Inside Afghanistan's secret schools

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world. In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometres. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic pl ...  Show more

Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Afri ...  Show more

Afghanistan and Women's Rights: A Recent HistoryIn the early 20th century, Afghanistan might have been described as one of the most progressive countries in Central Asia in terms of women's rights. Afghan women first became eligible to vote in 1919 - a year before the United Stat ...  Show more

In Afghanistan, high schools are currently closed to girls, and women have been banned from TV dramas. So how hard is life for the female half of the population, as the Taliban reassert control?Tamasin Ford hears from her colleague Yalda Hakim, who recently returned to the Afghan ...  Show more

One year ago this week, when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, they promised to institute a modern form of Islamic government that honored women’s rights.

That promise evaporated with a sudden decision to prohibit girls from going to high school, prompting quest ...

In this deeply moving talk, educator Shabana Basij-Rasikh shares the harrowing story of evacuating more than 250 students, staff and family members from the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) -- the country’s first and only all-girls boarding school -- to Rwanda after the T ...  Show more