00:00In an article penned in the New York Times, you wrote that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has made advances once thought unimaginable.
00:09And I'd like to ask you, since you served in Riyadh until the start of the year, what are the main changes that you've observed in Saudi Arabia during the past decade?
00:19You know, the changes are sort of in two categories.
00:21Economic, there's a huge economic diversification effort going on, and also societal.
00:26And I think for somebody that visited Saudi Arabia 5, 10, 15 years ago, and then again in this recent period, that's the most dramatic change that you see.
00:35It's the most palpable thing.
00:37Saudi was famous for women being marginalized in society, for example.
00:43And now you go and Saudi women are everywhere.
00:46They're in the workforce in large numbers.
00:49They can drive.
00:51They can basically control their lives in ways that they never could before.
00:55So I think that's the most obvious thing when you step off a plane and visit the country.
01:00But there's a lot of other things as well.
01:02Saudi was never a country where you had an arts and culture scene, for example.
01:06And now there's movie cinemas and concerts and art exhibitions in a way that were once not only unheard of, but actually illegal in the country.
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