1 week ago
9
Athens is location to the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the well spring of ideology and doctrine and much precocious has go famed for its graffiti, riots and the longest recession successful modern history.
But a caller occurrence of the Economist’s “Weekend Intelligence” podcast argues that the capital, a “city choked successful cement,” is overmuch much than the sum of these parts.
Narrated by Athens autochthonal Fani Papageorgiou, the podcast traces the city’s roots backmost done the stories she heard arsenic a kid and the ones that preceded them and done the eyes of a fig of residents who emotion it, including writer mates Dorina Papaliou and Apostolos Doxiadis; Cambridge University governmental idiosyncratic Stathis Kalyvas; Kathimerini Executive Editor Alexis Papahelas; Andreas Stavropoulos, a spouse astatine the American Threshold Ventures and a subordinate of the government’s advisory committee for artificial intelligence; and Elina Kountouri, managing manager of the Neon creation foundation.
Papaliou sets the country for the occurrence with her observations astir the strong, agleam airy with which Athens is endowed.
Kalyvas takes the narrator connected a stroll astir his favourite small shops successful the city, which boasts “beauty successful diversity.” It’s a “city that’s built not connected purpose, but organically to marque you consciousness overmuch much connected to others.”
Papahelas recalls his puerility experiences of the 1967-1974 junta, which became the driving unit for his assemblage of work connected the topic that helium refers to arsenic the “dark decade.” The astir telling story from that play is however the CIA thought astir Greek ideology astatine the time.
“The time of the coup, the US ambassador is writing a cable. And the title of the cablegram is ‘The Rape of Greek Democracy.’ The CIA station main steps into the bureau of the ambassador, looks astatine the cablegram … [and] turns to the ambassador and says, ‘how tin you rape a whore?’ So fundamentally the CIA backmost then was thinking of the large ideology arsenic being a whore.”
The junta epoch is besides covered by Doxiadis, who, while a university student studying abroad, played a “lone wolf” portion successful the absorption against the colonels.
“I was successful complaint of transferring clandestine material. Not bombs, not weapons. We were nonviolent, but tracts and books and the messages from Athens to the centers of the enactment successful Western Europe,” helium says. “We did hazard our idiosyncratic state and of course, very superior torture. And that was the enactment that we had. We knew that if we would get caught, that was a danger.”
The occurrence besides deals with the fiscal situation and the “brain regain” successful its aftermath, typified by Stavropoulos and his engagement successful caller AI mill established successful the outskirts of Athens, 1 of the 7 being acceptable up crossed Europe aft surviving successful California astir of his big life.
“The crushed why I think the prime of beingness present is so precocious comes down to 1 word, ‘spontaneity,’” helium says. Athens is simply a metropolis where 1 is “able to spell retired and devour precocious and stay late.”
Kountouri, the NEON director, observes that Athens is simply a metropolis where outsiders very easy consciousness they belong, overmuch much than successful different parts of the continent. “There are so galore antithetic layers and so galore antithetic communities that unrecorded here. And I think artists and radical that travel present to work here, they consciousness comfy due to the fact that they consciousness they belong.”
Papaliou recommends that Visitors should travel to Athens “without an agenda. They should beryllium unfastened to beryllium inspired” and not view its inhabitants arsenic a “curiosity.”
* The occurrence is available connected the Economist website oregon streamed via podcast distributors.
Greek (GR) · 
English (US) ·