In Focus | All stories

Few people in the Czech Republic know that a significant chapter in the history of early Czech sound recordings was written by Czech immigrants in the United States. For several years now, Filip Šír from the National Museum in Prague has been searching for the lost recordings and the stories of the people behind them. Last year, he published his findings in a book called Bohemia on Records, written together with music collector Gabriel Goessel. But he says there is still much more waiting to be discovered.

Doctors at the University Hospital in Brno are celebrating an unprecedented success. In mid-August, they delivered a healthy baby girl 117 days after her mother was declared brain dead after suffering a brain haemorrhage. It is the longest artificially sustained pregnancy in a brain-dead mother ever recorded in medical history.

Many Czechs in Australia will be familiar with the voice of Filip Koubek. This is because for many years he presented special Czech broadcasting produced by the country’s SBS radio aimed at Czech expats living in the country. Now, more than 40 years after its launch, the service has been discontinued.

For nearly ten years, the company Nanovo has been buying, renovating and re-selling design items from Czechoslovakia’s Communist era, from home décor to furniture. I visited the company’s warehouse in Prague’s Vysočany district to meet its two owners, Jirka Mrázek and Adam Karásek and I first asked them if it was still easy these days to come across original pieces from communist Czechoslovakia:

The 1969 moon landing glued millions of people around the world to their TV sets 50 years ago. For Czechs and Slovaks, this historic event had a special, bittersweet, taste. Vít Pohanka spoke to two Czech journalists who had the unique opportunity to cover the Apollo flight both from the USA and Prague.

Swedish statistician Ola Rosling is co-founder of Gapminder, a foundation that aims to chart trends and use data to fight what it calls “devastating ignorance” using “fact-based worldviews everyone can understand.” On the invitation of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, he recently visited the Czech Republic to share his vision with local politicians and decision-makers. His message to them in part was to reexamine their assumptions about the world – because the Left and Right are “equally wrong” – and embrace nuance over binary thinking.

Once a common species in the Czech Republic, the European ground squirrel, also known as the souslik, has become increasingly rare over the past decades. While in the past ground squirrels were exterminated as pests, today conservationists are trying to protect existing colonies and reintroduce them into suitable habitats. I discussed the sousliks with Hannah Findlay, a young British woman based in Moravia who works as a researcher for the Czech NGO Alka Wildlife. I started by asking her what made its numbers dwindle in the first place:

Young Czech scientist and traveller Arthur Sniegon has devoted much of his life to protecting Africa’s wildlife. Among other things, he took part in undercover operations focused on capturing wildlife poachers and established an NGO called SaveElephants, focused on protecting Central Africa’s elephants. This year he received a prestigious grant from the Neuron foundation to explore a remote part of wilderness in the Congo.

Every year, millions of tourists visit Prague, but a vast majority of them never get beyond its most famous sites, such as the Old Town Square, Charles Bridge or Prague Castle. As a result, the city centre has become excessively crowded and most of the locals try to avoid it as much as they can. For those who want to get a sense of what real life in Prague looks like and enjoy the authentic atmosphere of the city, there is Use-It Prague, a free alternative map inviting visitors to get off the beaten path and enjoy some of the city’s more unusual

Czech doctors and medical experts are helping abroad. Within the government program MEDEVAC they provide urgent humanitarian aid in countries such as Jordan and Ukraine. You can also find medical devices Made in Czechia all over the world. This small country is definitely punching above its weight on the global scene when it comes to health expertise and technology.