What does soil sound like, and what do those sounds mean? In this episode of The Swiss Connection podcast, host Susan Misicka meets Marcus Maeder, the world’s first scientist to use acoustics to research the soil and underground biodiversity. Maeder is a PhD student in environmental sciences at Swiss federal technology institute ETH Zurich. He’s also a researcher at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology at the Zurich University of the Arts. The name of his project is Sounding Soil. Also in this episode, we explore some of Zurich’s greenspaces with Joan Casanelles Abella, a Span ..read more

Construction workers got a surprise recently while laying a pipeline underneath Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland. On the lake floor they found the traces of a prehistoric village! This finally confirmed a long-standing theory among archaeologists, who believed that people had lived in the area thousands of years ago. But why were the traces of their home so deep within the lake? Across Switzerland there are about 500 pile dwelling sites, but these are normally found along the shorelines of lakes. And how do archaeologists manage to unravel prehistoric findings underwater? On this episode of ..read more

Switzerland is celebrating a rather awkward anniversary this year. It was only 50 years ago that women got the right to vote at the federal level. What was the hold-up? And what’s still holding women back today? In this episode host Susan Misicka talks with Regula Stämpfli, a Swiss political scientist and co-host of “Die Podcastin” – a German-language feminist podcast. As Stämpfli points out, not having the right to vote also meant that Swiss women were unable to study, choose a profession, have a bank account, or even to retain their own citizenship if they married a foreigner. “Not having su ..read more

In this second part of our two-part series on assisted suicide, reporter Kaoru Uda tells host Susan Misicka what it was like to accompany two Japanese patients who came to Switzerland to die. Both patients had severe, incurable neurological disorders. Aina, a 30-year-old woman, had suffered since childhood. Yoshi, a 40-year-old man, had been in serious decline over the past five years. Reporter Kaoru had the unique experience of accompanying both patients on their journeys to die in Basel. In this episode of The Swiss Connection, she explains how she got to know the patients and their families ..read more

Every year, over 1,000 seriously ill people end their lives in Switzerland with the help of suicide assistants. Assisted suicide is legal in several countries, including Switzerland, Canada and the Netherlands. A handful of other countries – like Germany and Colombia – are working out the legal and practical details. Some people even travel great distances to die in Switzerland because assisted suicide is illegal where they live. For example, a 104-year-old Australian man made the trip in 2018. One of the people who helped him was Erika Preisig, a Swiss doctor and the founder of Lifecircle, wh ..read more

Swiss voters have approved marriage for all. What does it mean to same-sex couples? In this episode of The Swiss Connection podcast, host Susan Misicka talks with some couples who explain why it's important to them. We also hear from opponents of Swiss legislation granting same-sex couples the right to marry. In particular, we visit a gay couple at their home in Bern. They got married in the Netherlands five years ago, but in Switzerland, they only have a registered partnership. Here they share their love story and plans for the future. To ensure that you don’t miss the next episode of The Swi ..read more

Swiss designers gave us the big-name Helvetica and Frutiger typefaces in the 20th century. Now a modern-day designer from Basel is collaborating on a new font that we might soon be seeing a lot more of. In this episode of The Swiss Connection podcast, Nina Stoessinger of Frere-Jones Type in Brooklyn talks about inspiration and challenges. (Photo above by Andrew Lichtenstein) To ensure that you don’t miss the next episode of The Swiss Connection, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts – such as Apple Podcasts, PlayerFM or Spotify. You can also explore our previous episodes here: You can read ..read more

How soon will we start buying our groceries with Bitcoin? What kind of scams do we need to be aware of? And why is Switzerland so sweet on cryptocurrencies and blockchain? In this episode of The Swiss Connection podcast, finance correspondent Matt Allen gives host Susan Misicka an overview of what he's learned while covering this scene over the past several years. To ensure that you don’t miss the next episode of The Swiss Connection, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts – such as Apple Podcasts, PlayerFM or Spotify. You can also explore our previous episodes here ..read more

Swiss architect Renata von Tscharner has spent over two decades championing the cause of the Charles River in Massachusetts. In 2000, she founded the Charles River Conservancy (CRC), a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the urban parklands along the waterfront. Having grown up swimming in the River Rhine in Basel, Renata wants to get people swimming in the once badly-polluted Charles. The CRC is developing plans for a swim park that would give Bostonians the chance to enjoy the river that inspired the song “Dirty Water” by The Standells. The gallery below shows Renata on both sides of the ..read more

In this episode of Inside Geneva we take a look at the shifting influences in the United Nations – especially with regard to China. As the United States slowly withdraws from the multilateral system and focuses on its ‘America First’ policy, China appears to be filling the political vacuum. In this edition of our Inside Geneva series, host Imogen Foulkes is joined by analyst Daniel Warner, China watcher Meg Davis from the Graduate Institute, and Sarah Brooks from the International Service for Human Rights. Subscribe to this podcast, The Swiss Connection, for example on Apple Podcasts, PlayerFM ..read more