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Story Archives of 'International'
Idea Smackdown: Round III
By Jen Nathan on Thursday, November 19, 2009.
Ding! Another round of Championship Ideas Smackdown has begun.
In the right corner: a slew of clever ideas.
In the left corner: overwhelmed producers who can't decide what to schedule first.
YOU are the referee. Let us know what you want to hear on Word of Mouth next week:
- Health Care in the People's Republic
- Death to Receipts
- Muslim Teen Handbook
- How Green is Your Pet?
- Psychology of Terrorism
Russian Whistleblower Turns to YouTube
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 16, 2009.
Police corruption is no secret in today's Russia, but it’s rarely discussed out loud. Aleksei Dymovsky, a police officer in the Black Sea port city of Novorossiisk threw his career to the wind and decided to go public - on YouTube.
In a series of three 2-7 minute long videos released over the past two weeks, Dymovsky faced the camera and addressed his complaints directly to Vladimir Putin. "I want to work," he says, in one video, "but I can no longer stand investigating made-up crimes, imprisoning people we are told to imprison. I can’t stand crimes made-on-order. I’m sick of it all."
Dymovsky was quickly fired, but his videos have drawn more than 1 million hits on YouTube and he is being hailed as a hero, and joins the growing number of Iranians, Chinese and other citizens using the Internet to defy government secrecy.
Miriam Elder covers Russia for GlobalPost. She’s been reporting on Dymovsky’s case and joins us from Moscow.
GlobalPost: Russia's whistleblower cop is a YouTube sensation
Covering the Wars
By Jen Nathan on Wednesday, November 11, 2009.In honor of our nation's veterans, Word of Mouth is stepping away from the microphone to bring you part three of the Boots On The Ground: Stories From The War In Iraq series from the Peabody-Award winning public radio program To the Best of Our Knowledge.
Idea Smackdown: Round II
By Jen Nathan on Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
Ding! Another round of Championship Ideas Smackdown has begun.
We had a killer ideas meeting yesterday and now we need YOU to tell us what you want to hear on Word of Mouth next week:
- Death to Receipts
- Microcinemas
- Tech Crafting
- The 2012 Industry
- Private Prisons
- Carbon Footprint of Pets
- School House Rock for Science
- DIY Video Game Designers
- Is NBC Too Big To Fail?
- A Mixtape for your Kitchen
Tim Crouch's Vision of England
By Virginia Prescott on Tuesday, November 10, 2009.
British playwright and performer Tim Crouch enjoys challenging our notions of theater. His latest play, England, is transplanted from the typical theater setting into an art gallery. He and actress Hannah Ringham play one character – not identified as male or female - who desperately needs a heart transplant. As the character travels to a foreign country to receive a new heart, the play provokes questions about the commercial value of art, and of human life.
As Time Out magazine wrote in a review of England, "Tim Crouch is... conceptual without being obscure; experimental without losing the plot, or indeed faith in the power of words to move you." Tim Crouch joins us from the studios at Dartmouth College, where he’s performing England tonight and tomorrow at the Hood Museum of Art.
Watch an excerpt from the second act of England, as performed at the Fruitmarket Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival 2007:
Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal
By Abby Goldstein on Tuesday, November 10, 2009.Nearly a billion people are considered hungry, and yet every year, millions of tons of food gets wasted. Author Tristram Stuart says this waste not only adds to the problem of world hunger, but is bad for the land, aids in global warming and costs more for the farmers and manufacturers. We’ll look at the effects of food waste and what could be done about it.
Guests
- Tristram Stuart, author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal
Berlin Walls of the 21st Century
By Jen Nathan on Monday, November 9, 2009.
The Berlin wall crumbled twenty years ago today, but that doesn’t mean that physical barriers between opposing regions and countries have gone the way of the dodo. Foreign Policy magazine released its list of the Berlin walls of the 21st century.
East-West Couples
By Hardy Graupner on Monday, November 9, 2009.
German newspapers and magazines are teeming with articles charging that the political and cultural divides between East and West Germany still exist two decades after reunification. Many people still don’t perceive themselves as being part of a single society. For others, these psychological barriers no longer exist.
Artists Take Refuge in Berlin
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, November 9, 2009.
Later today, the festival of freedom kicks off at the Brandenberg gate. U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton joins French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Mikhail Gorbachev and throngs of revelers celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin and Bon Jovi will perform.
The evening culminates when thousands of giant, colored dominos fall along the path where the wall once stood. It symbolizes the chain reaction on that started twenty years ago, the night that East German guards stood stunned as the once mighty border crumbled.
It was an event that triggered an influx of artists, collectors and gallerists into Berlin’s Soviet apartments, industrial buildings, even a Nazi bunker. Artists helped turn cheap real estate into places to create and show art and transformed Berlin into a world art capitol. Catherine Hickley is arts correspondent for Bloomberg News in Berlin. She joins us now from Berlin with an update on the city’s art scene.
The Bloomberg News: Dark Cold-War Art Marks 20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall
The CBC: The Berlin Wall - Twenty Years After the Fall
'Festival of Freedom' to Celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
(Photo by siyu via Flickr/Creative Commons)
Idea Smackdown
By Jen Nathan on Friday, November 6, 2009.
Word of Mouth has more ideas than it knows what to do with, so let us know what you'd like to hear next week.
Here's a list of things we're considering. Add a comment with the idea(s) you think should win this grueling match. Let the best ideas win.
- Female mobsters
- Health care in China
- Online-only churches
- The subprime student loan crisis
- Why boldness is bad for science
- Paul Bunyan chic
- Census conspiracy theorists
