If Books Could Kill

Three Cups of Tea

Mittwoch, 5. August 2026 · 1 h 52

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In 1993, a desperate man stumbled into a remote village in the foothills of the Karakoram mountains. After the residents nursed him back to health, he placed his hands on the village elder's shoulders and made a sacred promise. "Somehow," he said, "I am going to get some private jet reimbursements out of this."
Warning: Contains spoilers for the 2016 film "Arrival."
Thanks to Ted Callahan for helping us fact-check this episode!
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Sources:
• Three Cups of Deceit (penguinrandomhouse.com/books/216104/three-cups…)
• “60 Minutes” expose (youtube.com/watch?v=XhAb37yZ0o0)
• 3000 Cups of Deceit (medium.com/galleys/greg-mortenson-disgraced-au…)
• Books vs Bombs? Humanitarian development and the narrative of terror in Northern Pakistan (outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/destination…)
• Delusional States (cambridge.org/core/books/delusional-states/6AE…)
• Can't Get There From Here (outsideonline.com/culture/books-media/cant-get…)
• Nobel Prize Nominee’s Charity Wins No Award for Accountability (blog.charitywatch.org/nobel-prize-nominee39s-c…)
• David Oliver Relin, Adventurous Journalist, Dies at 49 (nytimes.com/2012/12/03/business/media/david-ol…)
• What Mortenson Got Wrong (newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-mortenson-go…)
• Three Cups of Tea: The Pakistan and Afghan side (bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13125953)
• 3 Lessons to Learn From Greg Mortenson (undispatch.com/3-lessons-to-learn-from-greg-mo…)
• Mortenson returns to Afghanistan (washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/mortenso…)
• The naive republic of aid: Grassroots exceptionalism in humanitarian memoir (manchesterhive.com/display/9781526117304/97815…)
• Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data (documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/4796314687…)
• If you build it, will they come? (tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220380701384…)
• What Really Works to Improve Learning in Developing Countries? (link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-030-32626-…)
• The madrassa scapegoat (tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1162/wash.2006.29.2…)
Thanks to Mindseye (mindseye-music.bandcamp.com/track/the-place-be…) for our theme song!
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