Section Archive One on One
World Radio Day with prize-winning journalist Jan Bednář
The fortunes of journalist Jan Bednář only beginning to unfold when he
was kicked out of the School of Economics after signing the anti-communist
Charter 77 and compelled to work as a night watchman for several years. The
son of a dissident imprisoned for publishing samizdat literature, the
regime was glad to be rid of him when he applied to leave the country in
the early 80s. He went to England and was able to complete his studies in
politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, from where he
proceeded to join the Czechoslovak service of the BBC in 1985. More
Botanicus co-founder Dana Hradecká: planting the seeds of success
The Botanicus chain of stores offering herbal soaps, extracts and
delicacies is a Czech, and growing international, success story. Most
tourists will have probably bought something from one of their outlets in
the country. The small business was founded in the early 1990’s after the
restitution of a family farm around 40 kilometres north-east of Prague.
That has become the centre for the business and a tourist attraction with
more than 50,000 visitors a year. One of the firm’s co-founders Dana
Hradecká explained the roots of the original inspiration for the business. More
Documentary filmmaker Martin Dušek on why his native region continues to inspire him
Martin Dušek, who often works with co-director Ondřej Provazník, is a
two-time winner of the main prize at the Jihlava International Documentary
Film Festival, the Czech Republic’s most prestigious documentary award.
His films “A Town Called Hermitage” and “Coal in the Soul” were
both shot in the former Sudetenland in North Bohemia, a border region whose
Sudeten German inhabitants were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the war.
Martin Dušek ’s latest film deals with his own Sudeten German heritage
– in a humorous and provocative way. I caught up the director to speak
about why this part of country continues to inspire him and how he
discovered his love for making documentaries. More
Oldřich Černý – Head of the Forum 2000 Foundation
Oldřich Černý is executive director of the Forum 2000 Foundation, which
every year invites some of the world’s leading thinkers to a conference
in Prague. Forum 2000 was cofounded by Václav Havel, with whom Mr. Černý
was closely involved for many years. Indeed, he organised what was to be
the former president’s final public appearance, a meeting with the Dalai
Lama, a week before his death last month. More
“Fish warrior” Jakub Vágner on big fish, small ponds and following your dreams
It is rare to catch world-record holding extreme angler Jakub Vágner in
the Czech Republic. After all, he spends most of his time on fishing
expeditions to remote destinations like the Amazon, in search of what he
calls freshwater giants. In his home country, the 30-year-old fisherman has
become a star in his own right, and is currently on billboards all over the
city as the face of a new advertising campaign for a well-known Czech bank.
He also has his own TV show on National Geographic, Fish Warrior, and last
year, he appeared on the famous American Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I
spoke to Jakub Vágner about fish, the importance of going after your
dreams and how he first discovered his love for angling. More
Astronomer Jiří Grygar on a life of promoting stargazing and scepticism
It’s pretty fair to say that anybody in the Czech Republic who knows
anything about astronomy has learned at least some of it from Dr. Jiří
Grygar. Something of a Czech Carl Sagan, Dr. Grygar has been a frequent
personality of Czech and Slovak television screens since his popular
programme “Windows Wide Open to Space” in the late 1970’s. He was the
chairman of the Czech Astronomical Society and is one of the founding
members of the Czech club of sceptics, Sisyfos, which battles pseudoscience
and charlatanism in the Czech media. I met Dr. Grygar in his tiny office at
the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and asked him to tell me
about how he first became interested in his life’s passion. More
Vít Klepárník of new think tank CESTA: left should no longer be a dirty word
A group of Czech intellectuals including political analyst Jiří Pehe,
sociologists Jan Keller and Tereza Stöckelová, and others, felt that ever
since the fall of communism, political discourse in the country has been
dominated by a right-wing agenda, articulated by a number of liberal and
conservative institutes. To provide alternatives and to oppose these views
from a left-wing wing perspective, these intellectuals established in
January a new political think-tank called Cesta, or Path. In this edition
of One on One, RP spoke to one of Cesta’s founders, political analyst
Vít Klepárník. More
Václav Havel’s decency gave him courage, says his former advisor Jiří Pehe
People in the Czech Republic and around the world hail the late
ex-president Václav Havel as a great European, a humanist and a man who
stood up to the communist regime, a decent and courageous man who led his
country to democracy. In this special edition of One on One, we talk to
political commentator Jiří Pehe who served as Václav Havel’s chief
political advisor in the late 1990s. More
Tomáš Zilvar – magazine publisher focused on future media
Back in the mid 1990s Tomáš Zilvar quickly moved from putting together
DIY fanzines to publishing glossy titles like Tripmag and XMAG, magazines
that were focused on electronic music at a time when that genre was really
taking off among young Czechs. Today Zilvar, who is still in his early 30s,
has two jobs: running the Prague office of the hip New York-based magazine
and website Vice; and offering digitalisation services to Czech media
outlets and authors keen to enter the age of e-readers. More
Rudy Linka – a guitar virtuoso bringing world renowned musicians to Czech cities and towns with Bohemia Jazz Fest
The world-renowned jazz guitar player Rudy Linka was born in Prague but
moved to Sweden at a young age. After half a decade there he left for the
US, and has been living in New York for nearly a quarter of a century. In
recent years, however, Rudy has been home in the Czech Republic every
summer, organising the Bohemia Jazz Fest, a great free event which brings
world class jazz musicians to a number of Czech towns and cities. We met at
Café Slavia, one of the haunts of his teenage years. More
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