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Czech literature will be in the international spotlight next week when Czechia becomes Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest publishing trade fair. Seventy-five Czech authors are heading to Frankfurt for the event, which runs from October 7 to 11 under the motto “ Czechia: A Country on the Coast .” Against that backdrop, Czechast speaks to Belgian intellectual-property lawyer and passionate reader Bart van Besien, whose Bookmarked Places project explores countries through their literature – and whose journey through Czech books has taken him from Bohumil Hrabal and Jiří Weil to contemporary writer Marek Šindelka.

Václav Havel, playwright, dissident and the first president of the Czech Republic, would have turned 90 on October 5. In this edition of Czechast, former Charter 77 activist Jan Urban remembers first meeting him in the final years of communist rule – and reflects on the qualities that made Havel such an extraordinary figure within the dissident movement.

Linda Zeilina-Cross first came to Prague in 2017 and eventually chose the Czech capital as the base for her International Sustainable Finance Centre. She tells Czechast that Czech scepticism towards new ideas can be frustrating, but also sees a country whose clean-tech sector is stronger than many Czechs realise. Recent political changes concern her, but she believes economic forces driving the transformation will be difficult to reverse.

What does it mean to be Jewish and Czech after October 7, 2023, and the devastating war that followed in Gaza? At Brno’s Štetl Fest, Czechast spoke to historian Anna Hájková (University of Warwick) and Israel expert Irena Kalhousová (Charles University) about antisemitism, Israel, the political left and the peculiar position of Jews in Czech society.

More than 35 years after the fall of communism, how close is the Czech Republic to the free society and free-market economy envisioned in the early 1990s? In this episode of Czechast, former Czech president and prime minister Václav Klaus argues that much of Europe is now moving in the opposite direction. Speaking to Vít Pohanka, he discusses the European Union, the euro, the war in Ukraine and the political forces challenging Europe’s mainstream.

Karen Kruger grew up in the United States unaware that her mother was Jewish and had escaped Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransport. Discovering that secret set the Holocaust educator and filmmaker on a decades-long search that resulted in Letters from Brno and repeated journeys to South Moravia. Speaking to Czechast during ŠTETL FEST, Kruger explains how confronting a painful family history gradually turned into an unexpected sense of belonging.

Václav Klaus is known internationally as a politician who has never shied away from controversy, from questioning policies designed to fight climate change to his views on Russia’s war against Ukraine. But this episode of Czechast reveals a more personal side of the former Czech president: Václav Klaus the Pražák. Born and raised in Vinohrady, he looks back on more than eight decades of life in a changing Prague – and has some typically strong opinions about the city of today.

Prague is already feeling the effects of a warming climate, particularly during increasingly intense summer heat waves. Jan Richter, a climate change adaptation specialist at Prague City Hall, believes the answer lies partly beneath our feet: giving trees enough underground space, retaining rainwater and bringing more vegetation into even the historic centre. In this episode of Czechast, he also explains how a Fulbright scholarship in the United States and the urban farms of Detroit helped shape his ideas about the resilient city of the future.

For centuries, paintings, monuments and public buildings have shaped the way Czechs understand their past. According to art historian and Charles University Professor Vít Vlnas, works of art often tell us less about the historical events they portray than about the period in which they were created. In an interview for Czechast, he reflects on Baroque art, Charles Bridge, collective memory and why modern generations are beginning to see Czech history differently.

For the latest episode of Czechast, regional geographer and president of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University Jaroslav Koutský reflects on the changing map of Czechia. He discusses why some regions have reinvented themselves while others continue to face deep social challenges, and why geography still shapes everyday life.

The second half of the 1960s brought political thaw to stagnant Czechoslovakia and, with it, a breath of freedom that inevitably spread through the corridors of Czechoslovak Radio. International broadcasting, until then a strict and uncompromising instrument of communist propaganda, slowly began to change its tone. Czechoslovakia was opening up to the world, and the airwaves no longer carried only rigid ideological dictates.

After almost thirty years spent studying and teaching in the United States and Britain, political scientist and writer Milan Babík has returned to Prague. In an interview for Czechast, he speaks about adapting to life back in Czechia, the strengths and weaknesses of Czech education, the troubled future of the Václav Havel Library and why he still finds hope in ordinary human relationships.

Linda Nosková and Karolína Muchová made history in the first all-Czech Grand Slam singles final. This special edition of Czechast brings their reactions in their own words – Nosková speaking on Centre Court moments after winning Wimbledon and Muchová reflecting on a painful defeat at her press conference.

Few universities in the world can offer students hands-on experience with a real nuclear reactor. This episode of Czechast takes listeners inside the Czech Technical University in Prague with Professor Jan Rataj, head of the Department of Nuclear Reactors.

The witch trials in northern Moravia claimed nearly two hundred lives and remain one of the darkest episodes in the history of today's Czechia. In Blood in Bohemia, a special series of Czechast, Vít Pohanka and Rob Cameron revisit the story with historian Jaroslav Čechura. The episode explores both the traditional interpretation of the trials and a thought-provoking new perspective on their origins.