The first Blender podcast aired on January 14, 2011. To celebrate 52 uninterrupted episodes, our four hosts -- Grant Podelco, Daisy Sindelar, Bruce Jacobs, and Pavel Butorin -- look back at their favorite stories, interviews, and musical selections from the past year.

An up-close-and-personal look at the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, plus the tale of the torture inflicted on a 15-year-old newlywed Afghan girl.

Test your knowledge with our 2011 current events contest featuring questions about news from the regions we cover.

In this year-ender edition of The Blender, we look at three hot spots, Afghanistan, Belarus, and Azerbaijan and talk to our service directors about the major developments of 2011.

In Episode 49, we indulge our love for proverbs with a zesty inaugural round of The Blender Proverb Quiz and explore the popularity of the expression "Dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on."

Eyewitness histories as we mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. Plus, surf rock from St. Petersburg and "Sesame Street" makes its debut in Afghanistan.

In The Blender this week, a closer look at the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran and long-standing tensions behind the diplomatic blowup, a legal victory for long-oppressed transgender males in Pakistan, and a fascinating discussion of literature’s role in Russia’s relations with the Caucasus.

In Episode 46 of The Blender, we sit down with our own Bohdan Andrusyshyn, a.k.a. Danchyk, the American-born singer who won legions of fans in Belarus for choosing to sing in their vanishing native language. Danchyk takes us from his early days as a darling of New York's Ukrainian and Belarusian immigrant communities to his first performance in Minsk in 1989 -- and shares some great music, in Belarusian and English, along the way.

In Episode 45 of The Blender, we sit down with Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to find out why Washington is trying to be more civil. We also introduce you to RFE/RL's Farshid Manafi, just voted AIB's International Radio Personality of the Year, and to Dan Telegin, Russia's post-punk, lo-fi genius.

In Episode 44 of The Blender, a talk with "Wall Street Journal Asia" columnist Sadanand Dhume about the differences in violent, radical Islam from Pakistan to Indonesia; a report from Ingushetia on allegations of human rights violations by security services; and a closer look at accusations that Vladimir Putin had many affairs and beat his wife when working in East Germany in the 1980s.