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Chicago is home to one of the biggest Czech communities in the United States. It also houses the headquarters of President Barack Obama’s campaign for reelection. Where better to get a sense of how Czech-Americans plan to vote?

There are more than two million Czechs and their Czech-speaking descendants living outside their homeland, or working abroad indefinitely, and Czech Radio and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertakes a number of activities – partly through Radio Prague – to support those communities, to keep their connections with this country strong and to help them spread knowledge about the Czech Republic.

The death on October 12 of the Scottish composer Geraldine Mucha at the age of 95 marked the end of an era. Since the end of WWII, her home had been Prague, where she moved with her husband, the outstanding Czech writer, Jiří Mucha. It was here that much of her work was composed and performed, although it always bore an imprint of her native Scotland. Her father-in-law was the celebrated artist of Art Nouveau Paris, Alfons Mucha, and she did much to help to keep his work together. In this special programme, David Vaughan talks to Patricia Goodson,

In today’s music programme, we’ll be looking back at the life and times of folksinger and writer Josef Peterka, better known under the name of Bob Hurikán. Born in Prague in 1907 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hurikán became one of the main proponents of the ‘tramping’ movement in Bohemia (or trempink as it is also known) – more than a pastime but even a way of life combining a love of scouting, woodcraft and the American Wild West.

We have a very special guest today, whom I’d like to welcome to the studio: Valdis Dombrovskis, Prime Minister of Latvia since March 2009, which was a particularly turbulent time for the Latvian economy. Mr. Dombrovskis, who was born in 1971, previously served as an MEP and also Finance Minister for his country. He is also an economist, physicist and author. Welcome to the studio Mr. Dombrovskis.

This special programme is dedicated to one of the world’s foremost 20th century pianists Rudolf Firkušný. This year music lovers around the country are celebrating the centenary of the birth of one of its most famous sons –a virtuoso par excellence who was moreover one of the last direct personal links to some of the country’s greats – Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů, Josef Suk, Alfons Mucha but also president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.

Ája Vrzáňová-Steindler is a remarkable woman. Now aged 81, she was twice crowned world figure skating champion, in 1949 and 1950, while still in her teens. Immediately after taking her second world title, she won political asylum in the U.K., before moving to the United States, where she has spent much of her life. Her mother soon followed her to the West – in a dramatic escape on one of three civilian planes simultaneously hijacked by their pilots and flown to an airbase near Munich. Her father, however, remained in Czechoslovakia.

The Czech media landscape is changing beyond recognition, as anyone who used to listen to Radio Prague on shortwave knows only too well. So how is the Czech Republic keeping pace with the digital revolution? And what are the new dangers that go with the social media, citizen journalism and all the other innovations that are transforming the work of the traditional journalist? For the last three months David Vaughan has been teaching broadcasting history to students at Prague’s Anglo-American University. As part of the course he asked his students

Anniversaries give us the chance to think again about the meaning of events and their relevance today. Next month it will be exactly 70 years since the destruction by the Nazis of the Czech village of Lidice in June 1942. The facts and figures are well known, and even in the shadow of huge numbers later killed in the Holocaust, still remain shocking: 340 people were murdered, including 88 children and all but two of the men of the village. They were killed systematically and in cold blood in a calculated attempt by the SS to prevent Czech insurgency.

Czech beer is considered part of national heritage and has long been just as popular abroad as it has been at home. But over the last several years, beer consumption in the Czech Republic has been on a slow but steady decline which prompted all major breweries to look for new ways of attracting the pampered Czech beer drinker. In our beer special today, we examine a new hit on the market – low-alcohol fruit beers, or radlers, put out by three biggest beer producers – Pilsner Urquell, Staropramen, and Heineken.