ben pearson, over here, is an acclaimed film maker and photographer with numerous awards, ohioans and gal ri -- honors and gallery shows to his credit. ben is making his directorial debut with the feature-length documentary, kabul 24, and he shares author credit for the book that we're going to hear about today. so i'm going to turn it over to these gentlemen. thank you. [applause] >> thanks a lot. i guess i'll just kind of start by telling you folks where it all started for me. back in november of 2002 a dear friend of mine, dr. steven mansfield, who's an author called and said, hey, you remember the folks who were captured by the taliban before 9/11? i said, yeah, the two american girls. he goes, actually there were two american girls, germans and australians. the folks have been basically bombarded with requests from hollywood to do movies of the week, and they don't feel real comfortable about it, and they don't really feel like their story will be told truthfully if they allow that to happen. and i told them about you, and they want to meet you. so i met a few folks from shelter