Obvious the Podcast

In this last episode of this season and year, we bring together two young Cypriots: a Turkish-speaking and a Greek-speaking to talk about the Cypriot identity, difficult history and similarities. 

Our guests: Eser Sarachoglou and Eliana Hadjiandreou. Host: Sasha Tyan

This week, I bring you stories of illegal border crossings, rewriting history and a teenage poem with the power to unite the island, featuring a Turkish Cypriot poet Nese Yasin and a literature teacher Bulut Unvan. Produced by Sasha Tyan

In 1974, the island of Cyprus was divided into the "north", to this day only recognised by Turkey, and the "south", which is part of the EU. Until 2003 the border was sealed, and though today people can move relatively freely between both sides, Nicosia remains the last divided capital of the world. 

In this episodes, a mother and a daughter tell their stories of this border, remember how it shaped their childhoods and changed their lives. 

In this episode, we talk about the border between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and how the discourse can become more productive. Theresa takes you to Cologne during carnival season, a time that is especially affected by the pandemic. The Italian journalist and fact checker Juanne Pili talks about the hindering role of conspiracy "gurus" in the quest of getting to a higher vaccination rate. His outlook is rather mild. Please, get vaccinated and stay safe. If you want to hear more of us in the future, you can support this podcast financially with just a few euros on buymeacoffe.com/obviouspod.

Obvious is about a variety of things we tend to overlook — and sometimes those can be more difficult to talk about, and hide in the most intimate corners of the mind. This second season is about borders, and in this episode, we’ll talk about the borders inside — a condition called Borderline Personality Disorder or BPD.

With this episode, we wanted to try and see the world and the borders that exist or do not exist in it, through the eyes of children. 

Our guests today - Tim, Andrei and Mariam - live in different countries, speak different languages and go to different schools, but all of them have a lot to say on the topic of borders and we think there are some things we could learn from them.

In August 2018, anthropology graduate Daniele Ventola left Naples, his hometown, to embark on the biggest adventure of his life — a journey to China along the Silk Road — on foot. The 7500 km walk was not a personal challenge, but a cultural project, aimed at demonstrating the futility of borders and the universal nature of the human being.

While on his journey, he took pictures, interviewed strangers and carefully wrote down his stories, which his readers on the other side of the screen hungrily devoured. 

See for yourself: find him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Ventodellaseta/ and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ventodellaseta/

Remember the movies "Going the distance" and "Dear John"? Though long-distance love is not the most popular one in Hollywood movies, in real life couples separated by thousands of kilometers are actually more common than you might think. But statistically speaking, they also don’t last. 

Well, in this episode we don't talk about numbers, but we’ve got some personal stories told by real couples. And one of them comes from one of us, producers of this podcast.

In this episode, Theresa takes us on a virtual tour across Europe. But this trip is not a particularly pleasant one. In conversation with András Pethő, an investigative journalist from Hungary, and the editor in chief of Reporters without borders, she explores the ways in which press freedom has been threatened across the continent. How has the journalist's mission, which has for centuries trespassed borders, become threatened by national governments?

Welcome to the second season of Obvious the podcast, in which we explore a concept that is not that obvious... borders. In this episode, our reporter Astrig takes us to Stepanakert, a city in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan went at war again in September 2020 over the region. Six weeks of bloody armed conflict finally ended in the early hours of November 10th with a ceasefire brokered by the Russian Federation. More than 5,000 people died. In this episode you will hear about the people who are still living there, their everyday life, their hopes and fears, in a region where borders always move and were drawn in blood.

Have you ever thought about how to name your children? Well, Cyliane and Ralph have. Expecting a baby, they are just about to find out all the things to consider when naming a human being. In the third episode of Season 1, we will not only explore different cultural aspects of names, we also talk to Natalia Barbican about her bureaucratic and emotional journey of changing her surname when moving from Russia to the UK. Obvious the podcast is an international production by Sasha Tyan, Astrig Agopian and Theresa Mainka and is officially supported by Are We Europe, a new media that gives you a new perspective through its border-breaking stories.

How did the name Karen become this meme of a racist, middle-aged white woman? How much truth is behind it? What makes a name black or white and what does it have to do with belonging? In the second episode of Season 1, we’ve talked to two Karens from the US with different cultural backgrounds, Karen Rae Weir and Karen Kuo, about identity and discrimination connected to names. Serena James shares her personal story of how having a white name has impacted her daily life. Obvious the podcast is an international production by Sasha Tyan, Astrig Agopian and Theresa Mainka and is officially supported by Are We Europe, a new media that gives you a new perspective through its border-breaking stories.