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THIS WEEK'S SHOW: August 6, 2026
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey

A "blockbuster version of Moby-Dick" with "moral qualms about the whaling industry."

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, 2011
Ashis Nandy: on Pakistan’s latent “potentialities”

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Ashis Nandy (38 minutes, 19 mb mp3) Ashis Nandy, our sparkling Sage of New Delhi, is in effect a psycho-analyst of post-colonial South...
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, 2011
Rashid Rana’s Pakistan: a mini-version of the globe

LAHORE — Rashid Rana is Pakistan’s prize entry in the global art scene. Images that contradict themselves on closer inspection are his signature work. In his “Veil” series, for example,...
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, 2011
Shafqat Amanat Ali: local, global, classical, pop

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan (26 minutes, 13 mb mp3) Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan is one of Pakistan’s superstar singers, an embodiment of the...
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, 2011
Imtiaz Alam: So you want to be a journalist in Pakistan…

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Imtiaz Alam (14 minutes, 7 mb mp3) Saleem Shahzad on the cover of a report edited by Imtiaz Alam Imtiaz Alam has the...
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, 2011
Kamil Khan Mumtaz: back from a modernist Hell

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Kamil Khan Mumtaz (30 minutes, 15 mb mp3) Kamil Khan Mumtaz, at home in Lahore LAHORE — Kamil Khan Mumtaz, an eminence in...
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, 2011
Salima Hashmi: in the worst of times, the alchemy of art

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Salima Hashmi (34 minutes, 17 mb mp3) Salima Hashmi with her father, the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz Speak Speak, your lips are free....
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, 2011
Zeb and Haniya: the healing charm of “Urdu blues”

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Zeb Bangash and Haniya Aslam (40 minutes, 20 mb mp3) LAHORE — Zeb and Haniya could set you to wondering all over again...
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, 2011
Nadeem ul Haque: “the country that can kill the world”

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Nadeem ul Haque (15 minutes, 8 mb mp3) Nadeem ul Haque giving a talk at TedxLahore Nadeem ul Haque introduced himself with a...
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, 2011
Salman Rashid: a Pakistani Travelogue, with Tears

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...
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, 2011
Mohsin Hamid: on a “Pakistan-like” trend in America

"What shocks me about the way America is headed is that in some ways it’s becoming increasingly Pakistan-like."

LAHORE — Mohsin Hamid wrote the hair-raising novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist that will soon be a major motion picture directed by Mira Nair of “Monsoon Wedding” fame. The character in the...
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, 2011
Ali Dayan Hasan: “… the rule of law is non-negotiable.”

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...
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, 2011
Ayesha Jalal, Part 2: What Would Manto Say?

Click to listen to Chris’ second conversation with Ayesha Jalal (23 minutes, 12 mb mp3) … One inmate had got so badly caught up in this India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India rigmarole that one...
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, 2011
Ayesha Jalal: Pakistan’s Revenge of the ’40s, then the ’80s

"Pakistan as it stands today... is clearly not the Pakistan that [its] founder imagined."

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. Still...
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, 2011
Adil Omar: “Paki Rambo,” dropping beats in Islamabad

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Adil Omar (23 minutes, 12 mb mp3) I-S-L-A-M-A-B-A-D, baby. Let’s play Wii: Crash into each other till we have to sleep. There’s no...
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, 2011
Alia Amirali: Change Agent in a Stuck Society

Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Alia Amirali (27 minutes, 14 mb mp3) ISLAMABAD — Alia Amirali is a second-generation change agent in a society that’s stuck — or...