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Pico Iyer: Channeling Graham Greene and the World Spirit Updated: 2012-02-10 23:34:51 Description: Pico Iyer-- my monitor on the global spirit in conversation and books -- hears voices: of the Dalai Lama, Henry David Thoreau, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell among others. But the strongest dialog in Iyer's busy brain seems to run between Emerson an...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Steve Pinker’s “Better Angels”: Dodging Our Own Bullet? Updated: 2011-12-07 19:49:07 Description: Steven Pinker has written a game-changer on the little matter of how quickly humanity is headed for hell or redemption. The short form of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is that we're on the verge of Candide's "best of all...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Anatol Lieven: how to end the US dust-up with Pakistan Updated: 2011-12-01 20:31:36 Description: Anatol Lieven explains the lastest clash ......more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ha Jin’s recovered memory of Americans in China Updated: 2011-11-30 04:06:08 Description: Ha Jin's darkest fear about China is that the control-freak regime he fled 25 years ago has enough cash on hand to buy a lease on life -- in Washington and the West, at the expense of its people. The "myth" of an imperial rivalry with the US seems l...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mark Blyth (7): “We can’t all export to Mars” Updated: 2011-11-17 23:20:02 Description: Mark Blyth is flying us over the embattled Eurozone -- populations aging, economies flagging, and now democracy shrinking as technocrats in bankers' gray stand in this week for the elected political chiefs in Greece and Italy......more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD David Grossman: looking for an end of “the situation” Updated: 2011-11-16 22:18:54 Description: David Grossman is considering my question: why the "good guy" solutions have availed so little in the Middle East, over such an ominously long time. Patriot and peacenik, critical-thinker and oppositionist, Zionist and humanist, David Grossman is a ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Harold Bloom’s Melville Updated: 2011-11-11 02:50:08 Description: Harold Bloom is giving us a one-man performance of a one-act play. He invited us months ago to his class at Yale on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and finally here it is and here we are. Because this is Harold Bloom on stage, himself the “living la...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD My evening with Joan Didion Updated: 2011-11-08 22:08:34 Description: Joan Didion is reading from her second smashing meditation on death, Blue Nights. And I’m her interlocutor and foil again onstage in Cambridge. With a woman of the considered written word, not the spontaneous spoken word, it’s a tricky job. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Leslie Chang: “The Dickens of China today is doing real estate.” Updated: 2011-11-02 20:49:58 Description: Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Leslie Chang (30 min, 15 meg) Leslie Chang brings a cautionary anti-romanticism and a fine reporter’s eye to the start of Brown’s Year of China. Her story is China turning itself inside ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Jeff Sachs: the economy doctor is worried… about us Updated: 2011-10-26 22:20:56 Description: Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Jeff Sachs (32 minutes, 16 mb mp3) What Jeffrey Sachs didn’t much want to talk about was the double biography I want to read someday… of the semi-science and fumbling art of economics i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Pakistan Aslant: the two-hour version Updated: 2011-10-25 20:35:08 Description: Here's the short form, as we say: nearly a month of strong conversation in Pakistan, distilled to two radio hours. Both hours are illuminating the judgment that (1) Pakistan is not about to destroy itself, much less go away and (2) that its mutually...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Pakistan Aslant: the two-hour version Updated: 2011-10-25 20:35:08 Description: Here's the short form, as we say: nearly a month of strong conversation in Pakistan, distilled to two radio hours. Both hours are illuminating the judgment that (1) Pakistan is not about to destroy itself, much less go away and (2) that its mutually...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes: a Porniad Updated: 2011-10-19 15:37:03 Description: How quaint, just months ago, talking with Nicholson Baker about his inside-poetry novel, The Anthologist, to suppose his idle moments were consumed with Swinburne’s rhymes and the march time of Kipling’s four-beat lines. In truth the happy horndo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mark Blyth (6): Going to school on “Occupy Wall Street” Updated: 2011-10-17 04:15:30 Description: Americans reverence "fairness" more than equality. We're not Sweden, and perhaps just as well, Mark Blyth allows. "But we get out of shape when we realize that the risks are being socialized and the profits are being privatized. And that's what's ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD David Bromwich: Obama and the measure of Lincoln Updated: 2011-10-12 20:00:31 Description: Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with David Bromwich (32 minutes, 16 mb mp3) David Bromwich is my refuge from the chatter and fog of politics. Sterling Professor of English at Yale, he’s a close-reader and hard marker of Barack Oba...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Amitav Ghosh and his addictive empire trilogy Updated: 2011-10-04 02:22:29 Description: "River of Smoke" is part two of novelist Amitav Ghosh's epic trilogy on Opium, the narcotic fuel of the British Empire in the 19th Century. Reading it, you have to wonder if he isn’t writing by loose analogy about Oil, trade and world domination i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ashis Nandy: on Pakistan’s latent “potentialities” Updated: 2011-09-21 20:26:19 Description: Ashis Nandy, our sparkling Sage of New Delhi, says: "Bear with Pakistan," and remember the Pashtuns that Gandhi called the finest non-violent freedom fighters of India. Don't forget the Hindus and Muslims in vast numbers who remember help from "the ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Rashid Rana’s Pakistan: a mini-version of the globe Updated: 2011-09-19 14:45:07 Description: Rashid Rana makes art that contradicts itself on a closer look. About Pakistan, too, he is saying: Look again! Pakistan is not freakish or a world apart. It may in truth be a fair sample of turmoil and transition everywhere in this 21st Century......more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Shafqat Amanat Ali: local, global, classical, pop Updated: 2011-09-15 02:09:35 Description: Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan is one of Pakistan's superstar singers, an embodiment of the dynamism inside South Asian music. He is singing village music that's gone global, "classical" music gone wildly popular... ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Imtiaz Alam: So you want to be a journalist in Pakistan… Updated: 2011-09-13 21:02:53 Description: Imtiaz Alam has the gruff manner of your classic, chain-smoking, get-to-the-point “Front Page” news editor. He seems a Chicago sort of newspaper guy, except that he works and represents the profession in Pakistan, “the deadliest place in the wo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Catherine Lutz: “magical thinking” and the costs of war Updated: 2011-09-10 12:36:04 Description: Catherine Lutz's calm, conservative accounting of the "Costs of War" is nothing short of outrageous. It was a 5 Trillion Dollar War after all, counting the lifetime of care for disabled American troops and the interest charges on a credit-card war w...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Kamil Khan Mumtaz: back from the modernist path to Hell Updated: 2011-09-09 02:33:35 Description: Kamil Khan Mumtaz, an eminence in Pakistani architecture, is giving us a gentle introduction to Islamic thinking about art, design and meaning in life. He's tracking his two West-to-East journeys over the last 50-plus years: one professional and art...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Salima Hashmi: in the worst of times, the alchemy of art Updated: 2011-09-07 20:26:46 Description: LAHORE – Salima Hashmi is the vital link between Pakistan’s greatest poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911 – 1984), who was her father, and a “resilience” that you’d feel in the air even if Pakistanis weren’t invoking it so urgently and so often....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mark Blyth (5): Sovereigns, Citizens and Suckers Updated: 2011-09-06 15:49:47 Description: Mark Blyth is back in the pub, just in time, talking trash again and taking some credit. He’s the political economist who doesn’t mince words, even when he’s writing for fellow professionals. At Triple Crisis, for example, the other day: “The...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Zeb and Haniya: the healing charm of “Urdu blues” Updated: 2011-09-02 03:38:59 Description: Zeb and Haniya, the Pakistani song duo, could set you to wondering all over again why musicians aren't asked to run the world. In their studio in Lahore, we are puzzling how they make it look so easy to teach us new songs? to give East and West fres...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Nadeem ul Haque: “the country that can kill the world” Updated: 2011-08-31 23:45:29 Description: Nadeem ul Haque introduced himself with a bit of bluster as Pakistan’s official “growth” strategist, then began blurting out his frustrations....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Salman Rashid: a Pakistani Travelogue, with Tears Updated: 2011-08-30 18:30:56 Description: Salman Rashid, adventurer and prolific author, had offered to guide our discovery tour of Pakistan — in the spirit of Kipling’s Kim and his lama, or earlier of the Victorian genius and spy Richard Burton. ......more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mohsin Hamid: on a “Pakistan-like” trend in America Updated: 2011-08-25 21:23:50 Description: Mohsin Hamid, of the hair-raising novel "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," is observing a trend in America toward what we like least about Pakistan: extreme inequality, elitist indifference, a flight from taxes and "shared service."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ali Dayan Hasan: “… the rule of law is non-negotiable.” Updated: 2011-08-24 22:03:55 Description: Ali Dayan Hasan polices the shaky, wavy line of free speech and civil rights in Pakistan with iron conviction, a booming parliamentary baritone, and not much else. He was the first to sound the alarm last May at the abduction of the journalist Salee...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ayesha Jalal, Part 2: What Would Manto Say? Updated: 2011-08-23 20:56:40 Description: Ayesha Jalal is recalling Pakistan's greatest prose writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, whose most famous story -- in the Lahore lunatic asylum -- leaves an immortal judgment on the Partition of India in 1947. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ayesha Jalal: Pakistan’s Revenge of the 40s, then the 80s Updated: 2011-08-23 00:03:24 Description: It takes a historian of Ayesha Jalal's power to crystallize an awkward truth: that the agony of Pakistan today is inseparable from the tragedy of Pakistan's birth in 1947....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Adil Omar: “Paki Rambo,” dropping beats in Islamabad Updated: 2011-08-18 21:27:16 Description: ISLAMABAD — Adil Omar — referring to himself here as “Paki Rambo” — is working the entertainment value of social and personal anger, as rappers do. The twist that surprised me in conversation with Islamabad’s 20-year-old hip-hop star is t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Alia Amirali: Change Agent in a Stuck Society Updated: 2011-08-17 03:36:26 Description: ISLAMABAD -- Alia Amirali is a second-generation change agent in a society that's stuck -- or maybe worse: scared, confused, depressed, afraid it might be sinking. Her project, she begins, is to "rebuild the left" in Pakistan. She is giving us jus...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Haris Gazdar: Why is the US in Pakistan — really? Updated: 2011-08-16 01:45:35 Description: KARACHI — “Plausible deniability” has been the first principle of the US-Pakistan relationship, from the beginning, as Haris Gazdar explains it....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Shahrukh Hasan: The Peace That Could Save Pakistan Updated: 2011-08-10 22:28:36 Description: KARACHI — Shahrukh Hasan is a Pakistani media mogul who’s made peace with India his personal, professional crusade. In American terms, he’s a throwback to the days when lively newspapers were fat with readers and profits, and their editorial ch...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Fisherfolk of Karachi: a Parable of Pakistan Updated: 2011-08-09 21:47:56 Description: KARACHI — We are taking the fishermen’s measure of Pakistan’s distress here in a fishing village that goes back to antiquity, that fights the present-day odds with spirit. The fisherfolk all around us are the sea-level “canaries” in a shrin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Dr. Geet: Yankee doc, speaking Sindhi, in the flood zone Updated: 2011-08-08 23:29:37 Description: KARACHI — Dr. Geet Chainani is the young American dream I hadn’t counted on meeting in Pakistan this summer. She’s a Yank born in India, raised in New York City, trained as a medical doctor in the Caribbean. And for most of a year now ......more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Mohammed Hanif: the Explosive Case of Karachi Updated: 2011-08-05 14:27:21 Description: KARACHI — Mohammed Hanif, prize novelist of A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), is piercing a cloud of calamity and crisis that hangs over his city, Karachi, as we speak. The news headline as we arrived was “Karachi Continues to Burn and Bleed....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Harold Bloom: On the Playing Field of Poetry Updated: 2011-07-05 04:01:40 Description: Harold Bloom, in conversation about his famous Anxiety of Influence among poets, says it's "no different at all" from what Mickey Mantle experienced playing in Joe DiMaggio's Yankee centerfield -- a mix of love (never without ambivalence) and then r...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD The Montebello Project: a Marker Down for Peace Updated: 2011-07-01 22:16:24 Description: The "art of peace" in a time of war -- a play on Sun Tzu's classic "The Art of War" -- was the bait and theme of a three-day conversation at the end of June. The Arab Spring was part of the provocation. James Der Derian's rallying bet is that the "...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD What news of the Bulgers? Howie’s Still Ahead Updated: 2011-06-30 11:15:36 Description: We can’t pass up the Bulger story, after 30-plus years’ obsession with it. The Rise, Reign and Fall of the Bulger Brothers has been the biggest Boston story of our times, maybe the only really important political news in these parts since the Ken...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD John Tirman: “collective autism” about the costs of war Updated: 2011-06-28 14:41:50 Description: John Tirman is trying to explain how the United States got in the habit of fighting wars without a scorecard. We're a country, curiously, that can focus like fiends on earned-run averages and on-base percentages. But war numbers... ?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Joi Ito: How to Save the Internet from its Success Updated: 2011-06-07 21:16:32 Description: Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Joi Ito (29 minutes, 14 mb mp3) If the Internet dream could take human form, it might look and sound a lot like cheerful, boyish, 44-year-old Joi Ito, the new director of the fantasy factory known as...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ecstasy on 3 x 5 Cards: Lila Azam Zanganeh’s Nabokov Updated: 2011-06-01 21:03:53 Description: Lila Azam Zanganeh is lifting us from the effete to the exhilarating to the ecstatic in the beloved Vladimir Nabokov. But wait, I wonder. Wasn’t he teasing us with those tri-lingual puns? … disdaining us in the lonely leisure of himself, butterfl...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD |
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