Tapa Shotor was a large Sarvastivadin Buddhist monastery near Hadda, Afghanistan, dating from the Indo-Scythian period through the 9th century CE, notable for its Greco-Buddhist art blending Hellenistic and Buddhist styles. Excavations revealed clay sculptures and statuary demonstrating the connection between Hellenistic Bactrian art and later Gandharan Buddhist sculpture, with the site destroyed by Taliban looting and fire in 1992.
William T. Vollmann's 3,096-page novel A Table for Fortune follows CIA analyst Elliott Stevens (codenamed DAVE) from 1968 to 2019 as he processes intelligence reports and witnesses five decades of U.S. foreign policy, including the failures preceding 9/11 and subsequent wars. The work examines American hegemony, institutional conscience, and a family's rupture through the perspective of a skeptical intelligence officer who comes to distrust his own agency.
Wesley Morgan, author of The Hardest Place, discusses his decade-long investigation into the war in Afghanistan's Pech Valley, beginning as a 19-year-old freelancer embedded with US military units during the 2010 surge. The podcast explores how disconnected military strategies, fractured command structures, and counterinsurgency failures in this remote region exemplified broader problems throughout the 25-year conflict since 9/11.
The Pentagon released its fifth batch of declassified UFO files following President Trump's executive order, comprising 41 documents dating from 1950 to 2026. The materials include videos of mysterious aerial phenomena and an FBI interview detailing a military pilot's 2002 account of a silent triangular craft over Afghanistan, along with witness reports of a 1963 incident in Rio de Janeiro involving a metal sphere.