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Despite the great difficulty of acquiring computers in 1980s Czechoslovakia, amateur enthusiasts still managed to do so – and produced hundreds of computer games, some of which were politically subversive. They frequently did this on jerry-built computer systems, while homemade arcade games were also to be found. This scene is the focus of the book Gaming the Iron Curtain by academic Jaroslav Švelch. When we spoke, Švelch told me about his own first experiences with computer games back in the ‘80s.

Radek Špicar is vice-president of the Czech Confederation of Industry. But since last year – spurred into action by the UK’s Brexit vote – he has also been travelling the length and breadth of the country trying to convince ordinary Czechs of the merits of remaining in the European Union. When we spoke, Špicar shared the insights he has gleaned from dozens of such public debates. But first I asked him why he felt the pro-EU atmosphere in Czech society prior to accession in 2004 had evidently dissipated so much.

Today Anna Thu Nguyenová is based in California, where she works with technology start-ups. But the young Czech-Vietnamese woman is familiar to many here in her native country thanks to roles on TV series, including a soap opera in which she appeared in over 100 episodes. Indeed, when we spoke recently she was taking a break from her business career to appear in a new Czech Television series. Some viewers will know her by her former name, Anh Thu Nguyen Thi, and she explained the change.

Michael Havas grew up in New Zealand but came to communist Czechoslovakia – the country his parents had escaped from – to study film. He has made over 50 documentaries in a career that has seen him work with director Jan Švankmajer and many more noteworthy figures. Indeed, I first came across him in connection with a letter protesting Brexit that he wrote to the UK prime minister and circulated to friends, including Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin of Monty Python and musician Peter Gabriel. But when we met I first asked Michael Havas about his family

Metronome, Prague’s biggest music festival, will bring the likes of Liam Gallagher and Kraftwerk to the Výstaviště exhibition grounds for its fourth edition on June 21 and 22. A few weeks prior to that, the city will host the free festival United Islands of Prague, which first took place exactly 15 years ago, when the Czech Republic was celebrating accession to the EU. Both of these events are the brainchild of promoter David Gaydečka. When we spoke at his company’s bustling offices, I first asked Gaydečka how he had got into music promotion.

Around Prague there are hundreds of stones inlaid in the pavement honouring the victims of the Holocaust. They are known as Stolpersteine, which literally translates as “stumbling stones”, while Czechs refer to them as “the stones of the disappeared”. Sometimes grimy and easy to miss, these stones have been receiving fresh attention thanks to Trevor Sage, who decided last year to go around the city and clean them all. Since then the retired Briton, who has been living here for over a decade, has created interactive maps and built up the Solpersteine

Robert Tomanek is currently in Prague researching a book about Czech immigrants to America and the Sokol gymnastics movement, of which he has been a member almost all his life. The Iowa-based scientist, who grew up speaking Czech, is also a member of the board of the Sokol Museum and Library in the US – an institution that he and his colleagues are now working hard to create. When Tomanek visited our studio we discussed all things Sokol, past and present. But we began with his own background.

Anyone who is interested in the history of Central and Eastern Europe has likely come across the name Marci Shore. An associate Professor at Yale University, she has published a number of books focusing on the modern history of post-communist countries. She stopped by Czech Radio, while travelling through Prague earlier this week, and I started by asking her about the impact that Nazism and Communism had on the region and the psyche of its people.

Joseph Balaz is president of the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, which brings together the leading Czech organisations in New York. But Balaz’s main activity is running a successful construction firm that brings him into contact with global celebrities and the cream of Manhattan society. Not bad for a student from Prague’s Žižkov who escaped from communist Czechoslovakia with little more than the clothes on his back. The man born Josef Baláž spoke to me at the splendid Bohemian National Hall, the completion of whose renovation he personally

New York-based Alex Zucker is one of the most highly-regarded translators of Czech literature into English and works regularly with leading writers such as Jáchym Topol and Petra Hůlová. When we spoke on a park bench in Manhattan in late September, the conversation took in Zucker’s time in Prague in the early 1990s, his long relationships with authors and his criteria for choosing projects. But first he told me how he had started translating Czech literature – via an interest in human rights.