The Czech Story
The Czech Story
True stories from Czech history and culture, told in clear, slow Czech. For people who are learning Czech and want to understand a whole story, not just phrases.
Krátké skutečné příběhy z české historie a kultury, vyprávěné jasnou a pomalou češtinou pro lidi, kteří se česky učí (úroveň A2–B1). Těžší slova vysvětlujeme po cestě, jednoduše a česky. Žádné překlady, žádná cvičení, jen dobrý příběh.
How it works
Every episode is one true story about Czech history, people or culture, told in slow, clear Czech.
When a harder word comes up, the narrator explains it right away with simpler Czech words. No translations.
Listen once without stopping. Then listen again with the full transcript. The second time you'll understand much more.
Episodes
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Císař, který hledal zlato a našel vesmír
Rudolf II, alchemists, Tycho Brahe and Kepler
Four hundred years ago Prague was the strangest city in Europe. Emperor Rudolf II paid alchemists to make gold, and he also paid two astronomers, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, who worked out in Prague how the planets really move.
Read the Czech transcript → -
Údolí, které dalo světu dolar
Jáchymov: silver, the thaler and radium
The whole world knows the word dollar, but few know it is the name of a Czech mountain valley. The Jáchymov silver rush, the thaler coin, the black stone that gave Marie Curie her radium, and the uranium camps.
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Muž, který běžel ošklivě
Emil Zátopek, the runner nobody could watch
He ran as if it hurt, and for six years nobody could beat him. Emil Zátopek: interval training, three Olympic golds in Helsinki in eight days, and what the year 1968 cost him.
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Zlatá voda z Plzně
How Plzeň gave the world golden lager
In 1838 the people of Plzeň poured thirty-six barrels of their own beer out in front of the town hall. Four years later the world's first golden lager was born. In the second half: how to order beer in a Czech pub.
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Vánoce v kuchyni
Otto Wichterle and the soft contact lens
Soft contact lenses were born on a kitchen table in Prague at Christmas 1961, on a machine built from a children's construction set and a bicycle dynamo. The story of Otto Wichterle and an invention worth billions.
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Slovo z ateliéru
The Čapek brothers and the word “robot”
Every language in the world knows one Czech word: robot. How the Čapek brothers invented it in ten seconds in a painter's studio, what it originally meant, and the play that went around the planet.
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Muž, který obul svět
Tomáš Baťa, the shoemaker who shod the world
Why do prices end in 99? The story of Tomáš Baťa, a shoemaker from Zlín who nearly went bankrupt at eighteen, worked on an American assembly line and turned a muddy Moravian town into a shoe empire.
Read the Czech transcript →