Podcast: Another Pakistan

Veteran journalist Christopher Lydon, of Radio Open Source, traveled to Pakistan in the summer of 2011, microphone in hand, ready to take the pulse of the embattled nation. The result is Another Pakistan, a candid and thought-provoking series of podcast conversations brought to you by the Asia Society and the Watson Institute at Brown University, produced by Zarminae Ansari and Ben Mandelkern, with support on the ground from Aman ki Asha.

In Lydon's words, his team approached Pakistan "aslant."

"Less with oft-quoted strategists, more with the imaginative class, so to speak: with the typically grim but mettlesome singers, story-tellers and artists of Sind and the Punjab," Lydon explained. "They are wonderfully available, individual, candid women and men who have their own dark, truth-telling traditions. They each tell different stories, of course — and almost all of them different from the standard line of an 'Af-Pak' crucible of global terrorism. Many of them point rather to 'Indo-Pak' roots of the modern turmoil, in the Partition that carved two wounded and unequal sibling rivals out of the British Raj in 1947.

"I am deeply interested in the anxiety that has escalated in 2011, in the assassination of Salman Taseer and the official murder of the Sy Hersh of Pakistan, Saleem Shahzad, which has rattled our best friends in journalism. In general, though, I’m drawn to Pakistanis who can think about the long story, as far back as birth by partition, and who can think of Pakistan’s trajectory ahead for a generation. It’s part of the lure for me that Pakistan has a booming literary culture that is more and more linked and noticed in the West; also that it has a talented modern pop music culture that is heard all over the Indian airwaves, and all over Asia."

Follow the links below to listen to individual episodes. Or download our free Another Pakistan podcasts from iTunes. iTunes also features a master feed of all Asia Society Podcasts. You can also enter our feeds (Another Pakistan, Asia Society Podcasts) into the podcast player of your choice.