2011-01-19T15:37:08+01:00 Radio Prague http://radio.cz/en/section/czechstoday/pavel-kohout-unconventional-economist-and-government-advisor urn:uuid:2e8096d4-2e0a-5525-b613-79df87dd31a1 2011-01-19T15:37:08+01:00

Pavel Kohout is an economist who seems seldom out of the media. He recently created a stir when he announced he was leaving the government’s advisory committee, NERV, and criticised government willingness to tackle multi-billion crown corruption in public tenders. That furore appears to have blown over and Mr. Kohout seems on course to give further advice to the government and the new political party, Public Affairs. I asked him how he got involved in economics in the first place.

urn:uuid:eec5bad8-c81e-593b-a9fa-61cf77a9e34f 2010-12-22T13:51:49+01:00

A replica of a 17th century brig known as La Grace which belonged to the first Czech naval captain, Augustine Heřman, set sail for the first time earlier this month from Suez, Egypt. The wooden vessel, which captures all the atmosphere and charm of the historic original, was the dream of a group of Czech sailing enthusiasts. Built in an Egyptian shipyard, the new La Grace remarkably took relatively little time to complete: just two years. Now it will spend the winter on the Red Sea before moving on to other destinations in the spring.

urn:uuid:ce0a086b-906e-5618-b26c-b39f55202cb5 2010-07-07T15:15:43+02:00

For most of the last 17 years Jan Rovenský has been in the thick of most big environmental campaigns, apart from a short but enjoyable spell as a nature protection official at a state park. His latest high profile position is as Greenpeace’s campaigner on climate change and energy policy. That often puts him at odds with local coal companies, power giant ČEZ, the Czech government and President Václav Klaus. We met up with the 35-year-old and asked him what had stimulated his initial interest in the environment.

urn:uuid:ba3a3942-1819-566d-b187-ff244f56dfdc 2010-05-12T15:33:28+02:00

In May 1945, millions of Czechs could breath freely again after six years of Nazi occupation. The German defeat brought about the end of the Nazi rule of terror, and the re-establishment of Czechoslovakia. But for thousands of ethnic Germans, the end of the war meant the beginning of a new ordeal. They were expelled from the country, and many of them were killed during the first day of peace. In this edition of Czech Today, Radio Prague talks to Marie Ranzenhoferová, who survived one of the violent expulsions, known today as the Brno death march.

urn:uuid:555bfe20-3c3c-547f-b441-74df60ac90ef 2010-03-17T13:45:38+01:00

Czech archaeologists are best-known for their work in Egypt, spanning five decades, but some specialists have begun making headlines for excavation work in a different part of the world: Mesopotamia – the cradle of ancient civilisation that is now present-day Iraq. Recently an eight-member team headed by Karel Nováček of the University of West Bohemia, returned from northern Iraq after having uncovered Stone Age tools that were used by either our ancestors or our distant relatives (Homo neanderthalensis). The tools date back some 150,000 years, to the Middle Palaeolithic, the oldest find of its kind in the city of Arbil in Kurdistan.

urn:uuid:b4e05b4a-58b0-589b-b21e-236bbaf752be 2010-02-17T17:29:42+01:00

Lidové noviny, or People’s Newspaper, is a leading Czech paper with a tradition going back more than a century. The liberal daily was first discontinued by the Nazis during the war, and then banned by the communist authorities in the 1950s. But in 1987, a group of dissidents in Prague decided to launch a samizdat version of the respected newspaper. In this edition of Czechs Today, we talk to one of the founders of the samizdat Lidové noviny, and its first post-communist editor-in-chief, Rudolf Zeman.

urn:uuid:8df244bc-0c5b-59a0-91db-dac201a06c41 2010-01-13T15:03:40+01:00

The Soviet-era Trabant – a tiny plastic car built in former East Germany that was left “by the roadside” following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, may have been consigned to the dustbin of history, but it still has a special place in many Czechs’ hearts. Among fans is a group of travellers, including a journalist and filmmaker, who have made the tiny vehicle central to their adventures. In late 2009 they conquered Africa in a Trabant - travelling all the way from Tunisia to Cape Town.

urn:uuid:71e24556-ffac-5e3f-9122-ce6c1caf78a3 2009-12-09T15:36:46+01:00

Few Czech rock bands have gained such notoriety as the Prague-based group Jasná Páka. Founded at the beginning of the last decade of communism, their music was a beacon for a generation that grew up in a Soviet-occupied country. After it was banned by the Communists in a crusade against rock music, the band reformed as Hudba Praha. The man behind both bands, Michal Ambrož, is one of the last pioneers of Czech new wave of rock still around.

urn:uuid:20f89274-b315-5193-b2cd-0cb74ab5105a 2009-11-18T12:37:56+01:00

Modlitba pro Martu, A Prayer for Marta, is a song that for many people will be forever associated with Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution of 1989. Performed by the 1960s Czech pop star Marta Kubišová, it had previously come to symbolise resistance to the 1968 Soviet-led invasion.

urn:uuid:865c2a8c-eabc-56d6-a889-5e3b5259c994 2009-11-11T18:39:42+01:00

The fall of communism turned around the lives of millions of people. In a special edition of Czechs Today we talk to a father and son of the same name about how this dramatic change affected their lives. Petr Cibulka senior was born in Opava and moved to Prague in August of 1989 –less than three months before the Velvet Revolution broke out. He now owns a hotel in Lednice, Moravia. His son Petr Cibulka junior belongs to the generation which was barely touched by the communist regime. He moved to Prague at the age of 15, later went for a study stay in the US and now works as a researcher at the English-language newspaper The Prague Post.

urn:uuid:a6ad64b9-b5ed-57cf-8d28-f470f87b331b 2009-08-19T17:12:21+02:00

For many Czechs, politics is a world of its own, with its own rules and strange characters. Some back their candidates based on things that have little to do with their actual policies, or their record, and some get their ideas from the media. One of the country’s most respected, and wittiest, political commentators is Bohumil Doležal.

urn:uuid:cfd562ec-8e7d-5e41-bb2e-82ea3c69d3a5 2009-06-24T14:30:19+02:00

The Lusatian Sorbs are a small Slavic minority who can mostly be found in the East of Germany. But they have their history, and their friends, in the Czech Republic too. Petr Kaleta is in charge of the Friends of Lusatia Society – in Czech, the ‘Společnost přátel Lužice’ – I’ll let him introduce himself to you in Sorbian:

urn:uuid:1c31a451-f2c4-51e2-92e8-023b94386ef1 2009-05-27T16:56:42+02:00

The endless sound of crickets chirping would make you think you were in a field somewhere in the Czech countryside, but in fact, this is a country attic, home to thousands of insects stored and raised by Czech businessman Vlastimil Švingr. Fourteen years ago, Mr Švingr was inspired to start a small farm to sell everything from larvae to crickets to cockroaches as food for animals in pet shops and zoos: today he has more than 1,700 clients throughout the country and his business is a big success, with an annual turnover of around 12 million crowns (around 630,000 US dollars).

urn:uuid:2844cc55-55d1-5bbf-b2da-7a6ffb5aa72c 2009-04-30T18:36:03+02:00

If you happen to have travelled between Prague and Brno on the D1 motorway in recent years, you might have wondered why those large yellow buses running between the two cities have Student Agency written on them. If you thought that Czech students travel more frequently than in other countries, you were wrong. Student Agency, now a multi-billion business, is the Czech Republic’s most popular transport company. In this edition of Czechs Today, we talk to Radim Jančura, its founder and sole owner.

urn:uuid:2d30d225-ee94-5f47-9c31-2144066abfa3 2009-04-01T14:34:21+02:00

For the past two years, Karel Barták has been the chief of the European Commission’s youth and culture communications unit, making him one of the highest-ranking Czechs in Brussels. Prior to that, he spent over a decade as the Czech News Agency’s European Union correspondent. So how was the transition from reporting on the EU to becoming an official himself? Karel Barták told me over a café a la russe on Brussels’ Place Madou:

urn:uuid:0e1d0b01-79e2-55e2-be54-39f666be7298 2009-02-18T13:56:51+01:00

This is the second part of a special Czechs Today dedicated to the writer, journalist and filmmaker Zdeněk Mahler. Over the years, Mahler, who is 80, has worked at the Communist Ministry of Culture, Prague’s Laterna Magika Theatre, and with his life-long friend Miloš Forman on the film Amadeus. But what about more recently? Well, Mahler has spent the last decade researching the life and work of Czechoslovakia’s founder, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. He has made several TV documentaries about the first Czech president, and has even been elected head of the Masaryk Democratic Movement:

urn:uuid:da7942d2-cf31-5464-a370-e7602c4d679f 2009-02-11T14:41:42+01:00

For this edition of Czechs Today I met octogenarian Zdeněk Mahler, born and raised in Prague’s Industrial Vysočany district. Over the last three quarters of a century, Mahler has repeatedly found himself involved in some of the country’s best-known cultural exports. He helped prepare the famous winning Czechoslovak exhibit at the Brussels Expo in 1958, and lived and worked with a certain Miloš Forman throughout the period of the Czech New Wave.

urn:uuid:e7d1887f-0b25-555f-9f54-647fcf08fe3b 2008-11-05T16:56:13+01:00

When most people think of games the first thing they probably think of are video games, with young kids or young adults lining up for the latest title for their Xbox or Playstation or PC. But increasingly in the Czech Republic and other parts of Europe the pastime of board gaming, yes board gaming (!), has found increased audiences. You may be wondering “What?” if you’re new to board games, but there is a world of designs and titles out there beyond old "classics" like Risk and Monopoly.

urn:uuid:8710c1d7-aa87-580f-a6b0-3061877c2aa2 2008-10-08T15:28:44+02:00

Antonín Holý is one of the Czech Republic’s most renowned scientists. Most recently, his name was put forward by the Czech Academy of Sciences to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work finding compounds to fight both the AIDS virus and cancer. Learn more in Czechs Today.

urn:uuid:8729144d-39a5-5a6d-9d25-5693c5120b99 2008-09-10T14:04:20+02:00

In the past when Czechs thought about comics, classic children’s publications like Čtyřlístek (Fourleaf Clover), about four animal characters, or Fast Arrows – adventure stories for kids - came to mind. But after 1989, conceptions of comics gradually changed as comics not seen here before gradually entered the market. Soon, many grew instantly recognizable to most teenagers: classic superheroes like Spider-Man, Batman and others; on the other, newer genres also began to come in, edgier so-called new wave productions, of which Art Speiglman’s classic Maus was one of the most famous. What is being published now and how has the audience come of the age? Find out in Czechs Today.