Russia +++ sanctions +++ Diversophy +++ N Korea +++ Absolutely Intercultural 211 +++

Binoculars
Not allowed in North Korea

Where in the world can you get one hectare of land for free and retire 5 years earlier than the rest of your countrymen?
What would it be like to do scientific fieldwork in North Korea?
Welcome to Show 211 of Absolutely Intercultural, the podcast about all things intercultural. My name’s Anne Fox and this show is coming to you from Denmark.
absolutely free
So let’s start with that free land and hear what Diana Solovyova of the Institute of the Biological Problems of the North, originally from St Petersburg in Russia, thinks of the offer as we go absolutely free. Remember that you have to be a Russian citizen to take advantage of that offer!

absolutely sanctioned
Diana was staying with us for a while in Denmark and I began to notice that she was very interested in French cheese and in this segment, we find out why there is no French cheese in Russian shops at the moment.

absolutely overheard
We have featured George Simons and his Diversophy game on the podcast, a couple of times now, the last time to explore the special editions he is creating to help migrants and locals understand each other better. Your correspondant, ie me, has taken on the job of creating a version for Denmark, together with Line Mark Rugholt. What exactly does that entail? Well first of all we build on existing country packs but unfortunately there is no existing Denmark pack so we have to build that first. And as we keep emphasising here on Absolutely Intercultural, nationality is not a good predictor of culture, but you have to start somewhere. So listen in as we talk with George and his intern about how much overlap there could be between the Swedish and Danish games, where his Finnish students, who developed the original migrant pack, are testing the game now and how the Danish team is getting their information for the migrant cards. So let’s go absolutely overheard and eavesdrop on part of the meeting where I started by explaining how much overlap we had found between the Swedish pack and what we would need in a Danish pack. So watch out for a Danish deck that will be available shortly in the Diversophy series and I hope we will be able to use the new migrant pack for Denmark to foster understanding between locals and new migrants within the next few months. When we do I’ll be reporting on that for the podcast.

absolutely impossible
I’m tempted to call this next segment Mission Impossible. Diana Solovyova, who we met in the first segment, was approached to do some field work in North Korea. Diana is an ornithologist and in her research into the very rare Scaly-sided merganser duck, needs to go out identifying where the birds are, and mapping their location. Let’s see why this turned into Mission Impossible.
It was great to hear that there might be a good solution at the end.

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I can tell you now that the next show will be coming to you from Germany on March 3rd with Laurent Borgmann as host.
So stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox

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Image: By Santiago Medem, reproduced under Creative Commons licence.

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