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Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he interviews the women's world champion, Hou Yifan. Still only 19, she's one of only a handful of women to have become an elite grandmaster. And she comes from a country with no strong link to chess, China.
Hou Yifan is a Chinese chess prodigy. She is the Women's World Chess Champion, the youngest ever to win the title, as well as the youngest female player ever to qualify for the title of Grandmaster.
The full fifteen-minute broadcast can be viewed at the official site
In the interview, Dominic Lawson asks the tough questions of grandmaster Hou Yifan, possibly out of revenge for his crushing loss, but more likely out of good journalism. Apart from classic questions regarding her upbringing and how she first became involved in Western chess, he asks her about what money in female chess is like and her theory on the overall disparate level between male chess and female.
One reader and listener commented the chess commentary by GM Daniel King was unnecessary and irrelevant for an audience who could not follow the game. This is not actually true, though it might seem that way to some. For a non-chess playing audience, listening out of curiosity, the general comments are enough to not only show that Lawson was outclassed by the Women World Champion, initially described as a match between a poor amateur football club and a top club such as Manchester United, but also the general reason that led to his demise. A feeling of how the game went and why is conveyed without immersing the listeners into technical details. In fact, actual move-by-move analysis would have been the blunder.
Natan Sharansky is a prominent Israeli politician, human rights activist and author, who spent years in a Soviet prison for allegedly spying for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After that Sharansky became a human rights activist and spokesperson for the Moscow Helsinki Group. Sharansky was one of the founders of the Refusenik movement in Moscow.
In 1977 Sharansky was arrested on charges of spying for the DIA and treason and sentenced to 13 years of forced labor in Perm 35, a Siberian labor camp (Gulag). He kept himself sane during solitary confinement by mentally playing chess. (Source: Wikipedia)
The full fifteen-minute broadcast can be viewed at the official site
Nathan Sharansky explains how he had first wanted to not only be a professional chess player, but the World Champion. The reason for the choice, aside from plain love for the game, had to do with something else.
