Iceland Serves Up Road Salt for Dinner

It seems Icelanders have been seasoning their food with industrial or road salt for about 13 years, without realizing it.

How Iceland Views the Financial Turmoil

Iceland suffered a big economic crash in 2008, now the country is watching the situation in Greece with wary eyes.

Iceland Real Estate

The Geo Quiz is looking for a region in Iceland where a Chinese businessman hopes to build a luxury eco-resort.

Food Festival Serves Whale Meat in Iceland

A fish festival in northern Iceland celebrates the country’s fishing industry.

Under the Ash in Iceland

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The ash plume over Iceland’s Grímsvötn volcano has almost disappeared. That is good news for international flights over that part of the world. But the ash that has fallen over the past few days is something of a nightmare for people on the ground. Icelandic journalist Thora Arnorsdottir speaks to anchor Lisa Mullins about it. Download MP3

Inside Iceland’s Ash Cloud

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Ash from a volcano in Iceland is again causing flight cancellations in Europe. Anchor Lisa Mullins finds out what the ash cloud might feel like if you are in it, from John Maclennan, a volcano expert at Cambridge University in England. Download MP3

The most appealing island destination

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For the Geo Quiz we were looking for a place where there are no crowds. It’s a cluster of islands in the North Atlantic about halfway between Iceland and Norway and has been selected by the National Geographic Traveler as the most appealing island destination.Download MP3

Environmental art in Iceland

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For the Geo Quiz, we head for the southern-most village in Iceland. This quaint Icelandic village is 100 miles or so south-east of the capital Reykjavik. About 300 people live there and this outpost at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean is one of several far-flung settings for an environmental art project called 350 Earth.
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Icelandic singer-songwriter Olof Arnalds

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In our Geo Quiz we’re looking for the South American home of the charango which also has links to Iceland. For the Global Hit, Marco Werman speaks with Icelandic singer-songwriter Olof Arnalds who sings and plays airy Icelandic songs on the charango. Download MP3
Video: See Olof Arnalds performing live.

Tech Podcast: Giant humanoid electricity pylons

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In this week’s podcast, Iceland says “nei” to boring electricity pylons. The country’s sponsoring a contest for innovative new girder designs for holding up electricity lines. We’ll hear from one of the finalists, whose design calls for giant humanoid shaped pylons to stride across the Icelandic landscape. (Photo: Choi Shine)

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Geo answer

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The answer to today’s Geo Quiz is Reykjavik, Iceland where candidates from the Best Party fared very well in city elections this past weekend. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Einar Benediktsson, an ex-singer with the Sugar Cubes who won a seat in the Reykjavik city council.

Best Party

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We head to the polls for today’s Geo Quiz. Actually, it’s the voters in the city we’re looking for who headed to the polls, last weekend. They live in a capital city that’s a couple of degrees of latitude outside the Arctic Circle. That makes it the world’s northern-most national capital. Download MP3

Translating disaster and disastrous translations

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In the latest World in Words podcast, our top five language stories of the past month: translating Iceland’s economic collapse, document by document; magnificently bad translations in Shanghai and at the Eurovision Song Contest; a language for communication with extraterrestrials; Arizona moves against accented schoolteachers; and Costa Rica’s new president Laura Chinchilla is one of millions of people who are named after animals.
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Talking Travel: Revenge of the Icelandic volcano

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If we here on the Talking Travel podcast never hear the phrases “volcanic ash cloud” and “travel chaos” again, we’ll be happy. Unfortunately, if Eyjafjallajökull’s got anything to say about it, we’re in for a rough few months ahead. Maybe even more. In this episode of our podcast, Lonely Planet’s Tom Hall discusses the sheer scale of travel chaos caused by the volcano, and whether or not the ongoing eruptions, and disruptions, should make you switch your summer travel plans. (Photo by Boaworm via Wikipedia)

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The multilingual census, and why Thais win at Scrabble

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In this week’s podcast, the U.S.Census Bureau is firing on all linguistic cylinders to ensure that non-English speakers are counted in this year’s census. Things don’t always go smoothly: in Vietnamese, the word “census” got translated into something closer to “investigation”. Also, how to pronounce that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, Scrabble obsession beyond the English-speaking world, and five unique Japanese expressions.
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