390. Road To 9/11: The Soviet-Afghan War (Part 2)

This is the story of how a regional conflict at the end of the Cold War gave birth. most dangerous terrorist network. It's also the story of a charismatic Palestinian preacher. and a quiet, shy, Saudi financier.

Named Azama bin Laden. who between them built a global army of holy warriors. In this episode we step into the lion's den. We trace the founding of a tiny, highly secretive vanguard. called Al Qaeda.

And explore how a radicalized stateless army ultimately fell into the hands of Azama bin Laden. Now Anita's uh busy with another project today. But uh instead we have to navigate us through the treacherous world of nineteen eighteen Shawa, a man uh who was there, uh, as was I uh at this time, in the beginning of both our careers as as young hacks. Um, Jason Burke, welcome back to Empire Pod. Hi, Willie. Great to be here.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (40 minutes, 6,711 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.