PRI | PRI's The World

Background ⋅ BBC ⋅ Books ⋅ Cartoons ⋅ Economy ⋅ Environment ⋅ Health ⋅ History ⋅ Language ⋅ Religion ⋅ Science ⋅ Special Reports ⋅ Technology ⋅ Travel

PRI

This tag is associated with 528 posts

More Greece, Russian films, and German potholes

By Jason Margolis ⋅ March 16, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

More news from Greece on this edition of the Global Economy Podcast. The country in the middle of its “worst crisis” in modern history, as the Greek finance minister put it. How are the Germans feeling about Greece? And how are the Greeks feeling about Greece? Also on this edition of the podcast: potholes in Germany, film in Russia, and a new trade route through the Himalayas. Also, is it better to give charitable donations of money or goods to help rebuild Haiti? Download MP3

Tech Podcast: Living with and without the internet

By Clark Boyd ⋅ March 12, 2010 ⋅ 2 comments ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week, the tech podcast brings you a study in contrasts. As part of a series of reports on the power of the Internet, the BBC brought mobile phone connections to these two farmers in rural Nigeria. They’d never surfed the web before. Listen in to find out how they got on. At the same time, the BBC asked some South Koreans to disconnect from the ‘net for an entire week. Painful, considering South Korea is one of the most connected countries on earth. Also this week, we hear about how Indians are finding the love of their lives…online.

Moorish grafitti and texting in Yiddish

By Patrick Cox ⋅ March 12, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Alhambra in Grenada, the crowning glory of Moorish Spain, has more than 10,000 prayers and poems in Arabic inscribed on its walls. We hear about an effort to catalog the inscriptions. Then it’s the second part of the BBC’s documentary on Yiddish. Reporter Dennis Marks takes us to New York, where the language is undergoing a modest revival: among Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights, with a family who text message in transliterated Yiddish, and with a musician a novelist who are re-interpreting the old language of Eastern Europe’s shtetls for new generations. Download MP3

Travel Podcast: Soccer World Cup in South Africa

By Clark Boyd ⋅ March 9, 2010 ⋅ 5 comments ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now that the Winter Olympics are over, sports fans the world over are turning their attention to South Africa, and this summer’s soccer blow-out, the 2010 World Cup. In this episode of Talking Travel, Lonely Planet’s Robert Reid and Tom Hall assess South Africa’s readiness to host soccer’s premiere event, and about the unique prism that sports provide for tourism in general.

The BBC’s Koneksyon Ayiti + Yiddish forever

By Patrick Cox ⋅ March 9, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In the latest World in Words podcast: Eleven days after Haiti’s earthquake, the BBC began daily radio broadcasts in Haitian Creole. We hear how the broadcasts kept Haitians abreast of the news and put them in touch with loved ones. Also, the past, present and future of Yiddish. Once spoken by millions in Europe, it was nearly wiped out in the Holocaust and through assimilation. Today it survives, and not only as the language that gave English klutz, kosher, kvetch and many other evocative expressions. Download MP3

Tech Podcast 280: Cross Cultural Training Goes Online, & Reliving the Dot Com Bubble

By Clark Boyd ⋅ March 5, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here you see a graph of the tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index from 1994 to 2008. See that peak? That’s the “dot com” bubble. In this week’s podcast, we take a step back in time to those heady days just before that bubble burst. What was it like to live through that? We’ll hear from someone who survived. Also, new body scanners come to US airports, and cross-cultural business training finds a new home online. And we end with some very interesting research on voice recognition technologies.

Packing flashcards, Pandas and Polyglotty Olympics

By Patrick Cox ⋅ March 4, 2010 ⋅ One comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Our top five language stories this month: why the disappearance of the Bo language is a big deal; the Olympics are being broadcast for the first time in, among other languages, Cree; when pandas move from the U.S. to China, do they have to learn a new language?; lawsuits concerning Arabic flashcards in hand baggage and speaking Spanish in English-only school; and the Pentagon’s latest attempts to equip soldiers with real-time speaking translator-bots.
Download MP3

Iceland’s debt clouds country’s future

By The World ⋅ March 2, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Iceland’s population is only about 317,000 people. Many are worried that the country’s current debt crisis will force the best and brightest to leave Iceland in search of work. Unemployment in Iceland has risen from one to ten percent just in the last year. But some young Icelanders, like Oern Haroldson (pictured), aren’t waiting for the government to get its economic house in order. The World’s Gerry reports. Download MP3

Oh Canada

By The World ⋅ March 1, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Canadians don’t know how to celebrate? “You’ve to to be kidding me, eh?” says Andrea Crossan, producer and reporter for The World. Andrea was in her hometown, Vancouver, to cover the games for The World. Read her Reporter’s Notebook, and listen in to her coverage.

Dangerous Mexican city

By The World ⋅ March 1, 2010 ⋅ 5 comments ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In the Geo Quiz we’re looking for a Mexican city that has made headlines recently as one of the world’s most violent: registering thousands of homicides in the last two years alone. Yet a high school student exchange program continues there as usual, despite the dangers, and the exchange students say they couldn’t be happier as Monica Ortiz Uribe reports. Download MP3

Geo Quiz archive

Geo Quiz

By The World ⋅ March 1, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
Our daily geography quiz.

Tech Podcast: Germans prepare for RoboCup 2010

By The World ⋅ February 26, 2010 ⋅ 3 comments ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In this week’s podcast, we feature a listener-generated segment on robotic soccer. Tell me, is there anything more awesome than teams of three kid-sized robots trying to score goals against one another? Absolutely not is the answer. We’ll hear from the FUmanoids, the German team that is currently the #2 team in the world. We’ll also talk about Google’s Europe woes, and about Latvia’s virtual “Robin Hood.”

A Cross-Border Comparison of Stimulus Spending

By Jason Margolis ⋅ February 26, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Just over a year ago, President Obama and Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better know as “The Stimulus.” It was a $787 billion shot-in-the-arm to the U.S. economy, a mix of tax cuts and expenditure spending.

The U.S. wasn’t the only country to take such action. On the Global Economy Podcast, we look at how the stimulus plans in different countries have fared and compare the actions taken by the Canadian and U.S. governments.

US diplomats to get new London digs

By The World ⋅ February 23, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The United States today unveiled the design for a brand new embassy in London. The US has had an embassy in central London for some 200 years. But space and security concerns are forcing a move to slightly less swanky, but more secure, digs across the Thames River. Later today, The World’s Laura Lynch reports on the winning design (pictured), submitted by Philadelphia-based firm Kieran Timberlake. Download MP3

Talking Travel Podcast: Clandestine Dining

By Clark Boyd ⋅ February 23, 2010 ⋅ 3 comments ⋅ Transcript

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You never know where your next great meal might come from. This might look like an unassuming dry cleaners in Barcelona. But it hides a delicious secret: a restaurant in the back that is quickly becoming the talk of the town. In this episode of our Talking Travel podcast with Lonely Planet, we chat about “underground dining.” That, plus a discussion on whether a virtual Trans-Siberian Railway can live up to the real thing.