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Reporter Brigid McCarthy provides a snapshot of the culture of corruption in Ukraine. She follows an American businessman as he tries to open his own café there, without paying any bribes. Download MP3
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For the Geo Quiz, we want you to identify an eastern European country by the top stories on its TV newscasts last night. One channel led with a visit by Venezuelan President Chavez. And in local news, some residents in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol were alarmed by the smell of natural gas. Download MP3Audio 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.
Mad Heads XL is one of the most popular rock bands in Ukraine. It’s also among the few Ukrainian bands with a sizable international following. Mad Heads started out performing in English. But a few years ago, the band decided to switch to Ukrainian. And when they did, things started happening to their music. Brigid McCarthy reports from Kiev. Download MP3
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In this week’s World in Words podcast, a language-learning marathon is over, as the author of a blog called 37 Languages decides which one to learn for real. Also, a new film documents a year in the life of an elementary school in Turkey. The kids speak only Kurdish, their teacher only Turkish. And we profile one of Ukraine’s most beloved performers: the cross-dressing Verka Serduchka, who is popularizing a hybrid Ukrainian-Russian dialect.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.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, they seized millions of Ukrainians and sent them back to Germany as slave laborers. When the laborers who survived went home after the war, they were treated as Nazi collaborators. Reporter Brigid McCarthy met a 76-year-old former slave laborer in Kiev (Image of Inessa Merchevska by Brigid McCarthy) Download MP3
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Last week Ukrainian lawmakers hurled eggs and smoke bombs in the chambers of parliament. This was after the ruling party of President Viktor Yanukovich (pictured) ratified a controversial treaty between Ukraine and Russia which extends the lease of a Russian naval base in Ukraine an additional 25 years. The brawl could signal the beginning of a turbulent period in Ukrainian politics, as Brigid McCarthy reports from Kiev. Download MP3 (photo by Ingwar)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.
Verka Serduchka is one of Ukraine’s biggest pop stars. She’s not really a singer…or an actress. In fact, she’s not even a she. This is a star with identity issues. And that makes her — or him — an appropriate representative of Ukraine itself. Reporter Brigid McCarthy in Kiev has this profile of Verka Serduchka. Download MP3
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer’s monumental book “Ghosts of Home” is a stunning marriage of intellectual curiosity and personal search, a compelling historical reconstruction of the German-Jewish Central European culture of the embattled city of Czernowitz, once known as the “Vienna of the East.”
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Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union 18 years ago. One of the first moves Ukrainian nationalists took was to make Ukrainian the official state language. But as Brigid McCarthy reports, Russian remains the language of choice and there’s a move to change that. Download MP3
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We don’t normally focus on the visual on this radio program. But something caught our eye this past week that’s almost entirely visual. And yet, it’s so beautiful and breathtaking that we want to tell you about it. Download MP3. Watch the video:
