Free Thinking - The Arab Spring, Sahar Assaf, Owen Hatherley, Social Media and Language
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2016
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anne McElvoy looks at what happened to the Arab Spring five years on, talking to Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany - whose new novel is called The Automobile Club of Egypt - and to satirist and critic Karl Sharro. They will be joined by Lebanese actress Sahar Assaf talking about performing in Dario Fo and Franca Rame's monologue An Arab Woman Speaks.
Also in the programme, Owen Hatherley discusses his latest book The Ministry of Nostalgia.
And, lexicographer Tony Thorne and writer Hannah Jane Parkinson discuss how social media is affecting language.
The English premiere of Dario Fo and Franca Rame's An Arab Woman Speaks is on at the New Diorama Theatre in London until 6th February.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.7 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.7 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:34.7 | Hello, and on free thinking tonight, the power of words in revolutions and autocracies, |
| 0:41.2 | the shifting nature of words as technology gives rise to ever more bamboozling text-speak, |
| 0:47.1 | and the revival of austerity as a phrase and an idea with roots after the Second World War. |
| 0:53.6 | But first, Monday marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Egyptian Revolution |
| 0:58.8 | on the 25th of January 2011. |
| 1:03.0 | The uprising in Cairo's Tohria Square brought hopes of more liberal freedoms |
| 1:08.0 | in a country long under the heel of an authoritarian army-backed rule. |
... |
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