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At the dawn of the social media era, Belle Gibson became a pioneering wellness influencer - telling the world how she beat cancer with an alternative diet. Her bestselling cookbook and online app provided her success, respect, and a connection to the cancer-battling influencer she admired the most. But a curious journalist with a sick wife began asking questions that even those closest to Belle began to wonder. Was the online star faking her cancer and fooling the world? Kaitlyn Dever stars in the Netflix hit series Apple Cider Vinegar . Inspired by true events, the dramatized story follows Belle’s journey from self-styled wellness thought leader to disgraced con artist. It also explores themes of hope and acceptance - and how far we’ll go to maintain it. In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, host Rebecca Lavoie interviews executive producer Samantha Strauss. SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't watched Apple Cider Vinegar yet, make sure to add it to your watch-list before listening on. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts .…
Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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Контент предоставлен davidhmould. Весь контент подкастов, включая эпизоды, графику и описания подкастов, загружается и предоставляется непосредственно компанией davidhmould или ее партнером по платформе подкастов. Если вы считаете, что кто-то использует вашу работу, защищенную авторским правом, без вашего разрешения, вы можете выполнить процедуру, описанную здесь https://ru.player.fm/legal.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve visited more than 30 countries, working as a researcher, teacher, trainer and consultant for international and government agencies. It’s given me a rare chance to experience a country as few tourists can, through the perspectives of my local colleagues. My essays on travel, history and culture have been published in newspapers, magazines and online media, and collected in three books: Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia, Monsoon Postcards: Indian Ocean Journeys, and Postcards from the Borderlands. Available from Amazon and online booksellers.
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Контент предоставлен davidhmould. Весь контент подкастов, включая эпизоды, графику и описания подкастов, загружается и предоставляется непосредственно компанией davidhmould или ее партнером по платформе подкастов. Если вы считаете, что кто-то использует вашу работу, защищенную авторским правом, без вашего разрешения, вы можете выполнить процедуру, описанную здесь https://ru.player.fm/legal.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve visited more than 30 countries, working as a researcher, teacher, trainer and consultant for international and government agencies. It’s given me a rare chance to experience a country as few tourists can, through the perspectives of my local colleagues. My essays on travel, history and culture have been published in newspapers, magazines and online media, and collected in three books: Postcards from Stanland: Journeys in Central Asia, Monsoon Postcards: Indian Ocean Journeys, and Postcards from the Borderlands. Available from Amazon and online booksellers.
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×Even for the Balkans, a region with more than its fair share of crazy national borders, it’s an oddity—a twelve-mile stretch of Bosnia on the Adriatic coast separating Croatia’s top tourist destination, Dubrovnik, from the rest of the country. As with most territorial issues in the Balkans, Bosnia’s short coastline is a quirk of history, the outcome of conflicts between the Ottoman, Habsburg and Venetian empires, and Venice’s main trading rival, the Republic of Dubrovnik. Bosnia is hardly a maritime nation. It has no navy or merchant fleet. But since it gained independence in 1995, it has enticed travelers on the coast road to Dubrovnik to stop, shop, eat and sleep at its only port, Neum, population 3,000. That commercial advantage ended in 2023, when Croatia completed construction of the 1.5-mile Pelješac Bridge. It spans the channel from the mainland to the Pelješac peninsula, where new access roads and tunnels connect with the Dubrovnik road. It adds a few miles to the trip, but travelers avoid two border crossings.…
After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnia was torn apart by ethnic conflict, a three-way war between Serbs (mostly Eastern Orthodox), Croats (Roman Catholic) and Muslim Bosniaks. It was not until the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica and TV coverage of the siege of Sarajevo horrified the world that NATO stepped in, bombed Bosnian Serb positions, and forced their leadership to the negotiating table. Because many were driven from their homes in mixed communities, the Dayton Accord created two Bosnias—the Serb-majority north and east (Republika Srpska) and the central and southern regions, with a Bosniak majority and Croat minority (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The chair of the country’s presidency rotates between the three ethnic groups. The currency uses both the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets, and bills feature the figureheads of both Bosniaks and Serbs. Depending on where you are, the name of a town or village on a roadside sign is first in Roman or Cyrillic. License plates use only letters that are in both alphabets. Such well-intentioned changes are largely symbolic because the past looms large. A bloody civil war still lives in the memories of almost everyone over the age of 30. Communities that were once ethnically mixed are now dominated by one group. Two governments compete for power and resources. As a country, Bosnia is very much a work-in-progress.…
The long, skinny island of Pag on Croatia’s Adriatic coast, historically a center of the salt industry, is famous for its sheep’s milk cheese. Salt has been produced in the region for more than one thousand years, but the industry could be even older, dating from Roman times. The basic process of salt extraction has not changed much. Sea water is channeled into shallow pools which are closed off. Over time, exposed to the sun and wind, the water evaporates, and the salt begins to crystallize and settle. Salt was valued not only as a seasoning but because if its ability to preserve food. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, the Venetian Empire and the rulers of Croatia and Hungary fought for control of Pag and other islands. At the height of the industry, Pag had nine salt warehouses. One of the remaining ones houses the salt museum. After the tour, Stephanie and I went in search of the cheese. It owes its distinctive flavor to the topography and climate. In winter, a strong, cool, dry wind from the coastal mountain range picks up salt water and scatters a white salty dust across the rocky hills. Pag's sheep graze freely, giving their milk a distinctive salty taste that is preserved in the cheese. Just around the corner from the museum, we found Teresa who invited us into her kitchen where she makes the cheese.…
One of the legacies of Albania’s communist era are concrete bunkers. Around 175,000 were constructed all over the country. They range in size from small, shallow bunkers for a couple of soldiers to massive underground complexes with rooms, corridors and heating, electrical and water systems. Although the regime sometimes put out the line that the Americans or NATO were planning to invade, it was likely more scared of the Soviet Union. Albania broke with Moscow in the 1960s and allied with China. Its leader Enver Hoxha refused to reimburse Moscow for all the military hardware sent since the end of World War II. I guess he feared that the Soviets would send in the repo squad. The bunkers would be the first line of defense. But no one ever bothered to invade.…
For half a century after World War II, Albania was ruled by a communist regime so paranoid that its leaders believed that even the Soviet Union and China had sold out to capitalism. Albania zealously guarded its borders to stop anyone from leaving the socialist paradise, and to closely control anyone crazy enough to want to visit. Among those who were not welcome were, to quote Albania’s leader Enver Hoxha, “enemies, spies, hippie tourists and other vagabonds.” The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Europe , the bible for cheap travel, offered guidance on entry regulations for Eastern Bloc countries. For Albania, it had just two words, “Forget it.”…
After Turkish investors backed out, the first international hotel in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek officially became a “Joint Kyrgyz-Malaysian Venture.” Because English is widely spoken in Malaysia, you’d expect the new foreign partner to have tidied up the English grammar and spelling on the hotel’s printed materials. No way. The room service menu featured stewen rice, humburger and domestics pie. Or you could go downstairs to the restaurant for “beef language.”…
As the train pulled out of Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, Valery opened the first bottle of cognac and was figuring out how much alcohol our compartment would need for the 15-hour overnight trip. It was only 4:30 p.m. and, with several hours of daylight left, I wanted to look out of the window, not drink. But to be sociable, I agreed to a couple of shots. As the evening wore on and the alcohol took its toll, the conversation became more animated and difficult to follow. The next morning, as the train neared Kostanai, Valery opened a bottle of beer and offered me another. “Now you know kak russkiye zhivut (how Russians live),” he said, with a smile. I wanted to say I hoped not all Russians lived that way but recognized the sincerity of the hospitality. It was another warm memory of a cold winter in Kazakhstan.…
Before the Soviet era, there were no national borders between the peoples of Centra Asia, and identity was defined by religion, family, clan and place. The Soviets attempted to counter pan-Islamic and pan-Turkic tendencies by constructing nationalities, giving each a defined territory with national borders, along with a ready-made history, language, culture and ethnic profile. Your loyalty was no longer to your tribe, village or faith, but to your nationality as a Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen or Uzbek and to its Soviet Socialist Republic or SSR. For three quarters of a century, internal borders between the SSRs made little difference in the daily lives of people. It was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when each SSR became an independent country, that the notional boundaries became national borders. In border regions, nomadic families were no longer free to move their herds between winter and summer pastures; some arable farmers could not reach their wells or found their irrigation ditches cut. Buses stopped at the border and people could no longer travel easily to visit relatives or trade or shop on the market.…
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave us fourteen new countries (plus Russia) including the five “stans” of Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. We can be grateful the Soviet Union did not break up any further, or we would have to deal with Bashkortostan, Dagestan, and Tatarstan, all now Russian republics. From the mid-1990s, I faced the challenge of explaining my travels in Central Asia to colleagues, students, and friends. You would have thought the conflict in Afghanistan would have focused the attention of Westerners on the countries next door, but unfortunately it hasn’t. Just as medieval European maps tagged vast regions of Africa and Asia as terra incognita , unknown land, the five Central Asian republics are often a geographical blank between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the west and China to the east. To many, my travels might as well have been on another planet. I had simply been in “Stanland.”…
On Christmas Eve 1995, my wife, Stephanie, picked me up at Washington’s Dulles airport. After almost a month in Central Asia, I looked forward to returning to the United States. Instead, I experienced, for the first time in my life, reverse culture shock. One of the blessings—but also one of the curses—of international air travel is that in the space of a few hours (or, in my case, about forty hours) you are transported from one world to another. The place you leave and the place where you arrive differ not only in the predictable ways—the skin color and features of the people, the landscape, architecture, language, food, and money. More fundamentally, the everyday concerns of people are usually completely different. My first experience working in a developing country made a deep impression.…
When the Soviet Union broke up, its national airline Aeroflot suffered the same fate. The governments of cash-strapped new republics seized the aircraft sitting on the tarmac, repainted them in the new national colors and hoped they could round up enough spare parts to keep them flying. National airlines have since modernized their fleets, adding Boeings and Airbuses for long-haul flights, but Soviet-era planes are still the standard on most domestic and regional flights. Although “foreigners” prices and entrances have mostly disappeared, travelers still struggle with ling lines and bureaucracy at ticket offices and airports.…
Provincial Soviet-era hotels reflect the ostentatious public architecture of the Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. The impressive facades often conceal dark and drab interiors, with poor heating and ventilation, dangerous wiring, and leaky pipes. Even small cities boasted establishments with several hundred rooms. Of course, the number bore no relation to the expected number of guests. In an economy based on artificial production quotas, not on demand for products and services, there was no place for market research. Hotel occupancy rates may still be a state secret in some former Soviet republics, but my guess is that most government hotels in provincial centers don't fill more than 20 percent of rooms most of the time. And without guests, they don't have the money to modernize. These hotels have one saving grace—the dezhurnayas , the floor ladies. Remember to tip her.…
It was a classic Catch-22. I did not have a confirmed itinerary or a China transit visa. The Malaysian Airlines agent in Kuala Lumpur could have refused to rebook me, but he realized that the problem was not of my making. “Here’s your boarding card,” he said. “I’m just not sure what will happen in Shanghai.” The arrival of an itinerary-less, visa-less traveler threw Chinese immigration control into temporary confusion.…
Since the Mughal era, Barishal has been the commercial gateway to the southwest delta. It’s been whimsically described as the “Venice of Bengal.” although if you’re just counting waterways, almost any large town in southwestern Bangladesh is a Venice. At its commercial dock, brightly colored barges were drawn up on the muddy, litter-strewn beach, with gangplanks connecting them to wooden jetties. The river port is second only to the capital Dhaka for the volume of passenger traffic. On the other side of the passenger ferry terminal is what I’ll call the shared taxi station. Here, flat-bottomed nouka, powered by outboard motors or poled by boatmen, provide short-haul service to villages. A nouka departs when it’s full, or when the boatman figures he has enough fares to make the trip worth making. No nouka advertises its destination. You just know that Faisal goes to one village, Mamun to another, and that Amit will make sure your children get to school on time.…
For a small country, Bangladesh has a lot of rivers, around 700 according to most estimates. Roughly 10 percent of its total area is water, a high proportion considering that it has no large lakes. In other words, most of that water is moving. For the rural population, the rivers are interwoven with every aspect of their lives. They sustain agriculture and are the main highways for commerce. In many places, you need to travel by river to reach the school, the health clinic, or the government office. When the Himalayan snows melt, they wash earth from the mountain slopes into the river. Downstream in Bangladesh floodwaters submerge farmland and leave thousands of people trapped on levees and narrow spits of land. Yet when the muddy waters subside they leave behind rich, alluvial soil that makes the country one of the most fertile regions in Asia.…
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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Even for those with good language skills, getting things done in Kyrgyzstan in the mid-1990s was a challenge. A seemingly straightforward task, such as banking or paying a utility bill, often turned out to be a complex, time-consuming activity that required visiting several offices, filling out forms and slips of paper, and obtaining signatures and stamps. Sometimes, it involved waiting around for the only person authorized to conduct the transaction to return from lunch. A case in point was our phone bill.…
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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The 1947 partition of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan created artificial borders that are still hotly disputed today. In Bengal, the zigzagging border with East Pakistan (and from 1971, Bangladesh) was dotted with enclaves—little islands of one country surrounded by the territory of the other. In total, there were 162 chitmahals , ranging in size from ten square miles to less than an acre. For more than half a century, their residents were essentially stateless, unable to legally travel within their own country and lacking schools, health services, electricity, police and courts. Even after a historic land swap agreement in 2015 straightened out the border, most people stayed where they were; they did not want to abandon the land their families had farmed for generations.…
I drive out to a Johannesburg suburb for a church dinner and barn dance and find myself deep in Afrikaner country. Descendants of the Boers who trekked north from the Cape from the 1830s settled on the High Veld, a plateau region of grassland and scrub bushes. More than 4,000 feet above sea level, it resembles the High Plains of Montana or Wyoming. This is cattle country, where Afrikaner cowboys drove their herds, cooked pork ‘n beans on campfires and slept out under the stars. Later generations moved from ranches to ranch-style homes, but these suburban cowboys dressed in jeans, fancy leather belts, boots, cowboy hats and plaid shirts still muster a pretty good yee-haw, especially after a drink or two.…
It tells you something about how South Africa has changed that the sprawling townships of Soweto outside Johannesburg are now on the tourist bus routes. Soweto came to world attention in 1976, when police opened fire on 10,000 secondary school students marching to protest the policy of enforcing Afrikaans as the only language of instruction in schools, killing at least 176. Worldwide reaction increased pressure for economic sanctions and some historians regard the massacre as the beginning of the end for apartheid. Since the end of apartheid in 1991, the urban slum of Soweto has been transformed. Today, people actually move there from other districts because the housing is affordable, municipal services have improved, and the crime rate has dropped to close to the average for the city. There are malls, mega-churches, new highways and two huge soccer stadiums built for the 2010 World Cup.…
The main north-south highway from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, to Blantyre, the commercial capital, passes through a dry, flat landscape of scrub grass and small trees, broken by cultivated fields, with goats and cattle wandering close to the road and groups of men squatting under trees. The bus passed roadside stalls selling fruits, vegetables, household goods and auto parts, and piles of bricks and crushed stone for construction. Most villages consisted of small round huts of mud bricks with thatched roofs and a store built of brick or concrete. The bus passengers who were not sleeping were watching slickly produced Nollywood videos featuring rap artists and scantily clothed women alternating with locally produced videos of fully clothed church choirs swaying to the religious beat with cutaways of ministers in white suits preaching up a storm and scenes pirated from Hollywood religious epics. The contrast—in both the amount of exposed skin and social message—was striking.…
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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According to the census, two out of three Malawians claim to be Christian. One in five is Catholic, with others scattered among the mainstream Protestant groups; Muslims make up about one quarter of the population. Christianity is mixed with traditional beliefs drawn from animism and witchcraft, and often has a revivalist fringe. In storefront churches, roadside shacks with rough painted crosses, the music is loud and the sermons fiery—religion at its rawest, and perhaps most inspiring. Welcome to the “Faith in God Church—Home of the Incredible Miracle” and the “Winners Church—The Home of the Supernatural Breakthrough.”…
It is a paradox of history that South Africa’s apartheid regime, sanctioned and shunned by the international community, had a friend in Malawi. Its long-time authoritarian president, Hastings Banda, was politically conservative, suspicious and fearful of the socialist regimes of other countries in the region. Malawi was the only country in Africa to maintain diplomatic ties with South Africa during the apartheid era. South Africans occupied senior management positions in leading companies and helped train the security forces. When Banda decided to move the capital north from Zomba to Lilongwe, grants and loans from the apartheid regime helped finance construction.…
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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As a history student, it was challenging enough to keep up with the shifting borders of European countries. When I opened the atlas and turned to other continents, the borders of some countries seemed to make no sense at all. Why were some strangely shaped, with portions of their territory protruding into other countries? Why were there straight line borders, particularly in the Middle East and Africa?…
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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A shakedown by cops at Almaty airport in Kazakhstan provides a glimpse of life in a post-Soviet society undergoing wrenching social and economic transition. And as travel writer Thomas Swick notes, travel only becomes interesting (and therefore worth writing about) when things go wrong.
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Travels with David: Asia, Africa and The Balkans
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It was a proud day in 1965 when, at the age of 15, I was issued my first British passport. Looking back, the stern instruction in elaborate cursive not to mess with the Queen’s loyal subject seems like the pompous posturing of a country that had surrendered its empire but was not yet ready to accept its new, reduced role in the world. I’ve held a US passport since 1991. With two passports, I have one more than most people but I am still a long way away from matching the collection of my passport hero, Jason Bourne, the CIA-trained rogue assassin played by Matt Damon in the action thriller movies based on the novels of Robert Ludlum. He has six.…
After a 12-hour delay on a return flight from Madagascar, I engage in a polite but frustrating battle with the Kenya Airways customer service staff at Nairobi International Airport.
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