Bringing Europe Into Your Classroom

How Covid-19 Is Challenging Cultures

NPR podcast

Rough Translation

March 18, 2020

In this episode of the NPR Podcast Rough Translation, three international correspondents discuss how a nation’s culture affects the response to the epidemic.

Possible questions to ask your students

• What historical events impacted the Chinese, German, and Greek response to covid-19?
• How do the actions of the correspondents (for example one journalist is baking, another talks about jogging) compare to each government’s response to the epidemic?
• How has Covid-19 impacted each culture mentioned in the piece?
• What national beliefs and historical events have most influenced your government’s response to this international epidemic?
• How do you think the epidemic will change your culture?

If you have an article to recommend, please contact us at  europe@international.wisc.edu

This season’s featured book is the popular young adult novel, “The Man who Spoke Snakish.” by Estonian author Andrus Kiviräh.

The Man Who Spoke Snakish is the imaginative and moving story of a boy who is tasked with preserving ancient traditions in the face of modernity. Set in a fantastical version of medieval Estonia, The Man Who Spoke Snakish follows a young boy, Leemet, who lives with his hunter-gatherer family in the forest and is the last speaker of the ancient tongue of snakish, a language that allows its speakers to command all animals. But the forest is gradually emptying as more and more people leave to settle in villages, where they break their backs tilling the land to grow wheat for their “bread” (which Leemet has been told tastes horrible) and where they pray to a god very different from the spirits worshiped in the forest’s sacred grove.

DEFINITELY READ BEFORE RECOMMENDING TO STUDENTS.

There will be a discussion on campus with Professor Thomas A. DuBois, Chair of UW-Madison Department of German, Nordic and Slavic, for members of the Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS) book-club.

For more information about the international book-club please contact IRIS Assistant Director for Outreach,

Nancy Heingartner

nheingartner@wisc.edu

Spring 2020, Estonia

The Man who Spoke Snakish

By Andrus Kiviraehk

Fall 2019, Ireland 

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

By Patrick Radden Keefe

BBC (UK)

Spiegl (Germany)

Le Monde (France)

Independent (Ireland)

Nordstjernan (Sweden)

El Pais (Spain)

Resident (Portugal)

Polskie Radio (Poland)

Flanders News (Belgium)

Politiken (Denmark)

EU Confidential (Politico): A weekly podcast featuring keynote interviews on the forces shaping Europe.

Talking Politics: Launched after the Brexit vote in 2016 by Cambridge University professor David Runciman, Talking Politics is a weekly podcast that covers international and domestic affairs.

The World in 30 minutes with Mark Leonard: Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, explores the big issues in foreign policy and Europe’s role in the world.

The Europeans: An award-winning podcast looking at politics and culture around the continent. It delves into stories that don’t get attention in the national media and interview fascinating people across Europe, from writers to activists, scientists to chefs.

The Political Party: Comedian and former political advisor Matt Forde interviews figures from the political world, such as current and former MPs, journalists and diplomats from all parts of the political spectrum.

How to Invent a Country: When did countries become countries? Misha Glenny speaks on the borders, the stories and the people of countries, with a focus on European nations.

The History of Rome: A weekly podcast tracing the history of the Roman Empire, beginning with Aeneas’s arrival in Italy and ending with the exile of Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.

The British History Podcast: The BHP is a chronological retelling of the history of Britain with a particular focus upon the lives of the people.

Comedy

Call My Agent! (France): At a Paris talent firm, A.S.K, agents attempt to save their flailing business while confronting realities like sexism, ageism, and the gender pay gap in movies and TV.

A Very Secret Service (France): A posh series that lampoons Cold War-era politics and bureaucratic absurdity with dry wit. The French secret service inducts the main character, André, without warning or training, and we follow him as world paranoia boils and the fight for Algerian independence turns France on its head.

Fallet (Sweden): A spoof of police procedurals with spunk, verve, and a lot of heart. The Swedish series follows a Stockholm homicide detective and British chief inspector, both uninvested and incompetent, who are paired up to investigate the murder of an Englishman at a last-ditch effort to save their jobs.

Rita (Denmark): Rita, a Danish teacher, is “too cool for school,” but in this comedy, she actually cares about her students, and her unorthodox attitude is a hallmark of her equally unorthodox approach to her pupils.

Merlí (Spain/Catalonia): A free-thinking firebrand lands a gig teaching high school philosophy just as bankruptcy forces him to move back in with his mother. Complicating matters is his son, whom Merlí’s ex drops off just as he’s evicted, and who turns out to be a student in his class.

Drama

Dark (Germany): Dark clouds loom over the nuclear power plant that dominates the town and hangs over the complex storyline. Teenage boys start to disappear from the town, and these events prove to be the threads that reveal the dark, interconnected relationships of various citizens and the secrets they hold.

Occupied (Norway): In the not-so-distant future, the Norwegian Green Party, an environmentally friendly political formation, has taken control of the country, and has used their power to totally cease production of fossil fuels. When the oil stops flowing, the EU authorizes Russia to conduct a soft invasion of Norway and the geopolitical intrigue begins.

Money Heist (Spain): “The Professor” rounds up a group of talented criminals in hopes of pulling off the biggest heist in history. With high stakes, it’s a pulse-pounding action that manages to frame the story as thoughtfully as possible between gunshots and car chases.

Elite (Spain): Described as Riverdale meets Gossip Girl meets Big Little Lies, this show is full of teen melodrama. However, the material is elevated thanks to an inventive story structure that plays with the timeline, a reinvention of character tropes, and a murder mystery intertwined alongside the typical teenage drama.

Suburra: Blood on Rome (Italy): Instead of drugs or money, it is land that is at stake in this particular crime drama. A small group of young upstart criminals hatch a plan to get some land and establish themselves as underworld players. Our antiheroes quickly discover that there are many more experienced and more powerful hands playing this game, and that they might just be in over their heads.