From the “short century” to the “end of history”, from the “bipolar world” to the fragmentation of the world order. Between crises and rebirths, peoples and nations find themselves questioning themselves once again about their own identity. Stories of women and men in time and space told by “Borders, on the borders of the Empire”, by Roberto Sciarrone, directed by Renato De Angelis, the new Original RaiPlay Sound podcast is available from Monday 24 November, artistic director Andrea Borgnino, production manager Giulia Giannuli.
The first episode of “Borders” is dedicated to the end of the Ottoman Empire, one of the largest and most long-lasting empires in history, with Constantinople at the center of everything. Its end coincides with the birth of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular and nationalist Republic of Türkiye.
The second episode focuses on 1923, the year of the birth of the Republic of Turkey: in Lausanne, on 24 July 1923, the peace treaty was signed which definitively established the Turkish borders in Europe and Asia. Thus the Republic of Türkiye was born and a period of great transformations for the Middle East began
The third episode is entitled “Europa 1955”, from the European Defense Community (EDC) to the “spirit of Messina”. A journey to retrace the Conference that “rekindles” Europe, focusing on the six countries that choose economic integration (Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) and on the birth of the “European common market”.
The fourth episode of the podcast is instead dedicated to the United Kingdom in 1966, to the new Dunkirk of English radio. The story of the year that changed British society: from the victory of the first World Cup against West Germany to the Aberfan disaster; from Swinging London and its pirate radio to the birth of the hooligan phenomenon. And again: the Birmingham School, British pop art and Peter Blake’s Young British Artist movement up to the British musical invasion: The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Animals, Pink Floyd.
The fifth stage of “Borders, on the edge of the Empire” is called “Afghanistan 1979” and deals with the long shadow of the Soviet Bear, from the invasion of the USSR to the withdrawal of the Americans in 2021, the decline of equality and the triumph of barbarism. And again the Taliban reconquest: Afghanistan ground zero of denied rights, the most attractive of the “failed states”. The last piece of the RaiPlay Sound journey is “Berlin 1989”, the year in which the borders collapsed. The profound “civilizational rupture”, the “end of history” or the beginning of the Age of Global Insecurity? We will talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the centrality of the European Union; of Germany between West and East, with the souls of the country at odds with each other. Therefore, the past and future of a country that will also decide the European one.