Azam is an international investigative reporter for the New York Times. He used to be the Times bureau chief in Afghanistan, as well as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. He won a Pulitzer last year for his work on the US intervention in Afghanistan, among other awards. He’s also the author of Fear Is Just A Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance. I discovered him simply by reading the paper and noticing an extraordinary ability to ferret out the truth. In conversation, Azam did not disappoint.
A polished transcript is here, including money quotes from the chat. Below are timestamps for the main sections of the pod:
05:23: Growing up in a Pakistani family in a small-town Virginia
10:36: The value of fiction over nonfiction
22:26: Azam’s time reporting on Wall Street, and then the horrors in Afghanistan
46:24: A deep dive into a terrifying new wave of synthetic drugs
1:03:56: The violent settlers in the West Bank and the Israeli officials speaking out
For two clips of the episode — on the new wave of dangerous drugs, and the Israeli government arming the West Bank settlers — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: the lack of bigotry in Azam’s upbringing in the South; how UVA was more tribal than his high school; the war on terror; nation-building; how little the US understood Afghanistan; funding warlords against the Taliban; not talking to Taliban officials; US propaganda and lies; a story of suicide; Estonia beating fentanyl; the mega-potency of new drugs like nitazenes; drug-soaked paper causing overdoses in US prisons; why targeting suppliers doesn’t work anymore; harm reduction and Narcan; methadone; decriminalization in Portugal; the popularity of weed; the cynicism and evil of Hamas; dead kids in Gaza and US bombs; the depravity of Ben-Gvir; high-ranking Israelis against the settlements; and Bibi’s polling for the coming election.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Emily Eakin on postmodernism, Jake Weisberg on the cowards who caved to Trump, Michael Lewis on the federal workers who fought back, and Arianna Huffington on living well. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Talarico Pivots On Sports
It was, in the end, a simple reformulation, a recourse to common sense, and a sign, perhaps, that we might begin to have a calmer, saner conversation on the trans issue. Here’s how Senate candidate James Talarico put his new position on biological boys and men competing against girls and women in competitive sports:
I oppose trans athletes playing in girls sports, if it endangers safety or fairness. Every sport has to be safe and fair.
This gets it entirely right: the entire issue has never been about transphobia; it’s always been just about fairness and safety. Transmen (biologically female) should always be welcome to play with men, where as biological women they have no unfair advantage. They shouldn’t only if they are vulnerable to being pulverized in, say, a rugby tackle. Transwomen (biological males) shouldn’t play with girls competitively, period, because the unfairness is real and enduring; but in non-competitive games, as long as physical safety is protected, I see no problem. Done!
No one should be cheated out of a win or risk their physical safety in sports. Those are principles we can all agree on. Just apply those principles to the trans question, and we can find a workable solution. If the Democrats start making sane, pragmatic arguments like this, the increasing bigotry of some the GOP rhetoric will be exposed. And we might move back from the woke-vs-bigot brink to a saner, pro-trans center.
The View From Your Window
Isafjordur, Iceland, 11.03 am
Money Quotes For The Week
“There is no real solution for Gaza without migration. We are fully prepared to move them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible,” - Israel Katz, the defense minister of Israel.
“What is taking place today in the West Bank is a Chillul HaShem, a violation of God’s name of the worst order. We cannot stay silent,” - Jonathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism UK, after visiting the settlements.
“I want us to have the same passion for people who don’t look like Lindsay, who don’t have her same access, her education, her melanin, her privilege. There are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for [killing their kids]. I just wanna remind us to have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well,” - a doctor on The Oprah Podcast.
“The Lindsay Clancy trial is to sex what OJ was to race relations,” - Sarah Haider.
“The news that the heroic lone holdout juror is a black man is the funniest thing ever. Leftists have been trashing him as a toxic male all week. Racist right-wing accounts on X have been praising him and sharing memes of him as a white crusader chad ubermensch. Reality is constantly hilarious,” - Joel Berry.
Mental Health Break
In the latest mashup from DJ Cummerbund, Ringo gets center-stage:
In The ‘Stacks
Yglesias and Demsas discuss how 9/11 forever changed politics. Nick Gillespie sighs, “We have learned virtually no lessons from 9/11.”
After the AfD win (and a loss for German censorship), Noah Smith insists, “Liberalism needs a new philosophy of immigration.”
Michael Tracey details “the banality of Gloria Steinem.”
Nancy Rommelmann gasps at the “pain contagion” of moms sympathetic to Lindsay Clancy. Defending the dad is Bethel McGrew.
“Dads are lower-T,” writes Darby Saxbe, “and that’s mostly good.”
Robert King reviews Sextinction by Debra Soh.
Dylan Matthews “changed my mind” over Big Philanthropy.
Chris Arnade argues that well-intended policies in Oz have kept aboriginals in a state of dependence and dysfunction.
A short history of coffee.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday at 11.59 pm (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW photo book or a two-year Dish subscription. If you’re not a paid subscriber, please indicate that in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription. Happy sleuthing!
Yglesias Award Nominee
“Competitive sports matter in our society and we need to be pragmatic about that. … I understand these guidelines may be a hard tonic for transgender advocates, but the alternative is just as hard. We have lost control of the narrative,” - Mara Keisling, founder of the National Center for Transgender Equality. (She was one of the earliest guests on the Dishcast, sharing her experience as a trans woman.)
Below we hear from listeners on the episodes with John O’Sullivan, Ross Barkan, and Stephen Grosz. Here’s a fan of the first:
John O’Sullivan was the best guest ever. Well done.
This listener dissents:
John O’Sullivan is out of his fucking mind — by thinking the Democrats are more dangerous than Trump, and by supporting a cult of a Republican Party that almost universally supports the psychopath. (You have pretty well covered what the world will have to deal with for another 2 1/2 years.) Is there any reason to think that Rubio, DeSantis, or even Vance would meaningfully attempt to fix the damage? They seem to be fully complicit members of the cult in most ways.
I think we should wait and see how the GOP candidates move on from Trump. But point taken. Another adds:
When O’Sullivan stated that he’d prefer Vance, Rubio, or DeSantis over the Democrats, I wish you’d asked him whether he has ever considered whether Trump’s incompetence and self-dealing might make it harder for these three men to get elected in 2028 (like McCain in 2008). Partisans always believe that since the other side is always worse, you just have to put up with the incompetence and corruption on their side. But independent voters don’t think that way. We may end up with the far left because of Trump.
One more dissent:
Funny how someone who states that he is very conservative in terms of sexual mores and disapproves of pre-marital sex is happy to support a man “whose entire life has been priapic plunder from Jeffrey Epstein’s libidinous parties to sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf’s dressing room to hotel assignations with Stormy Daniels soon after his wife gave birth, most of it greeted with a collective shrug by the American public,” in the words of Tina Brown.
I feel that you went easy on O’Sullivan in his support for Trump.
