The Rich Roll Podcast - Roll On: The Plight Of Women In Afghanistan

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

It’s time to grapple with the human rights issues ensuing in Afghanistan. To guide us in this important conversation are podcast alums Drs. Ayesha & Dean Sherzai. For those new to the show, ‘Roll On’ is typically our opportunity to shift focus from my traditional fare of evergreen conversations to instead hone in on matters of contemporaneous, time-sensitive interest. Today we do just that, but with a twist, spending the entire episode grappling with the very grave plight faced by the 18 million women in Afghanistan in the wake of the United States departure. Breaking down the grip of Taliban rule, this is an exploration and round table discussion led by Team Sherzai. Experts on brain health, Alzheimer’s, and neurodegenerative diseases, Drs. Sherzai have twice graced this show for deep dives on maintaining and optimizing cognitive function. But what most don’t know is that Dean & Ayesha have considerable experience with Afghanistan. In 2003 Dean was appointed the Deputy Minister of Health by President Karzai, creating the most successful post-conflict healthcare system with women’s empowerment at its core. Ayesha founded the Social Welfare Society for Afghan Refugees in medical school, volunteered with Doctors Without Borders’ in Afghanistan during her medical training, and co-founded the Afghan Health Initiative in order to empower the Afghan diaspora with their own health. My intention for this conversation is less political—we aren’t here to necessarily debate the political advisability of the U.S. withdrawal as much as the incomprehensibly botched manner in which we withdrew—and the downstream human rights implications of Afghan women in particular. Other specific topics discussed include: The history of women’s rights in Afghanistan; using healthcare as a catalyst for women’s empowerment; a breakdown of the imperative of the Taliban and how it functions; the role that fear plays in female oppression; what we can be done now to aid Afghan women; and how to support celebrated female artists, scientists, politicians & leaders in Afghanistan. To read more and listen click here. You can also watch on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This is an important, pertinent, and heavy conversation. My heart goes out to those suffering. If possible, I highly encourage you to donate to programs like Restore Her Voice. Any amount can make a difference. Peace + Plants, Rich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, all you high vibration earth dwelling humanoids, those in search of truth, virtue, and the better world of our collective imagination. May this invisible wave formation of ones and zeros reach your brain and find you well amidst the tumult of a world that can feel at times out of control. May it bring you comfort, especially to those that are lonely out there and grace to those in need of it. My name is Rich Roll. Here again, in physical parallel, in neurological simpatico and verbal symbiosis

with my endearing and sagacious Confederate on all things roll on, the honorable and high principled snorkel mask adorning Baron of the literary manner himself, my liege, my Lord, the humble nobleman himself, Mr. Adam Skolnick. A lot of pressure on these intros after the response last time.

So I had to double down. I kneel before you, sir. Yes. How may I be of service? I am in service to you today, my friend. All right. For those new, roll on is typically our opportunity

to shift focus away from our traditional fair of evergreen conversations to instead hone in on matters of more contemporaneous time-sensitive interest. Today, we do just that, but we're gonna do it with a twist after a little bit of housekeeping and typical opening shenanigans.

We're gonna spend the gravamen of this episode grappling with recent events in Afghanistan, less from a political perspective and more from a human rights perspective with a specific focus on the very grave plight faced by the 16 plus million women in Afghanistan in the wake of the United States departure and the grip of Taliban rule. It's a conversation and exploration that is aided, soon to be aided by two special guests today, Drs. Ayesha and Dean Shirze. You know the Shirzes as the neurology duo, the experts on brain health, Alzheimer's and neurodegenerative disease. They've twice

graced this show in the past, but what you might not know or remember is that they both have considerable experience with Afghanistan, having lived and worked there for three years, I believe, beginning back in around 2003, a period in which Dean was actually appointed by President Karzai as the deputy minister of health. And together they created the most successful post-conflict healthcare system with women's empowerment at its core. Lots to come on that.

It's proving to be a fascinating conversation. But before team Sherzai joins us, Adam, how goes you? I am grateful. Are you ordering food at Cafe Gratitude? No, but I feel- That's what they say. I know. You don't just order the menu item. You have to say, I am.

I know. And the foods are grateful. I am honored. Compassionate. I am perturbed. Joyous. If I was the manager at Cafe Gratitude, which I applied for that, by the way.

You did. I didn't get it. That's why you ended up at Ben and Jerry's. So I'm at Cinnabon now. Off from Ben and Jerry's? Yeah, Ben and Jerry's because you guys, I didn't work there, I never worked there. So I applied to gratitude and Cinnabon,

but gratitude, I think I would add an I am perturbed item. Yes. Yeah, I don't know what it would be, but it'd be a lot of, there'd be lots of garlic and item. Yes. Yeah, I don't know what it would be, but it'd be a lot of, there'd be lots of garlic and onion. Yeah. Some like Jewish guilt, invective put into the menu.

A dill pickle. Right. I am grateful, because first of all, the scheduling, thank you to allowing me to be here with the sure size. Yeah, so we're recording this a week early because you're gonna be up swimming Alcatraz. That's it.

And also grateful we're dispensing with first world problems here to talk about like some real life and death issues in Afghanistan. So, that makes me feel grateful. That's one of the reasons I've always been attracted to kind of human rights reporting in general, because it does give you as someone engaging in that space,

like the gravity to see the world in kind of the way it really is and to be grateful for what you have. Sure. And so there's kind of that element of it there, except I did have one first world problem to ask you. What's the vegan way of getting rid of a spider that has taken up residence in your rear view mirror? Well, leave him be. Let him live there?

Yeah, is he bothering you? Well- Or consciously relocate him? Are we sure it's him? Maybe not. Her. I don't know. So no water in there just to like, cause every morning there's this huge, like messy web.

It's not like Charlotte. I'm not getting like a message in the morning. It's this mass of like stringy web that I then, I knocked down and then every morning it's there again. And today on the drive here, it blew out because of on the freeway, but it'll be there. Well, you're dealing with the symptom and not the cause.

Like if you're just destroying the web, but not finding the spider and appropriately relocating him to a habitable environment, I don't know. All right. Well, let's do a pot on that one time. That deserves a full hour. We need a full hour on this.

I once had rats living under the hood of my car. So something about my car is like, is a ecosystem. Yes, the Subaru ecosystem. All right, well, keep us posted. Next week there'll be an update, I'm sure. How are you, man? I'm good. I've been back in the pool.

I'm feeling grateful myself to be wet again after quite a respite. So that's been really nice. And it's actually helping my sleep and I'm seeing the gains pretty quickly. So I'm happy about that. I'm rocking new glasses. Great looking glasses.

Roka sent me, they have a fall line. They sent me like three pairs of glasses with my prescription in them. So I'll rotate those through, but- Got a haircut? Did get a little bit of a haircut. Looks good. Yeah, everything's good.

I love seeing the swim flop. I think I speak for everyone out there. When the flop comes down, then you throw what you've been doing out there. I drop the kickboard with all my gear on the deck. Yeah. It makes a loud thwap. Yes.

On Instagram stories, every time I do a swim, people seem to enjoy that for some reason. And the swims are impressive, man. You're doing 5K in like an hour 10. That is, that's all relative, trust me. You know, I have a long way to go to get back to form, but I'm excited to be back in it. And yeah, people love the flap.

And then they, I love it when people tag me, they do their own version of that. And then I always reply with a grade. Oh, exactly. Because there's a very specific way to do it correctly. Most people fall short of that. So do your thwap, tag me, I'll grade it. I'm starting, I'm gonna start thwapping at the beach.

Yeah, well that would require you going to a swimming pool and not the ocean. Can't I thwap on the sand? It's not the same. There's no thwap. It's not the same thing. It's just a- I have to take you not the same. There's no thwap. It's not the same thing. I have to take you to the pool and I have to evaluate your technique.

It's not gonna be pretty. My spidey sense from the spider in your rear view mirror is telling me that maybe you need a tutorial. I definitely do. Yeah. But you said you were gonna swear off cycling and you did this massive ride yesterday too. No, I said I need to take a break from running

and I need to be judicious about my cycling. So I've dialed the cycling back, but I'm gonna ride like one or two times a week and really focus on the swimming. Seems like that was a monster too. So it's actually already and I'm doing some strength training. So I'm really dedicated to like resolving this back issue.

That's my commitment right now. Right on. I do wanna report back on something that was a bit controversial last time we spoke, which is the appropriate definition of quote unquote bi-weekly. We had a bit of a kerfuffle last time around what that actually means. Some confusion.

I'm proud to announce that my instinct was correct, Adam. It was. Per Merriam-Webster, biweekly is defined as something that occurs every two weeks or twice per week. That's confusing, Merriam. How is that possible? Because even Merriam doesn't know what it means. Right, it means both or either.

Yes. This is sowing mass confusion. I blame Gen Z. Similarly, no, this is, it's both or either. This is sowing mass confusion. I blame Gen Z. Similarly, no, this is, it's always been the case. Similarly, bi-monthly is defined as something that occurs every other month or every, or twice, or like, no, every other month or twice a month. This is not good.

So if you say we're gonna meet bi-monthly or we're gonna meet bi-weekly, how are you supposed to know what that means? If you like join a new organization and then the organization says, okay, great to be here. We're gonna be here bi-weekly. And then you don't come for two weeks and you've missed three meetings

or at least two meetings. That's not good. No. You're on the outs, buddy. So with this, henceforth, I despair over the pitfalls of the English language. I mean, come on. Words, term, they have one job.

One job. And this means two different things. I don't know what to tell you. Let's create a new word for it. What's that? For every other week. You blanked out. Too much pressure.

Yeah, I know. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Sorry. This concludes that section. I'll come up with one by the end of the episode. One thing I wanna mention real quick here to shift gears a little bit. Many of you know and love Josh LaGianni.

He's been on the podcast a number of times. His story of dropping 250 pounds, I believe, to become an ultra runner living down in Southern Louisiana. It's a legendary tale. He's a beautiful human being. He's an audience favorite. He was one of my favorites from the beginning. Yeah, he's an incredible guy, beautiful, lovely guy.

And right now he really needs our help. Josh, his family, his community has been utterly devastated by Hurricane Ida. And as some of you may remember, Josh owns and runs a trailer park. This is his vocation. And at least 20 families' homes were destroyed by the recent storm.

And he's been going out of pocket, doing daily runs for gas, water, ice, food for his tenants, spending all kinds of cash on tarps that will serve as temporary roofs until repairs can begin. He's quite overwhelmed. And I just wanted to alert everybody to this fact. Our mutual friend, Howard Jacobson, who was also an early guest on the podcast, made a video.

I'll link that up in the show notes. And in that video, he speaks to Josh and includes links in a QR code for people to donate. And I should say, it's not a registered charity. There's no tax deductions here. It's just basically an opportunity to send a little bit of extra cash to Josh via Venmo or Cash App to help him out, his family out, and his community out. At the same time, Howard and I have been going back and forth. He's working on possibly putting together a webinar with plant-based athletes that would be free to the public, but would invite people to send money to Josh

for him to orchestrate survival and rebuilding efforts for his community. I don't have any details on that yet, but as that sort of comes into fruition, I'll be sure to let you know. As I mentioned at the outset, we're recording this on September 6th and this podcast doesn't go up until the 16th.

So in the interim, perhaps this will come together and I'll share that out on social media. Heavy and thoughts with you, Josh. Right. And I think that's it. Should we take a break and pivot? Let's do it. Anything else you wanna say? How are you feeling about Alcatraz?

I feel great about Alcatraz. Did a good swim. Our friend Neil Strauss joined with Kyle Tierman, who's a friend of mine. Kyle, he's been on the podcast also. Okay, perfect. So Kyle, the veteran of Mavericks, Big Waves, Big Wave Surfer, podcaster.

Now he's works at Mudwater. He's a writer and editor there. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, and so he was out, another friend of theirs, Chris came, my buddy, John Moore, who you've met, who swims, my swim buddy, who I'm gonna do Alcatraz with, was there and we all got in the water.

It was fun. It's at Will Rogers. No sharks reported. Reported, that's the key word. No sharks reported. Did you have the Malibu artist in tow though? He was there. To verify that?

He was there. Okay. But I felt good. The first, it was one of those funny things. Like, I don't know if you've ever had this, but like my watch, I have the Garmin Descent, which has a free dive application. And for the first, you know, 1,300 yards,

it's working perfectly and I was in a good pace for me. And then on my swim back, I'm waiting around for John and some others and I couldn't find them. So I started swimming back and then it just stays like in that same yardage for like 30 more minutes. And it didn't until I was getting out after the whole swim start ticking over. And which is, it's only funny that like,

I never cared about how many yards I was swimming or the time and never even part of my life. But as soon as you have that watch on and you're starting to measure your workouts, it's so annoying to not get it. Well, first of all, why do you have it on the free diving setting when you should be on the open water setting?

It's on the open water setting. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, these things are not perfect. Tech doesn't work. Tech doesn't work. All right, well, we're going to pivot to things that do work or hopefully things that can be fixed. So we're going to take a quick break

and we'll be back with Aisha and Dean Shirzai. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem,

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Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, I wish it was under better circumstances, but I feel like the conversation we're about to have is an important one to help us all better understand what's happening in Afghanistan, how we got there, and perhaps some solutions for all of us to avail ourselves to participate in ameliorating the hardship that's going on there. But before we even get into any of that, I think it would be

instructive for each of you to kind of recap your relationship with Afghanistan and your experience there. Sure. So I was actually born there. My parents and my grandparents are from Afghanistan, were from Afghanistan. And when I was a medical student, I had an opportunity to go back and help out. I think all of us grew up with this idea to give back to the community. That was something that was instilled in us by our grandparents and our parents. And back in 2002, I went back there to help out. I was with Doctors Without Borders and with some other phenomenal individuals. This was the post-Taliban era. And I was very passionate about helping women and children as was everybody else. Suddenly an opportunity became available for men and women, but especially for women to find freedom, to find their voice, to educate themselves, to interact with each other, and to be really accepted as human beings in a society which shrouded them, which just deleted them from the face of this earth.

from the face of this earth. And so to have been in that environment where you saw this growth, this hope, and the continuation of that hope over many, many years, and now to see this devastating effect of taking away that hope from them overnight is just catastrophic. So even though Dean and I are in the field of neurology and brain health, and we talk about everything brain health, I think it's very, very important for us to talk

about something that is powerful, that not just is a calamity that has affected a particular population. I think it affects all of us as human beings because it's an overnight extinction of 16 million plus human beings on this earth. These women who were given hope and it's worse than that, taking away that hope from them. Yeah. Dean, I wanna hear your experience as well.

But Aisha, this was, so when you returned to Afghanistan, it was around 2003. Yes, 2002. So we're talking post 9-11, it was that era of optimism and a sense of possibility where rights were being restored and everything seemed to be kind of moving in an upward positive trajectory,

at least with respect to human rights. Yes, absolutely. You know, when people watch the news or watch clips from Afghanistan and how the West and the United States went there to help rebuild the country and provide security, they don't realize that the biggest asset was providing opportunities for women,

for this population that never had that opportunity and for them to become very successful models of progress in a society. I mean, just imagine half of the society not being involved in making decisions for the country. Suddenly all of them came into forefront and it was this beautiful regeneration of a culture and a society where music was brought back, where art came back.

And when you provide that security, creativity is born. And so we saw the manifestation of that security. The very thing that makes me so sad is that it's just not there anymore. Yeah. Can I ask, just to set the context for listeners who might not know, when the Taliban came in, in the mid to late nineties and ruled there, they, music was like, you couldn't play recorded music, photographs were outlawed, certain books were outlawed, film, entertainment that was outlawed like by punishment of death, right? Is that correct?

Like recording tape would be hung from the trees as a warning. So then you're saying this openness brings it all back. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. It's difficult to perceive that limited way of life where anything that almost brings pleasure is completely negated. of that freedom, it's not just, you know, helping a particular set of population live a normal life. You're basically killing progress in many ways. And, you know, Dean and I actually saw this

metamorphosis that was happening early in the early 2000s when we were working there together. We actually met there during that time and we got married there. We dated there. It was one of the most amazing experiences. You were talking about what was during the Taliban in the 90s and what happened. I was there right after the 9-11, end of 2001. I was at NIH doing these wonky research in Building 10 where you put probes into the basal ganglia and all this stuff. And because of my background in management, they asked me to come go back to Afghanistan to see

for three months, if you can help out. And I went back, it was supposed to be three months. I'm not going to give up that career. And the first day I go there, and by the way, at the time I'm living on a lake in Reston, Virginia, you know, and I land into the airport. This is at the beginning. There's no light. There are no lights. There's no electricity. People are just, you know, walking around almost like a zombie-esque thing, no color.

The first thing I do is drive through the city and there's no building standing in this one street. That's famous street, third street and no building. And you see these little heads popping up and you look around like, oh my gosh, shouldn't they be told not to play there? Oh no, that's where they live.

So the emotional, the visceral nature was just so great. Three months turned into three years where the president asked me to stay and rebuild the healthcare system. But what I saw was, and this is critical because I think this is important for all of us as human beings. I think what the most important part of this conversation that you're bringing and similar kind of conversation is

for people to experience the breadth of human expression that it is that person named Malia Malala or something. It's actually my sister, my daughter, my mother. It's the same. They're the same people. Now, in 2002, I went to the restaurants. There was no taste.

Food had no taste, no color. Buildings had no color, nothing. People would wear just gray because those are luxuries. But as soon as freedom came, nominal as it was, within two months, you saw color, sound, music, taste, smell, good smell, everything just manifest. That was such an incredible mental state for me to see,

oh, wow, you talk about, you let a you know, piece of land, give it some water, vegetation grows. You leave a piece of land opportunity for human mind and everything grows. So I say that life is about management of expectations. And the worst thing we could have done, and this is going to be controversial, is to create expectation in women. Because what we made in these 20 years was the most important thing as human beings that we can create, which is opportunity for hope, opportunity for the brain to manifest its full potential. And we saw that incredibly,

and Aisha saw that in women that she dealt with. Right. I mean, I go in and I thought that I'm talented. When you bring hungry people and give them opportunity, they would blow me away as far as their talent. They would learn like multiple languages. One person actually got two degrees within two years. The women were learning, I mean, you can speak to that.

Oh my gosh, yeah. The level of motivation, that hunger for growth, for knowledge, for art. I've never seen that in my life anywhere. And I think it's because of that contrast where there was nothing and then suddenly they were given opportunity that they could do anything they wanted.

And they all chose to be something significant, not just in their own lives, because they realized that in a country where you usually have a group of survivors, I mean, Afghans are mostly survivors. They've seen governments come and go. They've seen, you know, countries come and go. Empires. Empires come and go. And so, they have this sense of self-worth and self-preservation. But this new generation of women knew that it has to be beyond that.

It can't just be about the self. It has to be recreation of stable grounds on which they, their children, and the next generation can live. they, their children, and the next generation can live. So over the past 20 years, what we've seen is these incredible women create the infrastructure for themselves and for the next generation to grow and to be someone significant and to have a voice and to propel that voice to the world.

Which makes the removal of that hope and all of those opportunities, all the more tragic, of course. Devastating. And I think we can debate the pros and cons of the US withdrawal and this sense of the occupation over the last 20 years being kind of an unmitigated boondoggle

and political disaster, et cetera. Certainly we can agree that the withdrawal was bungled on a colossal scale, but help us understand the human rights implications of where we are now. Well, I think it was just one of the most poorly planned steps ever. And we could go into the details of that, but I think in many ways, it's a disrespect to everyone who's worked there.

It's a disrespect for all the troops who actually lost their lives there. I look at it from a very sexist way. I think it was a very misogynistic step. I mean, yes, there's been a lot of focus on translators and allies who help the troops do their job and protect them. But did anybody think about what was going to happen to the women? Did anybody ever consider the girls in Afghanistan? That conversation never comes up. Did they never see that if Taliban come back,

that they're basically going to ask them to not exist anymore? That's exactly what's happening. Nobody ever thought about women. They were never a part of the plan. Yeah, it really wasn't. And what's interesting about this in the context of the advisability

of US withdrawing or not is the downstream implications of that withdrawal. And this idea that the occupation was a bad idea to begin with, and it was a loser, and it was never gonna, we were never gonna nation build to the extent that we aspired to. And yet there were victories along the way

and the hope and the opportunities that were created for these women. And a big part of your message is like recognizing that some good was done, which begs the question of whether or not some form of sustained occupation could have been advisable in this situation to maintain some level of stability for this type of opportunity. Absolutely, absolutely.

I would say that I agree with you that this protracted military existence in Afghanistan was not a tenable thing. I mean, not at the numbers that people spoke about. Small numbers maybe, and we have how many, we're in over a hundred countries right now, just maintaining and we were doing well. How long have we been in South Korea?

Oh my gosh, yeah, 50 years or more, exactly. But the reason that Ayesha brings up the misogynistic and sexist terms is because insouciance has a connotation. Why would you be indifferent or unaware or willfully unaware of what has been done in Afghanistan, which is not a small matter. Forget about nation building. You don't go to nations to build buildings. You go to nations to build human opportunities,

if that's even an option. But even if it's not, if it's a by-product, you acknowledge it. Why is it that building of 16 million women to the degree where each of them were incredibly talented is not even being acknowledged as a victory? If nothing else, we did a good job. The willful insouciance,

the willful ignoring of that fact says something about us ignoring it. And then the fact that leaving that vacuum in place, forget about vacuum, it's going to be shrouded literally with, you know, we talk about Taliban making women wear the burqas, which covers completely. Well, it's literally and figuratively that across 16 million people where that's the death of 16 million people. Why is that not being talked about? I don't want to make this a political thing with sexist male, but you have to kind of go to that core.

Why isn't that being addressed? And that's an important question to ask because that question comes to us here in the United States. That question will come to us in Europe. That question will come to us everywhere in the world. If we don't acknowledge the value and the language we use, we will live the consequences

and the policies we live. It's funny because when you sent your message to Rich, that email, and he shared it with me when you guys were getting in contact about coming back on to discuss these issues, the idea of reframing the 20 years as a triumph when everyone was talking about,

I think personally, I think because of the swiftness with which the Taliban took over, that dialogue of failure has been the main talking point. I think that has something to do with that. But the idea of reframing it as one of the best things the United States taxpayers have ever done is very interesting. It's definitely something I haven't heard anywhere else

besides that email and now what you're saying today. And I think that's a really powerful point that there was some cost of doing business element. There was a corruption element. Some money went away that shouldn't have gone, but maybe that is the cost of doing business of reclaiming lives that had been erased. And maybe it is the world's responsibility

considering Afghanistan is this country that since the Silk Road has dealt with, is like has been part of globalization since then, right? I mean, it's been, it's hung in the balance between whether it's the Soviets in the US in the 70s or the British when they were kind of in Burma and they were in India and here's Afghanistan and trying to figure it out.

And even well before that, Alexander the Great and the Persian empires, Afghanistan has been this one place that has been at the core of so much foreign policy and for centuries. I wonder if you could speak to that, given your knowledge of the history there and take us from that to where we are now historically

and why Afghanistan has been so vital. We're not much of nationalists. So the borders are not as important as the people. But in this case, the borders, although they have moved, it's a unique little real estate. I wouldn't want to own land in that real estate where your neighbors are Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, and a little further out, India.

That's a bad neighborhood and you're landlocked. And not only are you landlocked, the airplanes where they fly out of Kabul, they have to use special flight maneuvers because it's a bowl with tall mountains. And everywhere it's like that. So it's just mountainous land. Beautiful though, absolutely gorgeous.

I remember the first time I went there in 2002, they took me in a Russian helicopter. And by the way, I never want to do that again because it was an old, you saw the wires coming out. So don't worry, it's going to be safe. Not many people have died from this flight. And we fly over the mountains, right? Just barely, this is Hindu Kush mountains,

which are some of the tallest, I think the second tallest in the world. And then we get to this place called Badakhshan, which is green valleys, little river rats running and people are running around. And I'm like, I'm not even that, I'm like crying like baby, like this beauty. So it's an incredible land

as far as its extremes, as far as, and the people are a group of different kinds of peoples from Genghis Khan's conquests to Alexander's conquests. You see remnants of those features in Afghanistan as well, as well as some other others as well. So it's a unique population that has been forged

in the crucible of the most difficult space in the planet. And that's because of the China, Russia, India. Is that the reason the- Pakistan. And on's because of the China, Russia, India. Is that the reason? And Pakistan. And on top of that, the environment itself, the mountainous environment, like for example, the Panjshir Valley just fell, which is this little space

that had not followed the Taliban. And the reason for that is because external forces, again, the Russians bombed that place, carpet bombed that place nine times over. Still, they couldn't conquer it. They couldn't conquer the place. So the geography is just crazy. When you go there, it's just absolutely...

For nine miles, it takes you four hours because you have to go these incredible traverse. So it's the environment, the landscape, the neighbors has created these people that are survivors, caring, loving people that are unique to the region. But at the same time, it's constant war, constant calamity. I said, please, I'm at this again, gonna be politically, I'm known for this.

You know, sell the land, buy some place space in Florida, you know, because it's a tough, tough neighborhood. It's a tough neighborhood. But because of that, then the women up to now, even under Taliban, yeah, they shroud them. They're tough women. They are really resilient people. I think the withdrawal, the timing of the withdrawal

speaks to the kind of uptick that we're seeing in neo-isolationism across the world. So it's not that surprising that it occurred now, but I think the manner in which we conducted it and the mistakes that were made and the kind of implications that we're now living with really underscores the decline of the United States

as a responsible superpower in so many ways. I mean, how can any allies trust us again? How can our friends across the world believe us when we say we're coming here to do X, Y, and Z, when we pull out and create the kind of chaos and havoc that we're now seeing. And from a boots on the ground perspective, I wanna know a little bit more about your experience

working there with women specifically in these initiatives that you created and kind of the legacy of those today and what's going to happen. I actually want to highlight what Adam was referring to earlier. And this is exactly what we saw when we went back is, you know, a lot of our friends here in the United States and around the world always refer to, you know, US's existence in Afghanistan is a big failure, but the positivity and the success that was created during these last 20 years was probably, it's something that we all need to talk about and highlight. And I think it's something that we all need to be very proud of. You have a generation of women scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, businesswomen, politicians.

We even have the robotics team, just incredible human resource, this talent that was allowed to flourish. talent that was allowed to flourish. And these people not only represented just Afghanistan, but they represented the best part of who we are as a human race. And working with women in Afghanistan and seeing them take advantage of the security was incredible. And, you know, you always compare yourself. I always compared myself to some of the women who would work there. And with the speed of acclimating to change and the speed or the hunger that they had of getting themselves trained in a particular field

is something I've never seen ever in my life. And it really shifted the narrative in the society. And I think one of the reasons why we saw this massive growth where women became leaders and you saw change in the society was because of the presence of U.S. and the West there that allowed them to flourish and thrive. And Dean and I were involved in creating, you know, health empowerment programs.

And, you know, Dean actually did an amazing job in the Ministry of Health where he created the most successful health empowerment program without ever challenging the traditions and the cultural norms and the impediments that were there. Yeah, I call it social jujitsu. I'm terrible with jujitsu to begin with. You're good at social jujitsu.

Social jujitsu, which is you don't confront longstanding traditions and edicts, right? It's impossible to challenge. So you create a pathway for the behavior to come forward. And human behavior will find its path of least resistance. It will. So one of the projects, and by the way, I've said this in the past,

I'm going to retract that, which is I created that. I did not create it. I led that or I led it from behind because these people did it themselves. I want to make sure that we don't, this leadership thing is overstated. The environment was created.

I kind of created the idea, but you should see what happened. So one of the projects was where we said, we're gonna go to these places, which were Taliban infested and they still need healthcare because at the time in 2002, average age was 48. One out of four children were dying before the age of five. One out of six women were dying during their pregnancy life.

Given that the average per woman had seven pregnancies, do you do the math? I mean, and they didn't just die. It's the worst death you can imagine because they start bleeding. There's no hospital within four horsebacks rides. So they're going to die of severe bleeding and pain getting to the hospital by the thousands. So that was my challenge coming from NIH, the richest research Institute in the world, where for a project for tapping, we spent like $6 million, where here you didn't have penicillin.

So what we did was we knew that the lowest denominator of healthcare, which would save 90% was ORS, which is oral rehydration fluid, water, salt, and sugar. Because the children that died, died from diarrhea dysentery. And you can't give medicine for that. You just make sure that the water is retained. So that's it.

So because of no clean water? No clean water. It's like a homemade Gatorade. Homemade Gatorade. Yeah, so it's about water sources and that creates the dysentery that you can't recover from if you're on the phone. Exactly, exactly.

Women died, oh, and the other ones, upper respiratory, one antibiotic, ampicillin, would save significant amount of people. And then women knowing that when they're bleeding, this is spotting as opposed to serious bleeding. So start now and that saves thousands. So who do you need for that? Do you need doctors?

No, it's useless in Afghanistan. Do you need hospitals? No, although all useless in Afghanistan. Do you need hospitals? No, although all the people who had money wanted to build hospitals. Why? You could show it on TV. It's all about visibility. Visibility. No, I said, spend it on these young girls,

sixth grade educated young ladies who would learn the basics. So we went to the regions, Taliban leaders, and we say, we wanna bring healthcare. He said, no, no, we don't need it. We don't need your doctors. No, no, no, your own girls. And they would only see women and children.

They said, really? Is that okay? Okay, sure. But I knew what was going to happen. We made sure for most part, the clinics were made in a conspicuous place so everybody could see, because we knew what happens in three months.

Guess who gets sick? The man, the big man. And he would go to this young girl in a prostrate position saying, can you help me? You just flipped the dynamics. That woman was now empowered. That woman became a doctor, not really, but by concept. And there were, and a lot of those women ended up

in the parliament. A lot of those women ended up in positions of power. So you're training medics. But how do you do that? Less than medics. You're giving them like basically EMT training. Right. Less than EMT. On the kind of jujitsu tip,

like how do you accomplish that in a Taliban controlled area? Because any female empowerment is a visible threat to the power hierarchy. Education is a threat, but healthcare for the women themselves, their wives and their daughters and children is not. For them to serve each other. Correct, correct.

So it was just, oh, the women can go play around and take care of each other. Well, we knew healthcare is healthcare. So we actually wrote a paper published in a peer review journal, how to empower women in third world countries. Title was recalcitrant countries, but they changed it. So third world countries.

So nonetheless, but that wasn't us. So healthcare just being the vehicle for empowerment. Empowerment, yeah. Because it's a non-threatening, education is threatening. Ampicillin is not, you're just giving. So, but the bigger picture here was that these women took that position and took it to the end power because they became leaders, they became outspoken leaders.

They did more than just healthcare and you just created the environment. And if that's not success, if that's not success, so either we consider success that how much wealth we draw from a country or how much wealth human value, human capital we leave behind. The human capital per capita, if that's a quantifiable thing,

was exponential in Afghanistan from what the base was to what we left it. And it's going to be exponential the other way around now. Are you in touch with any of these women that you helped empower? And what are they telling you now? Yes, we are. We've been in touch with a lot of our previous colleagues.

And in this whole chaos, we've been in touch with, you know, good people who are trying to evacuate a lot of them. And there's nothing but sadness, just profound sadness. And like we said earlier, it's this lack of hope and seeing the opportunity of existing fleeing from them. That is just devastating. A lot of women are saying that if they ever go back to being at home and not being able to go back to work or school, which is exactly what's happening. The Taliban are telling them that they can't work anymore, that they can't go to school. They can't even go out to the grocery store without a man, a man from their own family.

They accept death. They said that we would rather die than be in this situation. A lot of them are rebelling. They're saying that, you know, we're not the same women that we were. Now we live in the 21st century. We're highly educated. We're capable. And you can't bring this on us. So in the chaos of fleeing from the country

and the devastation that the women are already seeing, those who are left behind, honestly, there's really no hope right now. Of course, Taliban leadership is getting behind microphones and talking about amnesty and respecting human rights and women's rights. But all of this is couched through Sharia law, of course. So when you run it through that equation,

nothing good is gonna come of this. Not at all, not at all. And in the 90s, correct me if I'm wrong, but when the Taliban came to power, because right now they're saying, once security gets better, then you can leave the house. But we recommend for right now, don't. I mean, people are, women still are leaving the house

from what I understand in Kabul, at least. But they're saying, we recommend you to stay home. And apparently that's what happened in the 90s. Like they never gave a strict order. They just said, right now the security is not good, so you have to stay at home. And then it gradually got vigilante enforced kind of thing in the 90s.

And that's kind of the concern now that it's the same language actually. It's not any different. It sounds to us, we wanna feel, oh, look, they're saying the right things. But in reality, that's exactly what they said in the 90s. Is that correct? Absolutely.

Exactly. There's a creep phenomenon, a social creep phenomenon where initially, although this is Taliban 2.0, much better performed, much better practiced, better language. But already yesterday they killed a journalist. Already there was a women's demonstration and they squashed it massively. Women, they were bleeding on the street and so on and so forth. And the other thing is, I mean,

you go back to the nature of the thing, not to get philosophical, like, you know, the thing in itself, but the nature of the thing is around women. I mean, if you think about the laws that they're talking about, majority of it is women feared, women centered. I mean, it's kind of funny, isn't it?

That an entire system is based on how do we shroud women? Like they think women are so powerful as the sexuality, right? That the entire pro... So women can't go to school or pass the sixth grade. Now they say past sixth grade, but reality is it's gonna be retracted further. They can't be in public.

And if they are in public, they have to be completely shrouded. And so what kind of a system is this? What benefit is it that you're actually hiding a system is this? What benefit is it that you're actually hiding a proportion of population? That nature and the core of that nature, which is fear of that thing that disturbs you and then human beings,

we talked about frail human nature, male's ego, all of us have some of that. It's so frail there that that nature can't change. It will go, it will collapse back to that fear. It's so interesting and ironic because you have this kind of Taliban archetype, which is very alpha male,

but obviously so fragile that they can't possibly see an unshrouded woman and be held to account for their behavior. So either the male ego is that fragile or these women are so all powerful that they must be hidden from us because we can't be expected to control ourselves. Well, we know what the answer is.

I mean, we're writing a behavior book. The core of human behavior is the sympathetic autonomic system, fight or flight. I mean, if you take out the frontal lobe, if you take out to the basic limbic system, it's that fight or flight, the anxiety component of it that raises the heartbeat. And that component then manifests in anything that quickly and rapidly controls it. Now, complexity is what humanity needs. Complexity is tough. Oh, I have this feeling,

but then all the different variables. All of it comes back to slipping back to the basic human nature, which is this is making me nervous, although we call it different things, and must be bad,, it must be eliminated. Literally, that's the core of human nature. And I can point to this ancient text

that will legitimize and rationalize the worst of behavior. Yeah. Well, you don't know who translated it. And like, who knows how that whole thing happened, right? So, but can I, I just wanna, so we're clear. I'm sure the listeners know a lot of this, but I just wanted to kind of elucidate

what we're talking about when we're talking about misogyny and at least in Afghanistan. This is based on a New York Times article that just published about how safe houses are closing, beginning with the Taliban coming through, safe houses for women, victims of domestic violence were already closing.

Apparently 50% of Afghan women reported physical abuse, 17% sexual violence, 60% enforced marriages, as opposed to arranged marriages. These are actually forced marriages. There's an issue of kidnapping women as a way to get back at a family as a dishonorable. There's honor killings of your own daughters or sisters or whatever, because of that same idea of,

I guess, promiscuity or just some, even just a romance outside of an arrangement. All this is harassment of women in the workplace, that kind of thing. The Taliban were releasing prisoners that maybe had been put away for domestic violence. And then there was worry, concern about retribution. This is all this kind of-

Cause those prisoners have been released. Ongoing right now. And watching the great movie that we both watched, how to learn to skateboard in a war zone if you're a girl, great film about Skatistan. I was wondering, cause you talked about social jujitsu. And so some of this stuff though predates Taliban, right? Not all of it.

So the Taliban was able to rise because there was already some of this was already in the culture. How can you kind of parse that? Like for people who are unfamiliar with Afghanistan, like why is this an environment that is tolerant of this kind of behavior? So education is a big thing and the combination of education and opportunity opens up the mind. Lack of education is fear. I don't mean just academic

education, knowledge, lack thereof creates fear and lack of opportunity collapses into the lowest denominator of interpretation. Especially if you're the only thing you have as means of interpreting something, right? I'm not going to get into too much of that because there will be a fatwa against me, but we'll go with that. Or wherever the religion, it goes back to religion instead of some other sort of educational background. Yes, exactly. So we're talking about, so the Taliban situation was a little unique.

In the end of 1970s, the Russians came to America and we quickly realized, uh-oh, we got the trap. They fell into the trap. Russians went to Afghanistan. Yeah, Afghanistan. Not America. Oh, no, Afghanistan, the trap. Russians went to Afghanistan. Yeah, Afghanistan. Not America. Oh, no, Afghanistan, yeah. That's a different movie.

Yeah, Afghanistan. And so during President Reagan's time, they started saying, okay, what can you do to really trap these people? Create extreme version of interpretation. So madrasas were created in Pakistan where the most extreme version of Islam was, or interpretation, was promulgated. And these young men would be brought in and would be just raised under these conditions.

And in that interpretation, it's if you die for the cause, you go to heaven. And if you kill for the cause, you go to heaven. Whoa, that's a win-win. Yeah. So thousands and thousands were trained and that worked. In the 70s in Pakistan. Yeah, and then in the 80s,

late 70s and in the 80s, that's when the Russians were just demolished because you can't defeat a force that doesn't fear death. Right. So you had thousands of people just putting bombs on themselves and putting on the tanks and tanks would blow up.

So the Russians were defeated. But okay, so you created this incredible force, incredibly scary force, and it's done with, but some people thought that it was useful still. We're gonna leave that side because a lot of people found that useful. And that scary force was continued. And now we're seeing that scary force.

The madrasas continued in Pakistan. They're continuing to train these young men. Still today? Today. Oh, absolutely. Oh, by the thousands. In fact, that's, and we see the product here in United States and Afghanistan where they're coming in and they don't know anything.

Most of them are illiterate. All they know that if I kill, I go to heaven. And if I die, I go to heaven. So the only thing between those two is war. And that's a scary force. And oh, by the way, as far as edicts are concerned, one edict, pray and women should be subjugated. And these are their leaders.

It's not just, you're not talking about, you know, some of the soldiers. These are their leaders who think that way just, you're not talking about some of the soldiers. These are their leaders who think that way. If you look at some of their interviews, which are not really posted on social media or anywhere else for that matter, but there are some local journalists who speak to these leaders. And when you listen to them for a protracted amount of time where all the filters tend to go away and that facade that they put of their peacefulness, when that goes away, you see the core true nature of their goals. And most of them have been raised in these madrasas. They've never been exposed to any kind of education. They've never had internet. They don't know what the world looks like or what exists in the world. They have no concept of democracy and justice. And their whole aim is to essentially

shroud women and implement Sharia law. That's it. And these are the leaders. And that's the scariest thing. I was looking at an interview where this man, he's, I think, the second person in the leadership right now. He's probably in his 20s, and he was talking about women's rights. He said, yeah, well, we believe that women should have rights. You know, women are our mothers. They're the representation of the society. And then suddenly you could see that, you know, these statements, I think he kind of ran out of words that were told to him to say. And it just flipped into something like, well, they have to be covered

because that's the rule, that's the law. And I was telling Dean, they brought up an example. So this is the analogy that he used. He said, well, if you go to a farmer's market and you see melons, right? There's a split melon, and then there's a whole covered melon. Would you buy the covered melon or would you buy the split melon? The split melon has a lot of germs on it and there's a lot of bugs on it. That's not sweet. That's not sweet enough for the husband.

The shrouded melon is the one that you would go and buy one. So he basically gave an example of how women should be by just giving example of melon. This is the second highest person in the leadership. The scariest conversation I've ever heard in my life. That's how they think. Despite that, we have this, you know,

US occupation and with that, you know, a creep of kind of urban progressive ways of life that starts to infiltrate the culture on some level. But, you know, Afghanistan historically being this nation of survivors that have defied empires for millennia, my sense is that most people are going to, you know, sort of behave in a manner that is, you know, survivor expedient for them. And when you have US troops there who can say, well, I don't know how long I'm gonna be here,

but you have to pledge allegiance to us. And knowing that next week the Taliban is gonna come and place the same demands on these people, people are gonna do what they need to do to survive. And so it's hard to get a gauge on the temper, if you do a temperature check on like where people's values are and what they aspire to in their own lives, it seems murky in terms of trying

to really understand like the culture. Cause there is no monoculture. No, no, no. It's such an accurate statement in the sense that the expression, even the people in themselves are in such turmoil right now that not only is their language mercurial and capricious and floating and amoebic, but even their values are that. And it's not a judgment of them. It is survival. It is survival. It's survival.

I mean, none of us have experienced that. I mean, what's the worst thing I experienced in Redondo Beach? I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't even, yeah, sometimes these young people drive really fast across in front of my house. I mean, that's really pissing me off. But to know, like when I went there,

these families said that right before you guys came during Taliban, there were rockets being fired every day and every family member had a person that had been killed during the war. Every single family member killed. Like we don't have any idea of that. So you're right. It's survival now and it's at the pace of the vacuum

and the vacuum is the thing, right? The vacuum that's left behind. So we've started this organization called Restore Her Hope. And the- Restore Her Voice. Voice, I keep coming back to hope for something. I'm hoping. I'm looking for hope.

I'm looking for, Restore Her Voice, because you said, where can we help? Where can we help? Not just in Afghanistan, because we're women's rights and justice and all that. And it's gonna be broader. And it's going to be broader. It's not going to be us going there and saving people. My goodness.

I couldn't even do some pushups as you heard. I'm not a warrior. I'm a scientist. And this is important. What's the most effective unit of a society? And we have three men here and well, four and one woman here. The most effective unit of productivity in a society are the women.

A dollar spent in healthcare and on women is at the minimum four times more effective than anything else. And the same is true across all spectrums. And when you give women voice, where especially if they've been empowered already, that becomes the most powerful force in the society, positive force.

And in United States or other places, when you take women's rights away, when you take their voices away, it becomes the nightest of the most destructive cycle. In fact, I think that's the beginning of a fall. So that's why we of a fall. So that's why we thought that giving women their voices back, both Afghan or

otherwise, especially post traumatic, is I think the most effective thing we could do. So what do you do? What's the organization do like specifically? Our goal is to highlight and promote women who have lived in Afghanistan, who have been through the trauma, for them to be the voice and for them to be the platform for all women living in Afghanistan and any other country.

I think the stories that they tell, the kind of perspective that they give us is invaluable because it really touches the true core of who we are as a society and as human beings. And we want to provide them not necessarily just the same platform they had, all these brave and courageous women who fled the country, the same platform here in the United States, but to help them get to the right people, the right groups, the right organizations to be able to promote this message that women's right is human's right. And they need to be at the same seat, if not at a higher seat of making decisions

for themselves and for this world. We have incredible politicians, YouTubers, artists, scientists who have been forced out of the country. And so we're trying to welcome them. We're trying to give them some stable ground and let them speak for the country. So a platform for these various women of different backgrounds.

Yes. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Like this diaspora of women. Where are some of these women who have gotten out? Where are they settling? Or are they just spread out all over the place? Like what is the kind of refugee landscape look like? They've been spread out.

Yeah, it's a little chaotic right now. A lot of the women we were talking about and we've identified a few of them are in Washington, DC. And some of them are actually in Los Angeles and area as well. What happened was a huge number of people were brought out to Qatar and other place and Germany. And then from there to US and other places.

And in US they're kept in big spaces in Washington and Dallas and other places. But the women that we're talking about, they were leaders of their fields. For example, there's a woman that was the head of the orchestra and actually played in Kennedy Center. So she's in the United States. We're hoping to kind of give her the platform

to not just get to where she was before, but also speak about that. I really think the most important thing as human beings we can do is speak. Speak fearlessly, speak often, speak with errors, make mistakes, but speak, speak, speak, and speak the truth without any abatement. Nobody's telling us not to say certain things.

And out of that, that's a paraphenomenon of evolution that sped up evolution a billion times, our ability to speak fearlessly. And if these women who have the power, who have the tools, who've lived those experiences, I think there will be a microphone for the cause. And it also highlights how similar we are.

Then when we speak, we realize that all those, those artificial differences, whether it's language or the way we dress or the way we speak, or we carry ourselves, it just falls. One of the things that we are trying to do is to make every American living here in the United States and around the world, for them to feel that these women are them. They are you. They're the neighbor that you have. They're your mom. They're like your sister. They're like your daughter. They're like your friend. They're no different. And if we can shorten the distance between those differences

and engage in conversations with them, I think we can all work towards a better world. We can be better versions of ourselves. Adam mentioned the short documentary, "'Learning to Skateboard' in a, what's it called? In a war torn- In a it called? In a war torn. In a war zone. In a war zone.

If you're a girl. If you're a girl, yeah. Which I believe won the Oscar in 2019. I watched it this morning and I was literally weeping. Oh yeah. Because to watch that movie now, in the context of what's transpired over the last couple of weeks,

it's just, it's so heart wrenching. And you can't help but think, where are these young women now and what are they doing? And is there any possibility or hope for getting people out of the country at this point? I mean, we all bore witness to what transpired at the airport, but with the Taliban kind of stranglehold on the country at the moment,

there doesn't seem to be an opportunity. Unfortunately not, no. We're seeing this diminishing of the efforts at this point and trying not to lose hope and it's difficult not to lose hope at this point, to be honest. To make it my field, our field, neurology. So we're a big signal detecting device, right? Our brain. We don't

get out of our comfort unless something happens that gets out of comfort, right? And for millions of years it was because we had to distinguish between a bush and a lion. Now it's a little more complex. Human behavior, social aspects. I think these opportunities

and I don't want to make it sound, diminish what we just talked about, 16 million people dying basically. And we should address that. I think this is an opportunity for us to have more complex conversations about humanity in general, women and women's rights,

and what we consider success. Again, we repeat, what we did in Afghanistan, incidentally, maybe as a pair of phenomenon, maybe, it doesn't matter. The consequence was the most successful thing we've ever done. If we consider success, the degree of change or delta, as they say in science, the delta of it,

the delta was just absolutely bewildering. And if that's not success, then your value system is based on an antiquated system. You better reassess your values, even though you're wearing the nice clothes and the tie and everything, you're in the wrong place psychologically. We did succeed.

And then we failed it because we didn't know that this was success. And why didn't we know that? And it's not about Afghanistan. We are, we believe in throughout the world. I mean, we've traveled 50 countries or more. And I think if we reframe the situation to speak about that, that our success is just this,

women's rights, which will create connectivity and women's leadership, feminine leadership, which is more about, you know, we talk about leadership and my backgrounds, leadership is all feminine. The part that's masculine, which is the muscle, it's just a couple of people, but it's feminine. And it's about conversation, communication, connecting.

And if we've increased that quanta, and the world will be a better place. If we reframe our successes around that concept, we will be a better society. We will not let that destructive seed regrow in our own country and it will regrow in our own country. Well, we're seeing aspects of that now. I'll let you do that.

What's going on in Texas at the moment. But yeah, I mean, I think that it's a very good point in that we don't identify the successes in Afghanistan because that is not our priority. We define success by whether or not we could create a thriving democracy and a stable police force and military that could protect the border

and instill democratic values across the country. We failed at that. There's this other huge success here, but because of our sort of cultural priorities, we don't consider that a success. Yeah, I think you brought it back to nationalism. I mean, America's had, you know, nationalism is, I mean, like Pledge of Allegiance,

the Star Spangled Banner for the ball games, the American flags you see everywhere. I'm not denigrating any of that. It's just a part of the culture. So when that's a part of the culture and then you see servicemen dying over there and it seems far away. And like what you're suggesting is a complete paradigm shift

in global culture. Well, and these people are different and they're not like us. Which is worth aspiring to, but it's just not, unfortunately, it's just not the majority of the people thinking that way. We should think that way. But globalism has gotten a bad name

because it's always thought in economic terms. This also is benefit economically when you can lift, like you said, and lift the women up economically, it lifts the entire country up economically. But just, I think that not to say it shouldn't happen, it's just probably the explanation for why it's not happening. There's a concept of American imperative,

which was, there's a little bit of a scary side of it in the 1800s and, you know, like almost like as if it was meant that we should conquer and all that. But let's flip that, this jujitsu, let's do the little jujitsu there. What if the American imperative is a new kind of empire that prospers, that grows,

but also changes societies for the... We keep using the word democracy as if it's a thing. There are different ways of that democracy. And in fact, in Afghanistan was pretty... We had more women at one point in the parliament than Afghanistan than we did in US Congress. Because by law, it was in the doctrine that they had to have 33% or one third women.

So they were there, they were active, they were outspoken. I actually have seen one of them women actually turned to a very, very powerful warlord and shut him down. So that was a great success. So not to kind of get too much into that, but the success that we had in Afghanistan is,

I think, should be addressed. And I think one of the first places that we've seen is here, we're doing it because I think it's a good, great learning for all of us as a society, as a nation, as a great nation, as a new empire, if you don't like the word empire, a great nation, as a new empire, if you don't like the word empire, a great nation, large nation, who can do great things, but at the human level, and it was done, it was done and it was lost. Yeah, yeah, we don't seem to value that kind of soft analysis though.

It's really those kind of tactile benchmarks that we're judging our progress by. And in the meantime, you know, I think we've lost our footing as, you know, a nation that was known to kind of take the moral high ground in situations like this. But I'm interested in, you know, you guys are neurologists and you think a lot about the brain.

How do we, like, help us understand, like, the mind of the Taliban? think a lot about the brain. How do we like help us understand like the mind of the Taliban? Like what is going on neurologically with such an individual that they hold a worldview that they do and conduct themselves in a manner that seems so retrograde and foreign to Westerners? I'm gonna take it and then you'll take it from there.

We could talk for days about this. It's actually easier than people think. If anybody has a teenage son who has sex, well, that's a redundant sexual urges, that teenage son, that's a redundant thing. But so it's a teenage son that doesn't know much, not very educated. And its entire world purview is condensed

to one little set of values that it's learned repeatedly over and over again. And then it's told that it should actually control all urges. That's the Taliban. That's it. I mean, the core neurology of that is base human instincts and a set of edicts to control those base human instincts. Well, in the effort to control those urges and instincts,

there's gonna be some errant sideways behavior. Yeah, yeah. The women are the scariest thing to them, right? I mean, the women are the things that, I mean, I remember going to Afghanistan and talking to some of these back Taliban. And it would be interesting that every other conversation would be about some edict around women's issues

because it's the emotion that disturbed them the most. So that's an emotion that must be subdued the most. That's very simple. Humanity is less complex than we think we are. It starts with those core parasympathetic and parasympathetic systems that goes to the limbic emotional brain that interprets things in the most survival-based way,

which means more control, more control. Eliminate any possibility of danger by reducing the number of variables. And that's basically the human nature when it's not allowed to flourish. And everything starts from a fierce stance. So everything is based on fear. Fear of the other, fear of the different,

fear of something that will take away things from you. I think people start becoming more nuanced when the fear goes away. Yes, that could be a luxury. You know, if you're secure, if you're not hungry, if you're not under attack, you probably don't have enough fear and you can explore things. But if you exist in a fearful environment, which they have, they've been told as children that someone will kill you, someone will attack you. The other person who doesn't look like you is different. So you have to stay

away from that. And the fear of women, the fear of your urges, your base urges, everything is based on that. And that's why sticking to a set of rules and regulations and coming back to that over and over again is a reflex. And that fear is solidified over many many years so much that it's impossible for for anything outside to be introduced that's why i think it's it's um um some people say that you know they may be open to conversations or they may be open to change they won't there's there's no hope for that this um comes down, I mean, it's not like, there are parallels to United States. Like if you're not able to have a sexual release,

there will be violence. You know, if you can't get laid, you will kill. And we have in cell, you know, involuntary celibate men here who bring the guns and shoot people at schools or on the streets. I mean, that happens here. Yeah. In Texas, we have a set of laws

are making it harder to vote and are controlling women's bodies without their consent. That's happening here. It's like those dominoes are here. So that's an extreme case of something that is, I guess, universal, but it's happening here probably more than a lot of places as well. So I find that interesting.

I think there's also an economic element to this, right? I mean, it's not, I was just doing some research and looking at ISIS-K and how that started in Afghanistan in 2015. And they were paying people $700 a month to come join ISIS. And that's a lot of money. It's not that dissimilar to stuff I've seen in cartel countries in Nicaragua and Mexico, where all of a sudden ISIS,

like these cartels are paying for the healthcare. They make sure that the payroll is met. Whereas the American forces, the checks are bouncing and you couldn't count on that. And I assume the Taliban are paying for fighters too. So there is an economic element of it, right? And so there is that, like people are going to where the paycheck is.

There's two elements to that. You're absolutely right. So again, there's a measure of support for these people, right? Where's that coming from? So the measure of support is coming from, it's a carrot and stick kind of thing. The element that there's a huge percentage of population that were not happy with the government as it was

because there was corruption. And corruption came in Afghanistan because a country that was hungry had nothing. All of a sudden, you brought in warlords to run the government. And I know that's controversial, but it is true. I mean, they know, they don't themselves. And some of them were good, some of them were not,

but there was a lot of corruption. I mean, we're talking in the billions. We know that the central bank of Afghanistan, $900 million was just usurped and taken away. And they found who it was. They didn't do anything about it because the president's brother was involved in it. So they didn't do anything.

And then the commanders were involved in it. So they didn't do anything. And then the commanders were involved in it. So they didn't do anything. So when people were getting frustrated, their life is not getting better, but certain, you know, other people in the community or society are getting, so a lot of frustration with corruption. That's one element. So my life is not going to change too much.

Yeah, for the men, especially, you know, for the men, life is not going to change too much. If I was poor, I'm going to be poor. Now you have a force that's dark. It's not going to affect me. Maybe my wife, maybe that's good for me, you know, and my daughter, but at least they're going to control corruption.

And they did. The other element is money that's coming from the Taliban is from outside countries and from poppy, you know, number one source of opium and all that's Afghanistan. They have that system better regulated than the government had their systems regulated. And like you said, people were getting paid on time

as opposed to the government. So both of those issues are economic. You're absolutely right. At the end, economy has a big, big factor. The answer to all your questions is money, right? Like that's- In a way, yeah, yeah. Money and education, money and,

I'm hoping that education gets people's fears away, but that's not always guaranteed. But there's also this asymmetry when you have religious fundamentalists, zealots who are fighting a religious war versus Western troops who are there because they've been deployed there and are trying to win hearts and minds

in a situation that is at best an extremely uphill battle. So, it's lined up for a loss right out of the gate. It seems like it was from the beginning. Like the thing to do would have been to chase the Taliban into Pakistan and they just couldn't do it because of like borders and politics. Or they just were unwilling to do it

until Obama finally said, we're gonna get Osama bin Laden. But like that allowed a safe haven, right? For them to kind of regain and get financing. And then there's also Iran has what, according to this frontline report I saw today, five to 10,000 people in Afghanistan are aligned with Iran and this quest to maybe create a Hezbollah type situation if the Taliban fails quickly. I mean, so we're looking at a possible civil war.

Not a possible, it's going to happen. And it's going to get radical because when you create a vacuum and there are elements of vacuum where different crystals can manifest, they will manifest. They will manifest and there will be radical manifestation because of anger, lack of economy and lack of education.

It will be, so, and I think people in power know this. Well, not to make it too political. Throughout history, Afghans instability has been used as a weapon for the neighbor's stability. So that's going to happen. Meanwhile, all of these women, accomplished women, are redawning the burqas, ensconcing themselves in their homes,

not going outdoors. It's gonna be terrible. It's a return to a Stone Age existence. Completely Stone Age. It already has. It already has. And that is the saddest thing that we're seeing right now. And I tell you,

I don't see them being defeated back at this point because of the partnerships of the neighbors. Like China already moved in with some deals, I think because of Afghanistan is a lot of resources. They say up to $3 trillion in minerals, not just lithium, but across the board, even uranium and everything else. So China's moving in, Pakistan, Iran,

and then our calmest neighbor right now. That's the calmest neighbor, Russia. Imagine that's your calmest neighbor. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? Your calmest neighbor is Putin. Putin, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just taking it easy right now.

Can I, Rich, can I shout out some of these names that we had bolded here? Some women, accomplished women, just like maybe I'll just read them off and some of their accomplishments and you guys have some thoughts about them, that'd be good. Shukria Barakzai. Yes.

She was mentioned in this great article that you sent over that Lindsay Adario wrote, who's currently shooting wildfires in Tahoe. Incredible photojournalist as we all know. She went from getting beaten in the street by the Taliban during the 90s to once the Taliban were gone, helping to draft the constitution and serve two

terms in parliament. I worked with her. I knew her. I actually was in many conversations with her. amazing human being. Just powerhouse of a human being, yeah. Is she still there? She is, yeah, yeah.

Fazia Koufi. Yeah, Fazia Koufi. Fazia Koufi poured her life into the country since the Taliban came to power in 96. She started a network of secret girls schools in the 90s in her home province called Badakhshan, is that right? And a member of parliament from 2005 to 2019 and was one of the people representing Afghanistan,

the Republic in peace negotiations with the Taliban and is now finds herself out of the country and kind of trying to figure out what's next, correct? Powerful woman, outspoken. She still is. She actually is one of the most outspoken Afghan women on Twitter. And she recently, she didn't want to get out. She actually promised that she was going to stay back and fight.

But when they threatened her, because these Taliban go from home to home looking for these strong, powerful women who were part of the government. And so she had to flee with two daughters in Qatar, but she vows to be connected and as loud as she can. Yeah, her daughters got out in advance of her, right? Yes. Mahbubah Sarraj, who I hadn't heard of, who is like- One of her favorite people. I saw her on the CNN, I think was it CNN?

Some clip and it was, she's one of the Afghan women's think it was some clip. And it was, she's from the Afghan Women's Network. She's staying. She says, I'm going outside no matter what and is hoping to work together, right? I mean, she's saying that in good faith, hoping to try to figure out a way to run the country in a positive direction. She's always been an ultimate optimist

and an outspoken woman. Absolutely love her. I hope she's safe. And Pashtana Durrani, a young woman. She's 23 years old, executive director of an organization called Learn. She's in hiding right now, trying to organize girls' schools on the digital platform. See, Pashtana is a great example of what happens when there's opportunity. She's in her 20s. So she is the latest generation of Afghan women

who had the opportunity to educate herself and help others. And she's done a phenomenal job, but she's in grave danger because they've threatened her. She's created multiple schools. She actually has a very strong social media presence and she's actively speaking against the tall and bottom right now. What is strong social media presence and she's actively speaking against the tall and bottom right now. What is the social media situation in Afghanistan?

I mean, do they have Twitter and people tweet and like what happens with, you know, somebody who says the wrong thing? It's ending. I mean, there were YouTubers who have, you know, completely stopped posting their videos. There were, you know, there's this one, a very popular show, a bowling show of a young lady

who is now in the United States. She used to invite politicians and people in the position of power to come bowl. And during that bowling session, she would actually challenge their politics and their preconceived notions. What a great idea. That's a great YouTube show.

It's like Hot Ones. Then there's this guy, Rustam Wahab on Instagram, who's been doing some really interesting reporting, young guy. And one of the things that we're hearing from the Taliban is like, oh yes, we're going to ensure an open media ecosystem. But he shared a video clip of like a television news host

with two, he's in a tie and he's reporting the news and there's two Taliban standing behind him with their rifles. That was supposed to be a debate by the way. Right. Yeah, that's gonna be a great debate with two Kalashnikovs behind him. I like that, that's like the old world debate.

What do you think about that? Yeah, whatever you think. Grossam is only 19. He's one of the youngest. Where does he live? He's British. I believe he's in the UK, yes. We just, and he's been posting clips

that are filmed by individuals and journalists in Afghanistan. So things that are not really posted out in the media that often. I am in love with this young woman, Shamsia Hassani, the first Afghan female graffiti street artist. Instagram is incredible. The stuff that she's doing.

She's still there, I think. Yeah, but she's kind of gone underground, it appears. Yeah, a lot of them have, a lot of them have. We have put together a list of articles and a list of these Instagram accounts. And in addition, documentaries, like the one we mentioned before, and plenty of other books and resources

that we'll put in the show notes for people that wanna dive deeper into everything that we've been talking about today. There's like the Tom Morello story that you liked, right? Oh yeah, I liked that one. The guitarist with Rage Against the Machine was promoting this guitar school that was also kind of like Skate-A-Stand,

but with music, a place for girls to get educated as well as learn guitar. And like a rock producer had kind of relocated to Kabul and started to teach guitar just one girl at a time and it created this whole thing. And before I just wanted to ask one last question is we kind of skated over this and you had said at the opening,

Aisha that like, and I've spent time on Maysat, Thailand and a lot of time in Burma. And so I understand the idea where I haven't been in an active war zone quite like that, but there were still displaced people and minefields and that kind of stuff, not too far away.

And I spent some time in there, but what was interesting was two parallels. One is medics training villagers as medics was a key towards development. And the other thing was this landscape of international people coming from all over the world, aid money, a network of people all there for a purpose. And that's to help people and then romance.

And you guys met in that kind of scenario. What was it like in those heady days in those early, you know, 2002, 2003, 2004, you know, like where it's like, who's there? Like, where are you going out to dinner? Like all that kind of stuff. Oh gosh. It was the, I'll give my version.

Then you can give your version. Okay. My version is better. No, no. So as I said, we both came from, you know, completely different environments, America, modern, you know, I was doing- But you have this great rich family history

with Afghanistan. We do. I mean, my grandfather was the reform king that was actually thrown out in the 1920s. His secretary of education was my grandfather. So our pride enjoys the fact that he was the secretary of education that brought women's reform, that brought education into the country.

And my grandfather was friends with her grandfather who came back to the United States. I didn't know that. Yeah, they're very good friends. It's like a movie. Yeah, they came back to the United States. They're very good friends. It's like a movie. Yeah, they came back to the United States. He came back to the United States, went to Columbia University, medical school surgery, and then went to Hopkins to become public health expert,

went back to Afghanistan and created the, sorry, I'm not gonna, parliament. He wrote the first constitution. Brilliant, brilliant man. And then my grandfather, same thing. And of course, when you do good things there, my grandfather was kicked out early. So his sons came to United States in the 50s.

They're doctors here, surgeons. We stayed, my parents stayed. And then 1970s, the communist came and immediately everybody ran to America and we were not very smart. We went to Pittsburgh, but no offense to Pittsburgh. I love Pittsburgh, it's my home, but we grew up there. And, but when was involved in the community,

not as much as I thought, but public health, yes. I was asked to go back to Afghanistan to help reconstruct. And at the time I was at NIH, they said just three months hiatus, went back, became three years. But in the first year in a party, expat party. Expats are these internationals that come together and the party's there because you're in a war zone.

It's horrible situation. All, everything is abated, you know, alcohol, everything, everybody's just drinking. And I'm sitting talking to some people It's a horrible situation. Everything is abated, alcohol, everything. Everybody's just drinking. And I'm sitting talking to some people and she pulls a chair next to me. That's my version. And she sits next to me and we start talking.

And the first conversation is about our grandparents. And they both had Alzheimer's and they both died of Alzheimer's and dementia. The plot thickens. And then we start talking and talking. And then we, because I was at the time deputy minister, I had this white car, this driver and security. I offered to drive them to their hotel.

And I drive her to her hotel with her mom. And then we'd lose each other. And I chased them. That's a whole thing. I found her. And then we dated in Afghanistan with our bodyguard. This is, I gotta say this part. Oh, that is a funny story.

The Ministry of Interior had given us a bodyguard because I was threatening people by just my beliefs. And the bodyguard was wet, fully dressed, 80 pounds, 90 pounds at most. And he had this line. You know how soldiers have these bullets here? You had a line of marijuana or hashish roll ups here, right there.

I'm like, you're a police officer, you're a cop. He actually was a teacher. He was a teacher. He was a teacher from Badakhshan. And we used to call him, which means dear teacher. And he was forced to work in the army as a bodyguard because he couldn't make enough money.

So, you know, he was our chaperone. And when we would go to hotels or to restaurants, you know, to have dinner, he would actually follow us. And he would fall asleep all the time. Because he's trying. He's going to do. Yeah, he was trying. Bodyguard with the kind.

There were times when Dean had to carry the Kalashnikov. I had to carry the Kalashnikov. The had to carry the Kalashnikov, the minister. Let's go, it's time to go home. And he would wake up and just- So that's how we met. Although he was a beautiful poet too. Here's the thing. He wrote us a poem. I don't know how you guys as neurologists

feel about free will, whether humans have free will or don't have free will, but this all feels very predestined to me. Like the work that you're doing now and everything that you've done. When you look back through the generations of your family histories. I consider myself very lucky.

And I think there's a lot of work to do. Us being neurologists and talking about plaques and tangles and Alzheimer's disease and being involved in all the science and putting a halt to that, not necessarily a halt, but refocusing on what is making us strong as human beings. That's one of the reasons.

And I think that's a continuation of the stories of our grandfathers and all these amazing human beings, especially women that we met in Afghanistan. The work we do even now, it's not the esoteric clinical trials and stuff. We are, I think the only neurologists that work in the community. That's right.

We lead one of the largest brain health initiatives in the world. With a focus on women. Centered on women. So meaning that we actually take the women in the community, we train them because we know that they're going to have the most impact. And coming back to that,

and they are the most successful by far. Right. As far as destiny, well, it depends on the searching mind, doesn't it? If you're searching, you meet your destiny. If you're not searching, you meet your destiny. You dodged the free will question with that though. I'm a little bit of on Harris's school of free will.

Okay, can I ask a question about the neurology is because you talked about the resiliency of so many of these women and especially the women who are given freedom and look what they can do. I wonder as neurologists, if you saw also some of the fallout on the other side where this kind of being forced to shroud, stay inside, does that contribute to early onset dementia? Do you see some of these neurological issues that present earlier maybe through this environment or does the survivor in you kind of like take precedence and eliminate that? That's a good question. I don't think we have hard data on that. The one thing that

is quite evident is this prevalence, massive prevalence of anxiety and depression. And it's not the typical anxiety and depression because, you know, sometimes when you're in survivor mode, you don't really have the time to show the manifestation of depression. So, you know, when you're always wondering what your children are going to eat the next day, and when you're always wondering whether you're going to have a shelter tomorrow or not, or whether your loved one is going to be around your dinner table or not, there's no time for you to sit back and, you know, feel bad. There's this massive amount of anxiety that people live with. Yes, there are a lot of deaths because of cardiovascular disease and other

manifestations of stress and anxiety. I don't think anybody has actually done work to look at, you know, the neurological manifestations of that. And especially in the last 20 years with, you know, early deaths and, you know, people dying of easily preventable diseases, they probably don't even get to that point where the neuro degeneration aspect actually starts kicking in. Just as a continuation of that, I mean, that's a beautiful answer. So I shouldn't, but I'll just give it a little bit. So the human brain, I mean, we're here outside of the intangible answers that why we're here. The tangible is we're here because of the, I mean, as much valued as we have for it's our brain, right? Especially our feeling brain. You know, Descartes said, I cogito ergosum, I think therefore I am. I say in socio ergosum, I feel therefore I am. As much as we can feel, that's why the animal thing,

that's why, if you don't distill the cause to the base value, which is ability to feel, it's meaningless. So as far as feeling is concerned, that's the brain, the brain is here to feel. But at the same time, it's also here to explore, feel fully. And there are levels of it and explore fully when the brain is not, and this is, we don't have data in Afghanistan,

but outside of Afghanistan, when a brain is not exploring, it shrinks. The moment the brain stops exploring and exploring could be anything, thinking, reading, playing music, you know, all of this stuff, except for playing Sudoku, which I hate, but all these manifestations of creativity of the mind being coming to the fore, and if it's not doing that, it shrinks, it has more consequence than eating bad. And I'm a nutritionist, I have a master's in nutrition.

She has a master's,ability to let the brain be creative destroys the brain. And we have entire 50% of the general population shrouding, not being able to think. You're killing them. Yeah, so, and that's true in America. It's true everywhere. So as far as why we're here

is to let people's creativity roam, let it flourish. Don't be scared. We have latitude. I hope that this conversation is not, people recognize it's not from Afghanistan only, America. We have to be fearless and out of the creativity of each individual's will

to manifest their full potential. Let's not stop shrouding it. Yeah, and I think the solutions to these problems, be they in America, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, certainly there are other conflict zones across the world and genocides and plenty of problems, but finding our way forward begins with empathy and empathy is about understanding.

And I appreciate you guys coming here today to help us understand better so that we can breed the empathy that's required to manifest the solutions. But before we kind of end this, I do want to spend a few moments just talking about the solution. You've got this organization, Restore Her Voice. I know there's a GoFundMe component to that. So if people are listening or watching and they feel the urge or the call to contribute in a meaningful way, like what is the best outlet for time and resources? Well, I'm grateful to you for allowing us to use your platform to spread this message. I think if one of the best things that people can help with is to be the voice of these

women who have been silenced by the dark, antiquated and ignorant forces in Afghanistan. And for us to help rebuild the same kind of situation that they had in the past 20 years for them to speak up. I think these women coming from Afghanistan to the United States are the best representatives of the harsh environment there and of the beautiful potential that women have there. And so if they want to help us, we would be grateful to them. If they want to help us, we would be grateful to them. We've already raised a whole lot, you know, with the help of these kind, amazing individuals, more than $100,000 over the last couple of weeks.

And we're going to use all of these resources to help these women establish themselves and reach their potential and be a representation of the women in Afghanistan. And people can go to the website, restore, what is it? RestoreHerVoice. RestoreHerVoice.org. That's the website and we're on social media as well,

RestoreHerVoice. What say you, Adam Skolnick? I'm just grateful to be a part of this conversation and met you both and to you Rich for scheduling it so I could be here. And it's just, this is kind of stuff that makes you wanna be a journalist and be a writer is to explore these stories and try to contribute

in some small way to a huge problem. And so I appreciate being a part of it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I think so much. Thank you. I think that we mentioned Skatistan earlier, but we didn't really explain it. So if these issues are brand new to you, listener, viewer, maybe start with that documentary

because it's a really beautiful portrait of an effort at a grassroots level to empower young girls in a very heartwarming way by creating this school that is kind of behind tall walls and hidden, wherein they teach kids, young girls how to skateboard. They've got a skate ramp, but they use it also as a platform for empowerment by teaching them like the soft skills

so that they can value themselves. And it's really quite beautiful. It's like 40 minutes long or something like that. It's a beautiful, beautiful documentary. And then I found a electric literature is a good website in the literary world. And Nadia Hashimi, a writer who's in the Afghan diaspora, she put together a list of books by or about Afghan women.

So I think you're gonna link to that as well, correct? Oh, right, eight books by and about Afghan women. So we'll put that in the show notes. Amazing. Yeah, cool. So people can kind of get into that. And like some of these, like that documentary of the 1950s in Afghanistan to see how it was trending and where it is now,

it just shows you how fragile it really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, it was so progressive. It had developed so much that nobody would have envisioned that it would collapse. Not only did it collapse, it had developed so much that nobody would have envisioned that it would collapse. Not only did it collapse, it collapsed twice. Progress is fragile.

And I think it's an important reminder that we not take for granted our liberties and our freedoms and to be more vigilant about what is right and correct and fair and equitable. But also like not to have such hard, like I think when you get to a point where there's such hard, like hard polarization and hard boundaries between left and right

or up, whatever it is, red and blue, you actually are contributing to a potential of a fall. Whereas if there's much more free flow of ideas and receptivity, I think, you know, you have a better chance. If there's hard walls and obstacles between, you know, that's gonna impede intellectual growth, I think. But that's what we're seeing right now, you know, in the United States, you know,

a calcification of ideologies that's making conversation and communication more and more difficult. And that is exacerbating the polarization. And I think the problems that, we're contending with right now. Yeah, and the result is something like in Texas that should have been nipped in the bud with better organizing and communication, right?

Like you think, right? So that, yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. How do you feel? Feel good? Feels amazing. Did we do it?

Oh my gosh. Absolutely. We love you for- We love you guys so much. Thank you. You're doing, this is not fulsome flattery. I'm an honorary guy. You're doing the most important thing,

having the courageous conversations. Trying to do it. Yeah, it is. And these guys have this idea, like this concept of the last 20 years in Afghanistan the most important thing, having the courageous conversations. Trying to do it. Yeah, it is. It is absolutely true. And these guys have this idea, like this concept of the last 20 years in Afghanistan that just completely flips it on its head

and just like, it's like, it seems so obvious after reading that email. Wow, this was a success. But before that, it wasn't even in my mind. And so I think it's brilliant.

I mean, it's like to have this kind of counterintuitive notion put out there, I think is super important. I mean, that's like to have this kind of counterintuitive notion put out there, I think is super important. I think we should all take pride in that. And unfortunately that's not the narrative that you see every day. So thank you for this opportunity

to actually talk about that. Thank you. And thank you for the wonderful gift, this book, this Steve McCurry book, which is quite a work of art. It really is. I appreciate it. It really is, of course.

It will hold a proud spot here in the studio. So thanks. Oh, it belongs here. And you guys are welcome here anytime. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was so nice meeting you.

Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Namaste. That was your cue, Adam. Thank you.