Night Waves - Vali Nasr
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2013
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rana Mitter talks to Washington insider Vali Nasr about his new book 'The Dispensable Nation - American Foreign Policy in Retreat.' The reputation of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder with Darwin of the Theory of Natural Selection, has now regained its former lustre. Rana and guests discuss why one of Victorian Britain's greatest scientists fell into obscurity. Ibrahim El-Salahi has a major retrospective at Tate Modern and exhibition curator, Salah Hassan explains the Sudanese artist's crucial role in the evolution of the reputation of African Art. Mount Fuji has finally gained World Heritage Status - Martin Dusinberre explains its central role in Japanese culture.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:40.8 | Tonight, pull on your thick as parker and woolly as socks and help us climb the world's newest UNESCO heritage site, Mount Fuji. |
| 0:48.9 | We'll find out why today is the day that tens of thousands of Japanese will make their way up its slopes. |
| 0:56.0 | And the nearly man of natural science who died 100 years ago, we'll find out about the |
| 1:01.7 | evolution of the reputation of Alfred Russell Wallace. And an artist who until recently |
| 1:08.1 | couldn't get his foot in the door of a single British gallery. |
| 1:11.9 | This show, about five to ten years ago, we approached every single museum or gallery in London about it, |
| 1:19.2 | even in Birmingham or Liverpool, but many turned it down. |
| 1:30.3 | Who is... Who is he? |
| 1:31.3 | Well, stay tuned to find out, and discover why he's now being celebrated as one of the most important figures in modernism, with a major new exhibition at Tate Modern. |
| 1:41.3 | But first, last week the United States surprised the world by announcing that it was talking to the Taliban. |
| 1:49.0 | For some insiders in Washington, D.C., it sounded as if the powers that be were finally listening to one person |
| 1:56.0 | who's made one of the most controversial criticisms of American foreign policy in years. |
| 2:02.7 | Valley Nasser is one of the world's most respected authorities on the politics of Shia and Sunni Islam. |
| 2:09.2 | From 2009 to 2011, he served as the senior advisor to Richard Holbrook, |
| 2:15.0 | who worked with Hillary Clinton for the Obama White House on |
| 2:18.1 | Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Nasser became increasingly frustrated at the Obama administration's |
| 2:23.7 | policies. Convinced that they were failing to understand Afghanistan and refusing to engage |
| 2:28.8 | seriously with Iran, he left the administration and wrote his explosive book, The Dispensible Nation. |
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