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THIS WEEK'S SHOW: October 1, 2026
AI Apocalypse?

"A juvenility of moral imagination that is at the core of this."

, 2014
Artist in a Revolution: Ganzeer and his Wounded Cat

It’s a thrill to read about the graffiti genius Ganzeer in the New York Times Sunday Arts Section, and about his prominence in a big show at the New Museum...
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, 2013
Coffee Hour on Cairo: A Collective Work of Art

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Barbara Massaad (32 min, 15 meg) Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious...
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, 2013
Gregory Buchakjian in Beirut: A Course of Catastrophe

Gregory Buchakjian looks at the Arab uprisings of the last two years and sees not an exception but an extension — at best a pause, not a change, along a...
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, 2013
Barbara Massaad in Beirut: Make Food, not War. Seriously!

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Barbara Massaad (19 min, 21 meg) BEIRUT — Barbara Massaad, writer and chef, in her kitchen, is telling us a terrific story about...
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, 2013
Guy Talk in Tahrir Square

"What broke the culture of fear in Tahrir Square was a miracle, in some sense."

So three Egyptian guys walked into a coffee shop in Cairo… and this is what we talked about. (1) The culture of fear in a “securitized state.” (2) The burden...
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, 2013
Khaled Hafez: Art and Revolution in Egypt

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Khaled Hafez (12 min, 5.6 meg) CAIRO — Khaled Hafez — charismatic painter and multi-media artist, in his regular Friday salon or master...
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, 2012
Nael El Toukhy: a post-modern novelist’s eye on Egypt

Nael El Toukhy is a bright light among Egypt’s millennial writers at a breakpoint in Arab culture as well as politics. On a rooftop in Cairo we’re talking about the...
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, 2012
Khaled Abol Naga: Egypt’s Best of Times, Worst of Times

Khaled Abol Naga — movie star and now film producer, too — found his political voice in what was supposed to be a documentary film. “Microphone” (trailers: here and below)...
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, 2012
Alaa Al Aswany: Egypt’s Number One Novelist on… Us

"Novelists and doctors are both interested in understanding human pain."

CAIRO — Alaa Al Aswany, the best-selling novelist in the Arab world, sticks to his day job in dentistry. We meet in his modern clinical suite where he starts writing...
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, 2012
Heba Morayef’s Rights Watch in Egypt

Where do the torturers and thugs come from a long-suffering, world-weary population?

CAIRO — Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch serves effectively as a home-grown guardian angel of human decency amidst the endless contradictions of Egypt’s stumbling revolution. She is taking me...
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, 2012
Tuesday in Tahrir: Field Notes, with Novelists

  CAIRO — On the way into the tumult in Tahrir Square today, we’re in conversation with the novelist Mona Prince of So You May See and My Name is...
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, 2012
Egypt’s Revolution Continues: the Talk of Tahrir

Click to listen to three middle-class “revoltionaries” with Chris Lydon renewed protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (26 min, 11.8 meg) CAIRO — We’ve been in Tahrir Square all day till...
, 2012
A Note on Gaza, November 20, 2012

CAIRO — The slaughter in the Gaza Strip is five hours away by car, plus a few hours’ waiting time at the border checkpoints. Yet Gaza’s suffering is several surreal...
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, 2012
Elias Khoury: an upheaval in “souls, bodies, imaginations…”

Click to listen to novelist Elias Khoury in conversation with Chris Lydon on the Arab unpheaval. (27 min, 12 meg) This revolution is mainly a cultural event, not a political...
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, 2012
Khaled Fahmy: a baseline “biography” of the revolution in Egypt

CAIRO — Khaled Fahmy came home to Egypt just months before the uprising in Tahrir Square. He was leaving a big university career in Oxford and New York, drawn by...