Communism – Another World

Owen Wilson keeps tens of thousands of bees in his backyard in Donaghadee. He began beekeeping as a teenager but stopped in the 1960s when he had to kill all his bees, after they’d been infected with American Foulbrood disease.

In this episode, Owen and his wife Ann outline the rules of bee society, including the death battles between virgin queens, the cluster ball-suffocation of strangers, the post-mating massacre of male drones, and bees who march to their death for the sake of the hive. He also tells of a man who could keep queen bees in his mouth; the health benefits of bee venom, pollen & honey; and why he always makes sures his trousers are tucked into his socks when he works with his bees.

Ep. 19: Quilts and Politics of Chile

Another World Episode 19

Quilts meet politics as Roberta Bacic takes on us a tour of Chilean wall hangings made during women under the Pinochet dictatorship. The quilts are not typical ones – they show village life in all its complications, including the violence, activism, and family life during the 1970s and 80s. The arpilleras have travelled around the world, having been sold and exported in order to raise money for women in Chilean villages and also to tell their stories to the outside world.

See more of the quilts here: http://www.derrycity.gov.uk/museums/quilt.asp

Video of a presentation from Roberta at INCORE on the Magee Campus of University of Ulster is here: http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/Seminars/CAIN_13-03-08-RB_ref.html

And more quilt exhibtions can be seen here:

http://museum.msu.edu/Exhibitions/Current/quilts_and_human_rights.html

Ep. 5: Death in Russia

Another World Episode 5

Fr. Patrick Gaffney, a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, talks about the changing cultures of death in Russia. Professor Gaffney explains how Russians have dealt with corpses, funerals, and the afterlife during the past two centuries. He tells of the journeys to heaven and hell that souls took during the Tsarist era, why the Soviet ‘red funerals’ failed, what happened to Lenin and Stalin’s corpses, and why there are so few obituaries or funeral homes in modern Russia.