This week's best summer in P1:
In Summer in P1's tsunami of gripping, personal stories about trauma and growing up, Russian researcher Gudrun Persson's summer talk is a cool breath.
She gives a sober picture of Russia and an interesting impact on the country's history from tsarist to communist state, and on to the current Putin regime.
I will take with me her sawing of the mythical picture painted by Russia.
For example, she does not agree that there should be a "Russian people's soul":
"I thus mean that there is no Russian national soul, or that Russia would be more difficult to understand than other countries. All countries have their peculiarities, their phenomena to marvel at. Hiding behind obscure concepts such as 'Russia is a mystery' or just saying 'Russia is different' is simply meaningless and it explains nothing ".
If you want to know more about Russian history:
If you want to dive further into Russian history, but with an easy tone, there are four very listenable episodes of the history podcast "The rest is history" from March this year, where two very British uncles and historians, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, go through the life of the young Putin, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Yeltsin years and the economic crisis, and finally Putin's Russia.
If you like history podcasts, but not wars:
"You must remember this" has for many years gone through various aspects of Hollywood's 20th century and the latest season is about the emergence of the 80's phenomenon erotic thriller.
Here are both stories about how a local politician accidentally made a porn film into one of the most watched movies in 1972 and interesting insights into how the ultimate erotic thriller, "Dangerous Connection" came to be.
Among other things, we hear how Glenn Close got the role of the rabbit cook Alex, even though she was barely allowed to audition because she was not considered sexy enough.