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This Tuesday, June 20, marks World Refugee Day, held to honour people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes in the face of conflict and persecution. In connection with the annual day, the Czech office of the UN Refugee Agency hosted a debate in Prague addressing the current situation of Ukrainian refugees in Czechia.

Pavlína Adam, a biologist and adventurer, recently became the first Czech woman to complete the Great Himalaya Trail, one of the world’s most difficult treks, stretching 1,700 kilometres across the Himalayas, with an approximately 240,000 metres of elevation gain. Pavlína and her US friend Sarah Kruger covered the trek in just 101 days, during the monsoon season, becoming the first female-only team to complete the challenge. When I met with Pavlína during her brief stay in Prague in between other adventures, I first asked her how she and her friend got the idea to set on the trail:

František Bělský is largely unknown in his native country. However, the Czech, who was born in 1921, achieved great success in his adopted UK, becoming the only sculptor ever to create busts of four generations of the royal family. Bělský’s remarkable life and career are the subject of a new book by journalist Bohumil Vostal, who first reported on his legacy while serving as Czech Television’s London correspondent.

Going to a Czech school and getting a Czech education is one of the key routes by which young refugees from Ukraine can successfully integrate into Czech society. But Ukrainian teenagers are apparently far less integrated than their younger counterparts, with the vast majority of adolescents not attending secondary school.

Dinner in the Sky is a food concept taking place across the world highlighting the best chefs and faces in contemporary gastronomy. Since 2017 the event has also been held in Prague, presenting Czech chefs who serve guests – at an altitude of 50 metres.

Father’s Day is this Sunday, but are Czech dads actively involved in the day to day domestic duties of running a family amongst heterosexual couples, or are mothers still bearing the brunt of the workload? I asked Dr. Jana Klímová Chaloupková from the Institute of Sociology at the Czech Academy of Social Sciences about the current division of labour in the home.

If you’ve heard the roars of a crowd at Prague’s Viktoria Zizkov stadium, there’s a chance it’s been fans of the Prague Lions, the American football team who recently qualified for the European League of Football (ELF) this season. This past week, I sat down with head coach Zach Harrod and quarterback Shazzon Mumphrey to talk about what the process of stepping up into the ELF has meant for the team and for the sport here in Czechia.

Saturday marks Petr Pavel’s first 100 days as president of Czechia. What have been his biggest successes – and his biggest failures? I spoke to political scientist Jiří Pehe about how he would rate how the fledgling president is doing so far.

According to the Czech police, there has been a sharp increase in the number of young people taking steroids over the last few years. Experts say that social media and the pressure to achieve the “perfect body” play a significant role.

In the 1950s, during the darkest phase of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Czech sexologists started to research the female orgasm, outpacing most of their colleagues abroad. What triggered their interest in the topic and what exactly did their research focus on? Find out in another part of our mini-series Sex under Communism.