: Live from Afghanistan!  It’s Saturday Night!

The Kandahar TV station has only 200 videotapes out of the 2,500-tape library collected over decades of Afghan broadcasts, the rest having been burned by the Taliban on their way out. Old rusty Soviet-era equipment will only allow black-and-white broadcasts. But Afghanistan’s TV landscape is squeaking back to life after six years of Taliban restrictions that allowed only government edicts and religious hymns. In Kabul, a Saturday evening talk and quiz show called “Test Your Brain” features Letterman-style “stupid human tricks” such as nodding your head yes while saying no. Questions include basic trivia such as “In what month did al-Qaida destroy the Buddha?” as well as riddles like “A man walks out into the rain for a half-hour with no hat and no umbrella. He doesn’t get a single hair on his head wet. How can this be?” (Answer: He’s bald). The show is a hit despite “grand prizes” that include chewing gum and Pepsi.

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.