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It's hard to believe that it's almost seventeen years since mass demonstrations brought about the end of Czechoslovakia's communist regime. Czechs have come a long way since 1989, but in many ways the country is still coming to terms with the four decades of totalitarian rule. Throughout November the Czech NGO People in Need is running a project called Stories of Injustice, showing schoolchildren powerful documentaries about communist-era oppression, and also bringing living witnesses into the schools. The children have also been asked to seek

Simon Broughton is a successful British television director whose work includes a number of documentaries on music from around the world, shot in locations ranging from Portugal to Afghanistan. He is also editor of Songlines magazine, a leading British periodical devoted to world music as well as co-editor of the acclaimed Rough Guide to World Music.

Natasa Newton is one of the founders of the Anglo-Czechoslovak Trust, an organisation established not long after the fall of communism, in 1990. Its main aim was to foster ties between young Czech and Slovak music students and their counterparts in the UK - in all over 900 students have so far taken part in the programme. Natasa Newton told me all about the Trust when we met at her London home last week, though I first asked her about her own background.

Ticketpro, the Czech Republic's first and largest ticketing agency was founded by a Canadian from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Serge Grimaux, the brains behind Ticketpro and the company's owner, has enjoyed great success since launching his business in Prague. When we met at Ticketpro's offices in Prague 1 recently, I first asked Serge Grimaux how he ended up in the Czech Republic?

Gerhardt Bubnik is a successful attorney, a former international figure ice-skating referee and a highly respected professional. Despite all his achievements in both law and skating Gerhardt Bubnik will be most likely remembered as the very first Czech to graduate from Harvard Law School. When I met Mr Bubnik recently I began by asking him if he remembered his decision to apply to Harvard.

My guest on this week's One on One is Jeremy Druker, executive director of the media development organisation Transitions Online (TOL). The organisation has two roles - it publishes a high-quality Internet magazine covering 29 former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. It also provides extensive media training for journalists from those post-communist countries.

Radio Prague reported recently on the alarming rise in the creation of Roma ghettos, where up to a third of the country's 250,000 or so Romanies end up, with no job and a bleak life ahead of them. One group trying to help Roma out of the ghetto and enter mainstream Czech society is the Romani student organisation Athinganoi. Rob Cameron spoke recently to Gabriela Hrabanova, the group's 27-year-old director.

In this week's One on One, my guest is Martin Palous, the new Czech Ambassador to the United Nations. Martin Palous has long been a leading Czech intellectual and his c.v. lists many important positions and publications. He was one of the first people to sign Charter 77 and was the dissident group's spokesman in 1986. When change came in late 1989 he was a key figure in the Civic Forum movement, and since the Velvet Revolution he has held numerous positions in politics, the civil service, and academia. Martin Palous was the freshly-appointed Czech

The Czech Republic's best known ballet dancer, Daria Klimentova, has been in Prague recently hosting, as she does every summer, a ballet master class. Born here in the Czech capital, for the last decade she has been a prima ballerina at the prestigious English National Ballet in London. During a break in the master class, Daria Klimentova told me how her career as a dancer began.

This week sees the return of the Letni Letna circus festival to Prague's Letna park, a festival attracting top-notch and avant garde theatre and circus ensembles from both the Czech Republic and abroad. American performer Daniel Gulko - of the Cahin-Caha Company - is one of the more well-known performers who will be premiering a solo work-in-progress inspired by Herman Melville's "Moby Dick". It's titled Moby Locked Up, about an oil tanker captain who unhappily sinks his ship. Jan spoke with Daniel recently about the show, but began by asking how