Bassem Youssef: Satire and Dissent

This week on Babel, Jon speaks with Bassem Youssef. He's an Egyptian satirist who parlayed his low-budget Youtube program into Al-Bernameg, the most popular show of the Arab Spring. At its height, he had a weekly audience of more than 30 million viewers. They talk about how he got his start on television, the role of satire in political conflict, and why he fled Egypt months after the military returned to power. Then, Jon, Natasha Hall, and Danny Sharp continue the conversation about the limits of satire and dissent across the Arab world. 

• Bassem Youssef, Revolution for Dummies: Laughing Through the Arab Spring, (New York, NY: Dey Street Books, 2017).
• Bassem Youssef, "The Joke is Mightier than the Sword," Nieman Reports, March 24, 2015.
• Transcript, "Satire and Dissent," CSIS, January 18, 2022.