. Steve Nelson is the vice president of the weekly content, and he’s okay, too. And of course, the ultimate bosses, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs, they executive produced the show, we love them dearly. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, with additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia where you’ll also get the transcript of the show. And you can find me at @ASlavitt on Twitter. If you like what you heard today, why don’t you tell your friends to listen as well, and get them to write a review. Thanks so much, talk to you next time.