This week is going to rock!! Or is it going to be nice and slow? You decide 😉

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Baikal Babushka
#video #Russia

Lyubov is a true Siberian. She lives alone on Olkhon Island, taking care of her cattle. Lyubov gets water from an ice hole and skates on her rusty ice skates. She prefers her old-fashioned blades attached to valenki to modern ones.

Lyubov lives up to her last name, which translates as ‘walking on the sea’. Watch her uplifting story in our documentary, Baikal Babushka.

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Syrian Tango 💃
#video #Syria

Is there something you’d like to do, but something is holding you back? Rawnak from Latakia dares to dance despite conservative attitudes in Syrian society. Even though many frown upon their activities, she and her dance group organise flash mobs on the city streets. But Rawnak insists they have to do what they like.

This piece is from our documentary, Syrian Tango, about artists reviving the artistic scene in Syria.

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Smallpox epidemic in Moscow

#epidemic #moscow #smallpox

In 1960, Moscow could have been wiped out by a major smallpox epidemic. The virus was brought by Aleksey Kokorekin, a Soviet artist. He visited India, a country known for an unstable epidemic situation, and took home the carpet belonging to the deceased Brahmin as a souvenir. When he felt sick a few days after arriving home, neither he nor the doctors suspected smallpox. A hospital receptionist was just laughed at for suggesting it. Kokorekin got worse and died a few days later.

When other patients at the hospital started having the same symptoms, doctors revisited the smallpox idea only to realise the receptionist was right. They managed to prevent a national tragedy and defeat the virus in just six weeks.

Today, such a tragedy is not going to happen. The smallpox virus had been uprooted from the planet in 1980 during a massive smallpox eradication initiative by doctors worldwide.

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Make farming great again 🚜
#video #China

Farming is cool! Rita Zhu shows an idyllic life in the Chinese countryside, growing edible flowers, crops and vegetables. She’s an installation artist who chose a farm as her canvas. Art, agriculture and food combined make Rita’s farm an attraction for Shanghai residents who want to reconnect with nature. There’s even a term in Chinese - xiangchou, which means ‘longing for the countryside’.

Visit Rita’s farm in the new episode of, This is China. Do you sometimes wish to live closer to nature? 🌿

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#photo #Bolivia

This is the Chambi family from Bolivia. Eric, his wife and children, work as saleros or salt gatherers. Eric rides his old pickup truck to get salt blocks. He’s been collecting them for three years to build a small hotel. After a few thousand salt blocks, Eric finally opened his business in December 2019.

Instead of a new start of not having to chop salt from the earth’s crust under the scorching sun, the Covid pandemic struck. Not a single tourist has stayed at Eric’s hotel since March 2020. Eric keeps coming to the salt flats to bring more salt blocks in his truck. Sometimes, his family keeps him company.

RT Documentary’s Pavel Baydikov and Artyom Vorobey are in Bolivia, shooting a new documentary about saleros. Stay tuned for the premiere and subscribe to our channel not to miss anything.

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One of America’s most isolated communities is in danger
#video #USA

Tangier Island, Virginia, is so tiny it’s hard to spot it on a map. Located in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, it is home to less than 500 people. It’s among the most isolated communities in the US. Some say the residents have preserved the style of speech from the island’s earliest English settlers.

Generations of Tangier residents have earned their livelihood from catching fish, crab and oysters for nearly 250 years. Tangier Island is even considered the world capital of the soft shell crab.

However, their unique community is threatened by climate change and rising sea levels. With nine acres going underwater each year, Tangier Island is predicted to erode by 2050. Learn more about this unique community in our documentary.

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#video #Congo

The price Congolese workers have to pay for the rest of the world to enjoy smartphones — cobalt is essential for their production — is high. Miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the bulk of the world’s cobalt is found, are forced to extract and process the ore by hand, which causes serious health problems and environmental pollution.

Yet, none of the workers is ready to give up his job. Young Congolese men agree to this backbreaking work hoping to earn enough money for university. This way, they will have a slight chance of leaving this life and helping their families. Women who raise their children alone agree to work on cobalt processing though it might ruin their health. What’s more, the idea of closing the cobalt deposit site gives them shivers because they see no other way of earning a living.

We have already announced the upcoming premiere of our new documentary Cobalt Hell, and it’s finally arrived — tune for the premiere right now!

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The coldest place on Earth
#video #Russia

What does it feel like to live in the coldest place on Earth? RT’s Konstantin Rozhkov decided to test it for himself and journeyed to Oymyakon, where temperatures can drop to minus 50 degrees Celsius or minus 58 Fahrenheit.

When it’s that cold, things don't work like we are used to. But people who have lived here all their lives have no problem with it. They go ice-swimming when it's minus 50 degrees Celsius, and they come up with intelligent ways to keep their gadgets and cars up and running in these extreme temperatures, and their kids have fun on playgrounds. Also, there is no need to refrigerate food since they live in a giant freezer. This is why people eat raw meat and fish because all infections die out at such temperatures.

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#video #India

Ravi from India was head over heels in love with Uma. They married, but her relatives weren’t happy. Ravi and Uma are from different castes. The couple received threats, and Uma’s uncles came to their house one day. They beat the star-crossed lovers and took her away.

This week marked the most romantic holiday. While in most countries, people marry for love, most Indians still have arranged marriages. Find out more about love in India in our documentary, Love Commandos.

Arranged marriage vs love marriage - which one do you think is better? ♥️

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#video #Japan

Japan is listed as the loneliest country in an OECD survey. There are nearly six million elderly one-person households, according to 2015 census data. Murata-san is elderly and who lost connection with his family. Volunteers regularly check on him.

The country’s ageing and single population have given rise to kodokushi, or lonely deaths. As a result, more and more people die alone and unnoticed in their apartments, spurring a kodokushi cleaning business.

For more check, the documentary, Dying Alone.

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#video

Worried about the upcoming workweek? Don’t be - instead subscribe to our channel and watch our documentaries. 😉

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Living on rubbish
#video #Kyrgyzstan

There's a dumpsite on the outskirts of Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, that isn't just full of rubbish, it's rich in human stories too. Abdykadyr is 60 and it's need that forces him to toil away on the giant landfill, along with his sons and daughters-in-law. They rent a home near the dumpsite, where they collect iron, aluminium, in fact, anything they can sell. Abdykadyr isn’t at all embarrassed by his work.

He’s one of many who've ended up on the dumpsite. The new documentary tells their stories.

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