Podcasts




Yalla Culture - Episode 26 - The Stanford Prison Experiment

Duration: 0:13:57.458435

Welcome to episode 26 of Yalla Thaqafa. In episode 19, we talked about an experiment that took place in America, which was a scientific experiment in the field of medicine. Today, we will talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment, which was another strange experiment that took place in America. This experiment will make you think about painful memories and delve into the field of psychology. The interesting thing about this experiment is that it allows us to discuss this topic at the same time. Let's listen and see what happened. If we are not interested in reading and want to know about the impact of environment or situation on a person's character, there are various ways to experiment. For example, going to a place like Sultan Center and observing people's behavior. However, it may not be feasible to observe people in places where they are not conscious of being observed. At Stanford University, a group of scientists decided to conduct a mini prison experiment by recruiting volunteers and simulating a prison environment. This was a good method because the volunteers were successful and they could control the experimental conditions to ensure accurate results. The experiment took place in 1971 and was supposed to last a week but was halted after six days as it veered off its main goal. The aim of the experiment was to understand the psychological effects on individuals in positions of power and authority. It was conducted at Stanford University in America. The information provided in this episode is derived from the official website of the experiment, conducted by Dr. Phil Zimbardo. Dr. Zimbardo is still alive, and he created the website around 1999 or 1990, approximately. The experiment is very famous and has sparked controversy. There are even movies and interviews about it. In 2015, a film was made about the subject which is quite intriguing. The experiment is thought-provoking and may be considered painful. Links to the movie trailer and the official recruitment website are provided for further information. The experiment took place in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford University, resembling a prison environment with steel doors. The basement restroom was the only place where prisoners could escape, and even then, they had to ask for permission from guards to use it.


History of the stock market

Duration: 0:01:58

Filled with stories and legends, the history of economic development has always fascinated people. From ancient civilizations to modern prosperity, the evolution of economic systems and markets is a tale worth telling. The story begins with the emergence of the first stock exchange in the world in Antwerp, Belgium in 1531. However, it was the East India Company with its rich history and significant impact on the economy that truly shaped the course of economic history. The old trading posts paved the way for the birth of modern corporations, leading to the rise and fall of major players in the economic landscape. From financial bubbles to market crashes, such as the South Sea Bubble in Britain in 1720, the history of stock exchanges is a rollercoaster of success and failure. The birth of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange in 1790 marked a turning point in investment history, followed by the establishment of stock exchanges in Europe and America, ultimately shaping the global economy as we know it today.


Yalla Culture - Episode 24 - Banned Books

Duration: 0:09:36.246122

Welcome to episode 24 of Yalla Thaqafa. In this episode, I will be discussing the reasons behind banning books. The first reason is the celebration of Banned Books Week, which has been observed in the last week of September every year since 1982 in America. This event raises awareness about books that have been banned and the reasons behind it. The second reason is the winter in Kuwait, where authorities have been adding more books to the banned list, which now includes over 4000 books. Banning books has been a practice since the early days of writing, and it is still prevalent in many countries. The responsibility for banning books lies with both the government and the public. Reasons for banning books can be religious, ethical, or contain controversial topics. Some famous banned books include religious scriptures, such as the Bible and the Quran, as well as works of fiction like "The Da Vinci Code" and "Lolita". In Egypt, books like "The Da Vinci Code" and "Children of Gebelawi" by Naguib Mahfouz have faced controversies and were banned for a long time. In recent years, some of these books have been allowed back in the market. Other controversial books include "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie, which sparked outrage in the Muslim world. Ethical reasons for banning books include topics that are deemed morally questionable or contain explicit content. Books like "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence have been banned due to their controversial themes. Overall, banning books remains a contentious issue that reflects societal values and norms.


Yalla Culture - Episode 08 - Magical Realism

Duration: 0:07:10.403628

Welcome to episode eight of Yalla Fekra! Today, we will be talking about magical realism in literature. Magical realism and realism never meet. So, what brought these two together? Let's start from the beginning. Common knowledge suggests that magical realism emerged in literature or is specifically present in literature, but this is incorrect. It is closely linked to Latin America rather than the Arab world. In fact, in the 1920s in Germany, there was an exhibition on the New Objectivity. The term magical realism was coined by Latin American authors, such as Isabel Allende from Chile, Salman Rushdie from India, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez from Colombia. Marquez, in particular, gained fame for his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude." He even won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Other notable authors in this style include Haruki Murakami from Japan and Naguib Mahfouz from Egypt. So, what can bring together realism and fantasy in a narrative? A novel that combines elements of both can seem quite ordinary with a touch of imagination or fantasy. It can feel like watching a movie or living an ordinary life suddenly filled with magical occurrences. The debate between critics about magical realism continues. The boundaries of magical realism are not clear, making it difficult to define and categorize. In conclusion, the term magical realism originated in Germany and was later adopted in literature. However, as different authors began using it, the definition became blurry. Magical realism combines realism with elements of fantasy, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. It's a clash where it's hard to distinguish what is real and what is magical. Ultimately, magical realism remains a unique and captivating genre.


Sultan Saud Al Qasimi: I dream of creating a private museum for the Barjeel art collection

Duration: 0:12:27

Greetings to you and our viewers wherever you are in this special episode of the culture program. I have a greeting for you from the city of Shurooq, where you are sitting watching on the iPhone. Today we will get to know the “Generation of Arts” group at the Sharjah Art Museum with Sultan Saudiya, the fiancé of the series Saud Al-Qasimi. Welcome, emphasizing the significance of the first microphones in which you spoke in your city of Shurooq, and I chose to meet here in front of the Sharjah Art Museum. The museum is located in the area where we are now, a historically significant area with houses dating back over a hundred years. This is the area where many museums are located, including the Islamic Museum, the Arabic Calligraphy Museum, the Clock Museum, and also the Arts Museum, which was established in 1995 and the building was inaugurated in 1997. It is the oldest museum in the area for modern art. The visual artist aims to reach you through the phone in the year 1998 or 1999. Now, our art collection has become the most important one. There are collections available in two towers in the Sharjah Art Museum. It includes collections that have been or will be presented by artists from the Arab region, modern and contemporary art. We are talking about the transfer of this collection to the Sharjah Art Museum. The museum is one of the oldest in the area. A significant event was the first transfer of the collection in 2018. They give us one of the four main objectives of the museum, meaning that they welcome the government's efforts and emails about the museum. The museum is considered a relatively large space, 750 square meters, and we entered our artworks permanently or for a long time in 2018. The museum is very interested in achieving equality between works of female and male artists. Why, in fact, the challenge is to personally view the artist. We have heard many times that there are no important female artists in the Arab world. Therefore, the challenge is to visit any museum in Sharjah, where you can see the works of twenty female artists and others. Unfortunately, the Arab world adopted this incorrect idea from the West and repeated it in many museums in the region, resulting in an unequal presentation from a gender perspective. For artists from the Arab world, nowadays it is necessary to have a work that is preferable to be created and preferably from before the 1950s. This is the main standard that tries to restore balance. In the first ten years of the suffocation, so that it was close to what was proposed in the market and the place of the disc, the market was ninety percent with the works of men, who were like dragons' eyes, meaning. I don’t want to mean anything by important male artists, but the works of female artists took a challenging turn and managed to rebalance the group creatively. The works of female artists from the Arab region have many names that we will get to know shortly, but also the state or nationality of the artists are important. There is a great interest in artists from countries that I worked a lot on the map of the art scene in the Arab world such as Yemen and Libya. This is evidenced by the work that there is a presence of artists from Arab countries that are not well-known because they are very conservative in their countries. This was not the case in the Gulf countries, for example, as they were unable to enter the market. Correctly, the most important museums do not depend on them, especially in recent times. In Yemen and Libya, which are countries with a very ancient civilization, the focus has been able to obtain several artistic works by artists who have passed away to be on display. This work is a living example of this, by the work of the Yemeni artist Hakim Al-Haq. Speaking of this Sultan's uncle, Hakim, the most important for symbolic history to the Arab or happy Yemen, is a graduation project for the artist Hakim Al-Aqla when he was studying at the Sura Academy in Syria in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This work through four slides, the viewer can understand or learn the story of Yemen through us if a political action is taken, Sultan's political action. What are the criteria that matter to you in choosing new paintings to enter the Bridal Group? We are talking about the importance of the work for you. This is a painting by the Syrian artist Saeed Tameem, who was the education and important artist as he studied in Iraq, Syria, and Misev, and other parts of the Arab world. He was also a prominent artist, supporter of Arab unity between Syria and Nasser in the 1950s, and in this painting, he reflects the importance of President Jamal Abdel Nasser. He was a man of peace initiatives, but a man of strength, literally making a difference. Can I act? Can we see peoples of the world celebrating it, such as in Africa or South America? These represent countries of non-alignment, which he was part of creating, drawing from the works of art to the works of the butter, there are works that take us to work that makes you feel proud as an artist, or an artist unfortunately who traveled from one of. The most important artworks we have, including the leading Palestinian artist Ashraf al-Saadi, with a small number of her large and important paintings. She was born in 1905 in Jerusalem and studied under the Palestinian artist Gaban Kahlil and placed paintings here in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s of this Palestinian and individuals, Palestinian faces and flags. Unfortunately, after the disaster of Damascus and not writing there, she died there in 1988. This program of painting, after your permission, is a very rare program that carries great responsibility on us to preserve and secure it. She is a Palestinian artist, meaning the opposite of the Palestinian identity and history. I consider it one of the most important pieces that I killed in the search for the most recent works in the Arab world. What are the difficulties and challenges facing you in the search for rare artworks? The truth is that there is a lot of luck in old books from the fifties and sixties for this asset and the second is that there is a big migration, as the Arab world became in the mid-twentieth century, and many of the works went to Europe or North America, meaning that they were forgotten in video or offline. I don’t want it to mean that a world where all important works are left behind countries like Palestine, Qatar, Syria, Jordan, and others. I love that many of the works remain in these countries.