The World from PRX

Alina Simone bio picAS

Alina Simone

Contributor to PRI's The WorldAfghanistan After Karzai: A Washington-Kabul Town Hall
I actually started my career as an indie-rock singer and spent most of my time in far-flung bars and basements from Olympia, Washington to Arkhangelsk, Russia, where I was psyched to learn there are rock clubs even in the Arctic Circle. Perhaps it was these years spent in distant hidey-holes singing to four forlorn Swedes that keeps me inspired, as a writer, to seek out stories that are unusual, arcane and perhaps interesting only to me.In addition to reporting for PRI's The World, I am the author of the essay collection, You Must Go and Win, and the novel, Note to Self (both published by Faber). My writing has also appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, among other places. 
A man stands under a tent talking to people sitting down
Global Nation Education
This Brooklyn pop-up school taps immigrants’ expertise — by making them teachers
fake plants
Health & Medicine
Cashing in on the weed industry
Wigs hung on a wall.
Religion
This Orthodox Jewish wig shop in Brooklyn says covering hair doesn’t mean ‘you have to be ugly’ 
A KGB agent disguise kit is shown with make-up and a wig.
Arts, Culture & Media
You can take selfies with once-secret KGB spycraft at this NY museum
Alina Simone's daughter Zoe teaches her Russian-speaking grandfather some basic Chinese.
The World in Words
Russian-speaking New Yorker would rather her daughter learn Chinese
A protester holds up a sign at an anti-Trump demonstration in Washington DC.
Global Politics
The Putinization of Donald Trump
Linguist Edward Vajda with a Ket woman in her home village in Siberia, Russia.
Science
Is this remote Siberian language an ancestor to Navajo?
Bunched up computer wires.
Global Politics
The strange history of ransomware
Explorers Tom and Tina Sjogren stand in front of a blackboard at a makers space.
Science
Dreaming of a DIY mission to Mars
For nine years, Shou Hatori ran a nighttime moving company that helped people disappear in Japan.
Books
Japan’s ‘evaporated people’ have become an obsession for this French couple
Limanol Adams, 27, posing with cut outs of a popular Korean boy band EXO.
Arts
The next K-Pop sensation could come out of New York City
Kelly Wong is one of the lion dance instructors at the New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club. Originally founded as a fraternal society, the Freemasons were among the first troupes in Chinatown to train women to lion dance.
Culture
In New York’s Lunar New Year parade, women are breaking barriers as lion dancers
Romance scammers
Media
Victims of online romance scams, there’s a place you can go for help
Celine Dion became a part owner of Schwartz's of Montreal in 2012.
Food
Celine Dion is an unlikely savior of Montreal’s classic Jewish deli
The Akwesasne Freedom School
Culture
At this school in upstate New York, students are free to speak Mohawk
A Doukhobor festival in Castlegar, British Columbia. For hundreds of years, the Doukhobors' oral cultural was enshrined in songs and prayers.
Culture
Born in Canada, they sing in the Russian dialect of their grandparents
Chris Tara-Browne was a coffee magnate in Siberia. Now, he's starting over again in California. His new venture, CaféUnity, is going in in what was a hot dog stand in Rohnert Park.
Business
Siberia’s coffee king is setting up shop back home in California
Anne Jimmie grew up speaking Ktunaxa, only to lose much of the language when she was removed from her family and placed in a boarding school. In 2006, the Canadian government compensated Jimmie and about 80,000 other First Nations people as part of a clas
Culture
A new generation of Canadians are learning this language, and not all of them are tribal members
Anne Jimmie grew up speaking Ktunaxa, only to lose much of the language when she was removed from her family and placed in a boarding school. In 2006, the Canadian government compensated Jimmie and about 80,000 other First Nations people as part of a clas
Culture
A new generation of Canadians are learning this language, and not all of them are tribal members
Companies like the Diamond Foundry can manufacture a high-quality diamond in about two weeks. It takes the Earth about a billion years to do it the traditional way.
Business
Diamond labs say theirs are forever too — even if they were made yesterday
Alena Savostikova left Russia when she was 15. Her American accent is now so good that when she went in for a Russian role, she got cast as an American.
Media
Victor Kruglov tells his Russian clients to succeed in Hollywood, there’s one key — lose the accent
"The Sniffer," one of the most popular TV detective shows in Russia today, is made by a Ukrainian production company.
Media
There’s one thing that Russia and Ukraine agree on — their favorite TV shows
Nawang Tsering Gurungat at Diversity Square
Culture
There’s a Tibetan dialect called ‘Mustang,’ and it’s staying alive in the US
Bill Moore and Judith Fearing are members of Nelson Friends of Refugees. They've raised money and secured an apartment for a family of Syrian refugees. All they need now are the refugees. But they're still waiting.
Conflict
Some Canadians really want to sponsor Syrian refugees. Turns out it’s harder than they thought.
The pool at Barneo Ice Camp.
Global Politics
A tussle between Russia and Norway at an exclusive resort at the top of the world
Jarvis Tyner has been a member of the Communist Party USA for over a half century. Now he's retiring from the Party staff.
Global Politics
Here’s how American Bandstand led a guy from Philly to the Communist Party
An ancient Etruscan bronze statuette of Herakles dating from the 6th or 5th Century B.C.
Culture
Where did the Etruscans come from? The linguistic and genetic clues are piling up.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, circa 1900.
Books
A 1915 novel is now the blueprint for a real-life feminist utopia
This photo was supposed to be selfie proof of Martin Szwed's claim of skiing solo to the South Pole in just 14 days. He later said the photo was a montage.
Sports
Is the pressure to set new records turning polar adventure into a lying game?
A railroad track in Moscow, Arkansas.
Culture
There are more than 20 towns in America called Moscow. Why is that?
Staff at the Wuneechanunk Shinnecock Preschool.
Culture
This Native American tribe on Long Island is trying to raise its language from the dead
Trekking the Annapurna route near Jomsom. Trekkers are critical to Nepal's tourism industry, but the travel warnings boost the cost of travel insurance for them.
Global Politics
Nepal says it’s open for business, but tourists are still staying away
Natalia Pinus decided to run for the Novosibirsk City Council in Siberia. And she decided to run as an independent.
Global Politics
This woman demonstrated that even in Russia all politics is local
Christian Ray Flores became a rock star in post-Soviet Russia in the '90s: "No one knew exactly how to make music like that but I did because I grew up overseas."
Global Politics
The guy who supplied the soundtrack for Boris Yeltsin’s Rock the Vote
Jacob Kirkegaard recording in the Chernobyl exclusion zone: "It's a kind of a no place and so I thought: How can I record such a place because my presence ... changes so much?"
Arts
A man who travels the world not to see things, but hear them
"I just want to ride my bike aggressively in every city I can before I die," says bike racer Chelsea Matias.
Culture
This bike race attracts official sponsors, but technically it’s not legal
Jan Wanggaard (l), Bjørn Myrann (c), and Stig Pettersen (r), from the “Maud Return Home.”
Technology
A Norwegian artist wants to raise a storied ship using some really big balloons
The members of EXP -- short for experiment -- are all learning to sing in Korean.
Music
Bootstrapping their own K-pop band — in New York City
Krussia got his start in New York beatboxing because you don't need translation. "This is where you gain trust with people through sound ... without using any words,” he says.
Music
How this Russian rapper found his groove — in New York
Alexander Melamid
Arts
Launching an art magazine by people and for people who know nothing about art
Kazakh glam-rock and opera singer Timur Bekbosunov first got discovered singing Over the Rainbow at at festival in Kansas.
Music
When you think Kazakhstan think Timur, not Borat
Iris Dement
Music
What does a 20th century Russian poet have to do with Johnny Cash?
A man applies for Liberland citizenship in the village of Backi Monostor, Serbia May 1, 2015. A Czech citizen, Vit Jedlicka, has proclaimed a new sovereign state lying on the border between Croatia and Serbia.
Global Politics
On the Danube, the world’s newest micro-nation. But Liberland has a problem.
European Humanities University, a Belarussian liberal arts school that's located across the border in Lithuania
Education
When Belarus closed its last liberal arts school, the university went into exile
Elena Narbutaitė, Menachem Kaiser and Jake Levine, October 15, 2010, preparing bagels for the first public bagel party and presentation of the Vilnius Bagel Project. Yalta Restaurant kitchen, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Food
Bagels disappeared from Lithuania after WWII … but now they’re back
Pamela Brown and Mariano Nuñez at a Hague conference on private international law. They've been working on cross-border child abduction cases together for 15 years.
Justice
How a Texas legal aid lawyer is bringing kidnapped children home from Mexico
Music
All those musicians you see playing in the New York subway? Some of them auditioned for the spot
Andrew Miksys self-published an award-winning photography book, "Disko," about Lithuania's Soviet-era dance halls.
Arts
Self-published photo books go from last resorts to museum treasures
Melissa O'Reilly at the International Winter Swimming Competition in Murmansk, Russia, in March 2015.
Sports
Meet the ice swimmers who put the Polar Bear Club to shame
Music
A Russian DJ breathes life back into Russian and American legends alike
Hiram Green shows off some of the raw essences that go into his perfumes. He's at Twisted Lily, a fragrance boutique in Brooklyn.
Lifestyle
Independent perfumers are making a big splash in the fragrance world
Jason Torres and Daniel Fienco, "I Was There" participants, line up a shot for their film "What's Really Important"
Conflict
The grandson of ‘Old Blood and Guts’ makes film, not war
Mike Adams is the owner of Royalty Pecan Farm in Caldwell, Texas. Most of the nuts pictured here are being prepared for export to China.
Business
The Chinese went wild for American pecans — which may be bad news for wild pecan trees
This is the first RAPIDO house, located in Brownsville, Texas.
Development
A custom three-bedroom house for $69,000? Welcome to the new model for disaster relief.
Members of a Right to Light campaign in Hidalgo County, Texas, where many of the colonias along the border lack street lights.
Justice
On the Texas border, they’re fighting for the right to have street lamps
Poet Yu Xiuhua lives in her home village in China's Hubei Province. She became an internet sensation with the publication of her poem, "Crossing Half of China to Sleep With You."
Arts
1,200 years later, is Chinese poetry entering a new golden age?
Egg salad for Passover in Drohobych, Ukraine. Loli Kantor remembers this method of cutting an egg in the palm of your hand from her youth. It's part of the Jewish life that she documented in Ukraine.
Belief
The conflict in Ukraine has led to a Golden Age for Jews — though some are still leaving
Justin Bettman and Gözde Eker animate their sets with actors hired through a local casting website. After they’ve staged their photo, they leave the set up for passersby to explore, photograph, rearrange or selfie. This living room was the first set they
Arts
Here’s how you can find a bathroom, or a living room, on the streets of New York
Technology
Here’s what you can do with a whimsical idea and a whole lot of leg power
Hart Island as seen from City Island in New York borough of the Bronx in 2009.
Culture
Is your family member buried on Hart Island, off the coast of New York? Sorry, you can’t visit