One on One | All stories

As managing partner for the central and southeast Europe region for the global accounting giant Ernst & Young, Magdalena Souček has frequently topped lists of the most influential women in Czech business. With her doctor parents coming and going from Czechoslovakia, she spent part of her childhood and youth in Western Europe before studying in the U.S. and beginning her career there with Arthur Andersen. But when Communism fell in her native country, she soon returned to set up a Czech branch of the firm – at a time when even basic amenities were

With mushroom season in full swing, our guest in this edition of One on One is Jan Borovička, a leading member of the Czech Mycological Society, who combines a very Czech hobby of mushroom picking with his profession of geochemist at the Czech Academy of Sciences. How has the internet changed mushroom picking? Why are mushrooms safe to eat even after Chernobyl and Fukushima? And, most importantly, where are the best spots to find them? These are some of issues we discussed with Jan Borovička, who says this year’s mushroom-picking season did not

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

Stephan Delbos is a Prague-based poet. Five years ago, he moved to Prague, where he edits the Prague Review, teaches literary writing at Charles University, works as a business reporter at the English language newspaper The Prague Post and occasionally hosts the Alchemy poetry reading series at the Globe café. I talked to Mr. Delbos about the English language poetry scene here in Prague and what initially drew him to the city.

Lubomír Dorůžka first began writing about music seven decades ago when, during WWII, he produced a clandestine magazine on his greatest passion, jazz. The quintessential American art form was frowned upon by the Communists after their 1948 takeover of Czechoslovakia. However, in the relatively liberal 1960s Mr. Dorůžka was able to edit music magazines and play a very active role in international jazz organisations. As well as being a music journalist, he is also a renowned translator of American and British writers – and as a young man did many

Amongst intellectuals in Turkey, the psychologist and author Gündüz Vassaf is a bit of a rock-star. He writes a weekly column for the newspaper radical, was a founding member of the Istanbul chapter of Amnesty International and resigned from his post as university professor in protest of the 1980 military coup. Born and educated in America, Vassaf is regarded as one of the most important critical voices in Turkey. Currently, he is in town for the Prague Writers’ Festival, and we spoke to him ahead of the gala opening. The interview opens with the

Peter Smith’s guest on One on One this week is Iva Frühlingová – model, singer, actress and author. Born in the town of Litvínov, with a French grandfather Iva dreamed of going places and most of all of seeing Paris – the city she’d heard so much about as a child. Her dream came true at the age of 14 when she first travelled to Paris as a budding model. Today she divides her time between Prague and Paris, engaging in modeling, singing, writing and most recently acting. Peter began by asking her which of those “skins” she felt most at home in.

Sofia Smith, who is half-Irish and half-Asian, has been cooking in Prague since the late nineties. Angel restaurant, where she was the executive head chef, received much critical acclaim – its opening was written about by Fodor’s as “the culinary event of the year” – and as a freelance chef, Sofia Smith continues to put a smile on the faces of Prague’s food lovers. Most recently, she has been hosting themed nights at Prague’s James Joyce Irish Pub and teaching cooking classes at the capital’s Cocina Rivero cooking studio. She speaks about what she

Leoš Válka is one of the founders of the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague’s Holešovice district, which in just a few years has become one of the most important institutions of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. Válka has a perhaps surprising background for such a significant figure in the Czech art world: for several years he ran a firm in Australia doing maintenance work on high-rise buildings.

Independent documentary director and producer Petr Lom was born in Czechoslovakia but spent most of his life abroad – in Canada and the U.S. His latest film, “Back to the Square” was selected as the opening film at this year’s edition of the One World International Film Festival, where he is also on the jury. Before becoming a film maker, Petr Lom was actually an academic – until one day he quit his job and never looked back. I asked him about his films, which focus on countries such as Iran and Egypt, his connection to One World and his big career